The Hindu Business Line : Shut down the useless internal chatter

What do the most successful athletes do? They break down their performances into tiny component parts and work on improving specific aspects, explains Lynne McTaggart in The Intention Experiment (www.landmarkonthenet.com). "They concentrate on the most difficult moments and work out good coping strategies — how to stay in control in the face of adversity, such as a pulled muscle or an umpire's adverse call." Elite athletes know `how to block out images representing doubt'. They can change the `internal movie' and quickly `edit the scene' to imagine success, says the author. While the power of intention is such that any sort of focused `will' may have some effect, you need to be `coherent' if you want to be an effective `intender'.

Most of us operate with very little in the way of mental coherence, bemoans McTaggart. "We walk around immersed in a riot of fragmentary and discordant thought." Learn, therefore, to shut down "that useless internal chatter, which always focuses on the past or the future, never the present," she exhorts.

"In time, you will become adept at quietening down your mind and `powering up', much as joggers train their muscles, and each day find that they can perform a little better than the day before."

Power read!

Fight the symptoms of groupthink

To keep science healthy, young scientists should be hired and promoted based only on their ability, creativity, and independence, advises Lee Smolin in The Trouble with Physics (www.penguin.com). "People who invent and develop their own research programs should even be given priority, so that they can have the intellectual freedom to work on the approach they judge the most promising."

On how to prevent over-investment in speculative directions that may turn out to be dead ends the author's suggestion is as follows: "Physics departments should ensure that rival research programs and different points of view towards unsolved problems are represented on their faculties — not only because most of the time we cannot predict which views will be right but because the friendly rivalry between smart people working in close proximity is often a source of new ideas and directions."

Fight the symptoms of groupthink, Smolin exhorts. "We must open the doors to a wide range of independent thinkers, being sure to make room for the peculiar characters needed to make a revolution. A great deal rests on how we treat the next generation."

Lessons that should also work for other disciplines in trouble.

Tailpiece

"I used to think that currency fluctuation could be managed by... "

"Making the rupee float freely?"

"No, by installing better stabilisers at the ATMs!"

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

D. Murali