A while back, I was wracked with a sort of remorse. It was really sinking in that the way I worked before is not the way I worked now. I saw it more each day, on the job again with people whom I had worked with, 10 years ago. I am not the same person I was back then. That’ s for certain. My temperament tends to be more snarky and snappish, my attention span is shorter, and my ability to grasp and hang onto information over extended periods of time is very different than it used to be.
It’s a problem. ‘Cause this job and my ability to perform it is my bread and butter. And I don’t want to let the people on my team down. But I was having a hell of a time remembering the things I learned only a few weeks ago, especially when I hadn’t used them on a daily basis since I learned them. I was getting pulled off my past projects by new priorities, and I was spending more time testing and tracking and planning my work, than actually doing it. So the stuff I thought I had “down” about a month before, seemed like it had mysteriously evaporated.
It was a problem. It felt like a huge one. And I felt like I was spending all my time playing catch-up.
So that’s what I’ve been doing, lately. Catching up. It often happens that I need to retrace my steps and redo my work, so I’m doing it once more. This time, though, I’m employing a different learning strategy than I used before. This time, I’m actually putting the learning into action by applying it to my workaday tasks — and working on a private project I’ve been designing for the past several months. This private project actually relates to my workaday world — it’s a special productivity tool I use to manage my strengths and limitations and constructively overcome the hurdles that get in my way, based on what I know about my own tendencies, and my inventory of strengths and weaknesses and coping skills that have worked for me in the past.
This is good. Not only am I integrating my whole life — personal and professional — in complementary ways, but I’m also creating new ways to master the new skills I need to acquire. Instead of just reading and making notes, like I did six weeks ago, I’m now using the new skillset I need to master.
It’s gotta be hands-on. Or I’ll never retain the new information.
It’s so wild, how I forget that. I’ve written before about how I learn best — by doing — and there’s a part of my brain that knows all about it. But putting it into action is the challenge. A big one. And I forget that I have to take a break, let the information sink in, and actually use it before moving on to “learn” something else. Instead, I keep reading. It’s not enough that I learn — and master — one single skill at a sitting. Oh, no — I must read and conceptualize more… and more… and more…
I’m not sure what it is — I think my hungry brain wants to race ahead and learn-learn-learn. It gets into this groove and instead of stopping to implement what it’s just read, it gets lazy or acclimated or lulled into a false sense of security, and when I’ve gotten to the end of one section or one chapter, it wants to jump ahead and read more stuff that’s new, different, interesting. It gets into this habituated flow and gets stuck in a loop. Especially when it comes to reading, studying, taking in new information.
That’s very unproductive, and it has a tendency to overwhelm me, before too terribly long.
But I can’t be too hard on myself over this. The fact of the matter is, I’ve had six weeks for the initial flood of information to sink in. It may feel like I’ve forgotten it, but when I get back into using the information I read about a while back, a little bit at a time, I can actually sense some familiarity with it. So, it’s not gone. It’s just tucked away in the back of my head, and I need to find a way to coax it out again into plain view, where I can put it to good use.
Here, again, is a great example of where my brain is leading my mind astray. It’s convinced that I’ve lost what I gained, some time back, and it’s ready to panic, run for the door, relegate me to second-class status. The mis-firing processes in my brain are interpreting this extended learning process as a sort of failure. Its artificially elevated standards say, “ If you could really do a good job with this, you’d be proficient, by now,” totally underestimating the complexity and level of involvement required to do this new work I’m taking on. My brain gets turned around and confused and disoriented, so it thinks it’s lost in the wilderness for all time and is going to wither and die there like that kid from New Jersey who starved to death in Alaska, instead of it just being momentarily disoriented on a street corner in New York and needing to ask for directions from a passerby. It can’t immediately see a way through my passing frustration, so it thinks there is no way through. It can’t immediately access the information I stashed some weeks back, so it thinks it’s gone for good.
But here’s the thing — it’s not that I’ve lost what I’ve learned before. It’s that it’s filed in a virtual drawer in my head that I just need to find and open up again. I have learned, actually. It might not feel that way, but I have. And now I’m shifting into a different stage of my total learning process. All that reading and reading and reading without associated mastery isn’t a terrible thing. It’s not — I just have to realize that the reason I was reading and reading and reading before was different that what I thought it was — and it’s actually a lot more pragmatic and clever than I realized up till this point.
The real reason I was reading and studying like crazy before was for preparation, not execution. I was reading compulsively, not to master the material, but rather to familiarize myself with it, to get the feel of it, and to get myself to a point where I could listen to someone talk about all the topics and subjects and issues and aspects without being flooded with an overwhelming tidal wave of information overload… and eventual panic. Thinking back, I can remember many instances where conversations with my team members landed me in the middle of an emotional avalanche that totally shut down my brain. I just blanked. They were talking and talking about all this stuff, and I wasn’t able to keep up. So, I spent a lot of time reading about the things they were talking about. It was for the sake of putting my anxieties about verbal communication at rest, rather than implementing anything.
That first piece — the panic switch shut-off — was the first thing I had to do before I could move forward. I realize that now. And in its hidden wisdom, my mind devised this way for me to do just that — through reading and studying and familiarizing myself with the material before I started into all the doing.
So, actually, it wasn’t bad for me to spend all that time just reading and not doing. In fact, it wasn’t spending time, it was investing it. And now it’s paying off. Because I can sit through a conversation with people who are talking about stuff that used to be brand-spankin’ new and totally intimidating… and I don’t freak out.
That’s a good thing.
Posted in anxiety, books, brain, Brain Injury, concussion, coping strategies, Emotional Fallout, emotional volatility, Employment, head injury, Head Trauma, Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, mtbi, Neuropsychological Effects of TBI, Personal Experiences with TBI, Social Issues, tbi, tbi education, TBI Rehab, TBI Symptoms, traumatic brain injury, Work issues Tagged: anxiety, brain damage, Brain Injury, cognitive-behavioral issues, concussion, coping strategies, education, Emotional Fallout, emotional volatility, Employment, head injury, inspiration, learning, learning differences, life, Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, Motivation and Inspiration, mtbi, Neuropsychological Effects of TBI, panic, Personal Experiences with TBI, reading, Social Issues, studying, tbi, tbi education, TBI Rehab, TBI Resources, tbi survivor, TBI Symptoms, thoughts, traumatic brain injury, Work issues
A while back, I was wracked with a sort of remorse. It was really sinking in that the way I worked before is not the way I worked now. I saw it more each day, on the job again with people whom I had worked with, 10 years ago. I am not the same person I was back then. That’ s for certain. My temperament tends to be more snarky and snappish, my attention span is shorter, and my ability to grasp and hang onto information over extended periods of time is very different than it used to be.
It’s a problem. ‘Cause this job and my ability to perform it is my bread and butter. And I don’t want to let the people on my team down. But I was having a hell of a time remembering the things I learned only a few weeks ago, especially when I hadn’t used them on a daily basis since I learned them. I was getting pulled off my past projects by new priorities, and I was spending more time testing and tracking and planning my work, than actually doing it. So the stuff I thought I had “down” about a month before, seemed like it had mysteriously evaporated.
It was a problem. It felt like a huge one. And I felt like I was spending all my time playing catch-up.
So that’s what I’ve been doing, lately. Catching up. It often happens that I need to retrace my steps and redo my work, so I’m doing it once more. This time, though, I’m employing a different learning strategy than I used before. This time, I’m actually putting the learning into action by applying it to my workaday tasks — and working on a private project I’ve been designing for the past several months. This private project actually relates to my workaday world — it’s a special productivity tool I use to manage my strengths and limitations and constructively overcome the hurdles that get in my way, based on what I know about my own tendencies, and my inventory of strengths and weaknesses and coping skills that have worked for me in the past.
This is good. Not only am I integrating my whole life — personal and professional — in complementary ways, but I’m also creating new ways to master the new skills I need to acquire. Instead of just reading and making notes, like I did six weeks ago, I’m now using the new skillset I need to master.
It’s gotta be hands-on. Or I’ll never retain the new information.
It’s so wild, how I forget that. I’ve written before about how I learn best — by doing — and there’s a part of my brain that knows all about it. But putting it into action is the challenge. A big one. And I forget that I have to take a break, let the information sink in, and actually use it before moving on to “learn” something else. Instead, I keep reading. It’s not enough that I learn — and master — one single skill at a sitting. Oh, no — I must read and conceptualize more… and more… and more…
I’m not sure what it is — I think my hungry brain wants to race ahead and learn-learn-learn. It gets into this groove and instead of stopping to implement what it’s just read, it gets lazy or acclimated or lulled into a false sense of security, and when I’ve gotten to the end of one section or one chapter, it wants to jump ahead and read more stuff that’s new, different, interesting. It gets into this habituated flow and gets stuck in a loop. Especially when it comes to reading, studying, taking in new information.
That’s very unproductive, and it has a tendency to overwhelm me, before too terribly long.
But I can’t be too hard on myself over this. The fact of the matter is, I’ve had six weeks for the initial flood of information to sink in. It may feel like I’ve forgotten it, but when I get back into using the information I read about a while back, a little bit at a time, I can actually sense some familiarity with it. So, it’s not gone. It’s just tucked away in the back of my head, and I need to find a way to coax it out again into plain view, where I can put it to good use.
Here, again, is a great example of where my brain is leading my mind astray. It’s convinced that I’ve lost what I gained, some time back, and it’s ready to panic, run for the door, relegate me to second-class status. The mis-firing processes in my brain are interpreting this extended learning process as a sort of failure. Its artificially elevated standards say, “ If you could really do a good job with this, you’d be proficient, by now,” totally underestimating the complexity and level of involvement required to do this new work I’m taking on. My brain gets turned around and confused and disoriented, so it thinks it’s lost in the wilderness for all time and is going to wither and die there like that kid from New Jersey who starved to death in Alaska, instead of it just being momentarily disoriented on a street corner in New York and needing to ask for directions from a passerby. It can’t immediately see a way through my passing frustration, so it thinks there is no way through. It can’t immediately access the information I stashed some weeks back, so it thinks it’s gone for good.
But here’s the thing — it’s not that I’ve lost what I’ve learned before. It’s that it’s filed in a virtual drawer in my head that I just need to find and open up again. I have learned, actually. It might not feel that way, but I have. And now I’m shifting into a different stage of my total learning process. All that reading and reading and reading without associated mastery isn’t a terrible thing. It’s not — I just have to realize that the reason I was reading and reading and reading before was different that what I thought it was — and it’s actually a lot more pragmatic and clever than I realized up till this point.
The real reason I was reading and studying like crazy before was for preparation, not execution. I was reading compulsively, not to master the material, but rather to familiarize myself with it, to get the feel of it, and to get myself to a point where I could listen to someone talk about all the topics and subjects and issues and aspects without being flooded with an overwhelming tidal wave of information overload… and eventual panic. Thinking back, I can remember many instances where conversations with my team members landed me in the middle of an emotional avalanche that totally shut down my brain. I just blanked. They were talking and talking about all this stuff, and I wasn’t able to keep up. So, I spent a lot of time reading about the things they were talking about. It was for the sake of putting my anxieties about verbal communication at rest, rather than implementing anything.
That first piece — the panic switch shut-off — was the first thing I had to do before I could move forward. I realize that now. And in its hidden wisdom, my mind devised this way for me to do just that — through reading and studying and familiarizing myself with the material before I started into all the doing.
So, actually, it wasn’t bad for me to spend all that time just reading and not doing. In fact, it wasn’t spending time, it was investing it. And now it’s paying off. Because I can sit through a conversation with people who are talking about stuff that used to be brand-spankin’ new and totally intimidating… and I don’t freak out.
That’s a good thing.
Posted in anxiety, books, brain, Brain Injury, concussion, coping strategies, Emotional Fallout, emotional volatility, Employment, head injury, Head Trauma, Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, mtbi, Neuropsychological Effects of TBI, Personal Experiences with TBI, Social Issues, tbi, tbi education, TBI Rehab, TBI Symptoms, traumatic brain injury, Work issues Tagged: anxiety, brain damage, Brain Injury, cognitive-behavioral issues, concussion, coping strategies, education, Emotional Fallout, emotional volatility, Employment, head injury, inspiration, learning, learning differences, life, Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, Motivation and Inspiration, mtbi, Neuropsychological Effects of TBI, panic, Personal Experiences with TBI, reading, Social Issues, studying, tbi, tbi education, TBI Rehab, TBI Resources, tbi survivor, TBI Symptoms, thoughts, traumatic brain injury, Work issues