The header image is a variation on the preceding image. If you do not see an image of an arch washed by early morning sun then click on the post title. I wanted to include these two images to remind myself of the degree of change that is possible. This applies not just to external phenomena. It applies equally well to the personal dimensions of one’s world. I need to believe in the possibility of positive change.
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Category Archives: Plans
Decision Making
I have had this sense that emotions are critical to decision making. Yesterday, while puttering around on the Internet, I came across a story which supports that view:
Talk about a “sea change”: today cognitive neuroscientists have begun to understand how our emotions drive virtually every decision we make, from our morning cereal choice, to who we sit next to at a dinner party, to how sight, smell, and sound affect our mood.
The above quote is part of a much longer book excerpt. The full document may be found at Salon here.
A decision involves a choice between two alternate outcomes. Once you begin to examine even the most basic decisions, you quickly discover they mandate the review of a significant amount of information. Sifting through this information requires brain horsepower. It also requires considerable time. Brain horsepower, and time, are both scarce resources. The brain is able to maximize the utilization of these resources through the use of heuristics and bias. Let me give you an example.
What are you going to eat for dinner tonight? My hunch is that you have an initial response, an immediate preference which makes itself known to you almost instantly. You didn’t need to think about it much, if at all. The answer was immediately conjured up.
If you then begin to unpack your initial choice you will likely find it was based on your existing “preference envelope,” a food stuff that you prefer above all others. In fact, once you begin to search the fridge, or your shelves, you may find the desired food is not available to you.
Were you to attempt a “rational” answer, the amount of decision relevant information would increase exponentially. Do you consider the health benefits of your next meal? Do you contemplate potential weight gain? Do you estimate the micro-nutrients required to fulfill your daily requirements?
Or do you invoke an economic perspective and consider total meal cost against your available cash budget? Decision making now requires an answer to the question “What can you afford to eat?” rather than simply what you want. Or do you begin to contemplate the amount of time required for food preparation versus the amount of time you have available? I am hungry and want sustenance now! is much different from thinking about hunting through recipe books for an hour for that Mexican recipe which requires two hours of preparation time.
The point to all this is that decision making has the potential to be a difficult and time consuming process. The mind is able to shorten this process by using established bias as a trigger criterion. This results in a satisfactory quick decision. It may not be the optimum decision but it is a workable solution.
My hunch is that decision making is subject to emotion based bias. We make choices not on the basis of observable fact, and established rational criteria, but on emotional bias, on hunches, and on memories of past pleasures.
When I try and understand why it is that I spend long sleepless nights in review of very basic events, my sense is that my inability to arrive at a decision is due to some impairment consequent on the injury. I have difficult deciding what to do because the emotional bias that would assist in decision making is in some way impaired. The outcome is that I need to do two things:
- Follow established patterns and routines so as to reduce the burden of decision making
- Where I lack such established patterns and routines, I am forced to undertake an intensive review of decision relevant criteria in order to come to a decision. This intensive review is what keeps me up all night.
Update July 21st 2014
I saw Dr H today and she described my night time efforts as an attempt at problem solving. I think her view of the process is better than mine. What I am doing at night is acknowledging a problem and then attempting to arrive at a solution. I face two different obstacles. The first is gaining an overview and awareness of my situation. The second is making a decision based on that awareness. I appear to have difficulty with both of these processes.
Shamatha
My failure to follow through on blogging has had some interesting effects. One of these concerns the practice of Shamatha meditation and the application of mindfulness techniques.
In a much earlier time, I practised Shamatha meditation. This is a standard zazen practice as taught by Shunryu Suzuki. The practice involves being seated quietly in lotus position and meditating on the out breath as it disappears into surrounding space.
Outside of the periods of sitting practice, various techniques were employed to encourage mindfulness, the means of maintaining an awareness of how one engages with all aspects of external phenomena. During the past months of May and June, I made a concentrated effort to try and maintain situational awareness in addition to working to regain other skills. This included working diligently to enter an unbroken string of daily posts. In addition to posting, I also undertook on-line course work in an attempt to regain my prior technical skills. I found this attempt at learning extremely frustrating. My ability to learn appears to be considerably reduced from what it once was.
When I stopped this sequence of posts and the associated learning, I quickly entered a very different phase. An entry in my Accident Log describes this change:
Back from a copy run and post office submission.
Note that I am not following my prior routines.
I am preoccupied with the challenge of finding employment.
I am going ahead blindly.
Before this I was engaged in a very conscientious attempt to monitor my behavior and grow my awareness of deficit patterns and identify the means to mitigate those issues.
Now I blindly forge ahead, I forget my routines, drift off to other concerns and then return to the present and realize I am not following my discipline, that I am more or less out there. In driving this is unsafe. In other areas of my life I am moving from a stage in which I was learning to enforce discipline and achieve rehab goals to a sort of blind rush forward. I am not sure this achieves much, or if it is fruitful.
Since I have come to the conclusion that making any further submission to the insurance company is a loosing proposition, I have turned to try and locate employment. The injury gives me one advantage. I can look at my diminished bank balance and my poor economic prospects and I have no sense of anxiety over my predicament. No anxiety at all. I continue to find this to be very strange.
I am also very aware of the fact that in the past I undertook projects and woefully overestimated my capabilities. This resulted in the inevitable crash and burn. I have come to the realization that the recent period of a concentrated focus on posts and on-line learning may have given me a false sense of accomplishment.That I may once again be over estimating my capabilities.
I am making the attempt to map out and plan for a return to work, even if this work is nothing more than cleaning offices (Dr H thinks I may not have the physical strength for this type of work due to post accident atrophy of my left side).
The other critical aspect of my current endeavours is the need to maintain my self confidence. I need to believe in myself and my competence, my ability to perform to an acceptable standard. I feel as if I am walking a tightrope of competing interests. Attempting to be mindful in all that I do, attempting to maintain practical routine, while at the same time preparing to throw myself out of the plane without a single parachute and trusting that I can learn to fly before I meet the up-rushing terrain.
I really have no idea if such a thing is possible. What I do know is that I have no choice. I have already exited the plane. It is now little more than a tiny dot in the distance. And the ground is getting ever so much closer.