What does it mean to "use" your brain, and how is that different than simply thinking? As developers we engage in thinking all the time, but how can we use our brains better when solving problems?
In today's episode, we're talking about the limits of our brain and mind shifting strategies to solve problems faster.
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What does it mean to use your brain? And how is that different than just thinking? As developers, we engage in thinking all the time, but there's an entirely separate part of our brains that we might be missing out on using that could be better at solving some of the problems that we face on a day-to-day basis. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. You're listening to Developer T, and my goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers. One of the amazing things about the human brain is its ability to process complex topics. This is why we can write code that is abstracted so many levels away from a physical reality that we have to tangibly think about. We can imagine entire universes where we can create stories and keep track of those stories while we read a book, a book that was written with a bunch of characters that are in and of themselves abstractions. These are characters that we may not have ever even seen that specific character at that specific size before, but somehow we are able to process all of this information and create meaning out of it. This is an incredible feat, and part of our intellectual superiority that we are aware of, the domination that we have over the world around us, has given us a somewhat distorted picture of what the brain is actually capable of, and more importantly, where the brain is capable of. So, I'm going to give you a little bit of a quick overview of what the limits are. It's very simple to see the limits of your brain, and specifically limits that we're going to talk about today. If you want to test these limits, you can try to brute force memorize the first 20 digits of pi. This isn't a lot of information. It's just 20 digits. After all, we can process a lot more information than just 20 digits. We can read entire books with thousands of pages and understand them. So, what is it about remembering 20 digits that makes it difficult? Here's another exercise that you might want to try that you've probably faced already in your career. Go and look at the features of, let's say, three or four different libraries, popular libraries, or three or four different languages, and try to decide which one is best. This kind of exercise is going to help you to understand the limits of your brain, and you may find that you may have to use theseijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijij language to learn. You can use variables like the market size. You can try to quantify how much you enjoy that language or even how much you expect to enjoy it in the future. You can imagine that you would use measures like the number of available repositories on GitHub or even GitHub's own report of the trends for a given language. How do you decide what trend to use or how far back to look? These are all different questions that you would have to try to answer and then compare between the different languages. And so now you have this very large list of pros and cons and you could sit down and try to look over that information, but this is where we hit our limit. Our ability to cognitively process or think about something on purpose means that we have a lot of time to think about it. And so we have to think about it. We only have so much capacity to think in parallel. This is the critical factor. Remember, again, the number of variables. We're very good about thinking about one thing at a time. In fact, most of the advice that you receive on this podcast is an attempt to get you to think about fewer things at any given point in time and reduce the things that you are working on to the simplest form. So you don't have to keep a lot of information in your head. But if you are trying to make a decision, a complex decision with a lot of variables, there is another part of our brains that we can tap into. What's interesting is that as knowledge workers, we are paid for using this one specific part of our brain, this prefrontal cortex, the part that's responsible for thinking very deeply and thinking in a very focused manner. But there's another part of our brain that we're able to use that can help us think more abstractly and without the same limits, the cognitive processing limits that you would find in the prefrontal cortex. Lots of studies, for example, one from Carnegie Mellon, support the idea that the rest of our brain is working on the problem in parallel to us focusing on other things. For example, if you expose yourself to all of the information about the brain, you're going to be able to think more abstractly. And so that's the other part of our brain. If you expose yourself to all of the information about the various programming languages that you're considering, let's say you have four of them, then you can go and do something totally unrelated to that. Your brain's going to keep on working on that decision problem. Now, we're not really consciously aware of this, and there's no way to become aware of it. But once we return to that problem at a later point in time, we may have a different sense of clarity. And we might even have what we might feel is a gut intuition, but actually it's an intuition of the brain. And so that's the other part of our brain. And so that's the other part of our brain. And so that's the other part of our brain. And so that's the other part of our brain. that was given to us by that unconscious processing that's happening in the rest of our brain. So here's the critical thing to take away. First, we said the most critical thing is to remember that this has to do with the number of variables. So if you can reduce the number of variables that you're thinking about, then you can actually process those entirely in that prefrontal cortex. For example, if you're working on a math problem, this is a perfect example of processing in the prefrontal cortex. But if you're working on something that's not a math problem, then you can do something that requires much more evaluation, much further kind of discussion about multiple variables or comparison between multiple things. And that's not something that you're going to be able to hold in your prefrontal cortex. The working memory, for lack of a better explanation, is too small. So the kind of prescription to fix this problem is to expose yourself to the information, all of the relevant information for making a given decision, and then go and do something else. Maybe take a walk. Give yourself something that's totally unrelated that won't allow your mind to drift back and try to process that information again on purpose in that intentional and conscious way. When you return from that walk, revisit the information that you saw before. Something new might stick out to you, or it may be that you're not really done processing that information. This is so critical to understanding how and why we work the way that we do. It makes sense, for example, for you to take a true and complete break from your work, perhaps even right in the middle of your work. If you find yourself kind of hitting a wall, this is a sign that your prefrontal cortex is just not capable of doing what you're trying to demand for it to do. And so it may make sense to take a break from your work, perhaps even right in the middle of your work. It makes sense, then, to put on your shoes and go outside for a walk. And here's the part that I want, if you are a leader in your organization, I want you to understand. It makes complete financial fiscal sense to pay your employees for all of their brainpower. That seems obvious. It may even seem patronizing, but the truth is that we call breaks something that is totally not a part of our brainpower. And so it makes complete financial fiscal sense to pay your employees for all of their brainpower. That seems absolutelyij you may find yourself bringing your employees to work when they may find they may find they may may find they may find they may find they may find they may find they may find they may find they may Please encourage your direct reports, encourage even your co-workers to take time to make sure that they're using all aspects of their brain, both the conscious and the unconscious, and remind them that you trust them to know when to do both. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. Just a quick update here. Developer Tea, like many other podcasts, has been affected by the coronavirus and our ability to generate ad revenue. Here's the reality. We don't plan on stopping this podcast, but we do need your support. And I'm not asking you today for financial support. Instead, I'm asking you to share this podcast with other developers like you that you think will find value in it. You can do this in two ways. One, you can actually send it directly. This is a wonderful way because they're going to take your word much better than they're going to take mine. But the second way, if you don't know someone specifically to send it to, is to leave a review in your favorite platform of choice. If you go to ratethispodcast.com slash devtea, that's ratethispodcast.com slash devtea, you can leave a review in your platform of choice. And this is the best way to help a broad knowledge. And that's the best way to help a broad knowledge. And that's the best way to help a broad knowledge. to find the show. They're going to read your review. And instead of taking it from me, they're going to take it from you. And that's the best way to help this show kind of go through this pandemic. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. And until next time, enjoy your tea.