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Some personal observations and reflections on the relationship between energy levels - and the corresponding cognitive capacity to perform different levels of mental work - and some of the significant factors that affect those.
Meeks Cognition-Energy Capability Scale
10 - "Zone Thinking" - intensively creative mode - when I am "in the zone" - able to think, work, and see deeply nested relationships between highly abstract concepts. Deep insights occur often, and seem to come more easily - often coupled with leaps of intuition. A very rare level - often degraded by stress, worry, noise, and any negative emotions. On a monthly basis - this mode of working may only be experienced for a combined total of 8-12 hours during a month - often due to the significant degrade caused by open office plans, stress introduced by a heavy traffic commute, or poor office accommodations. Successfully sustaining this level of cognitive capability for mental work requires isolation. Copious amounts of great coffee also required.
9 - "Deep Thinking" - not "in the zone" - but able to perform intense, deeply focused, mental work - at a highly creative level. Deep insights occur - with sustained effort. This level is typically most useful for highly analytical work - or work that requires a high degree of attention-to-detail. Typically sustainable for 4-6 hours on a given day - but any sustained period of working more than 8 hours per day will quickly deplete the ability to achieve/sustain this cognitive/energy level for a period of time - fatigue will quickly cause a degrade to level 8.
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8 - "Efficient/Fast Thinking" - a sustainable level for high quality mental work. My normal day-to-day zone for most mental work - mental clarity is high, able to focus and execute consistently - even with the typical distractions of stress, heavy workload, worry, negative emotions, office accommodations, or a heavy traffic commute. This is the minimal level for pattern recognition faculties to be operating optimally.
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7 - "Average Thinking" - the minimum level to adequately juggle two or more projects - requires sufficient food, relaxation, recreation, sleep - and a reasonable workload. This energy/cognitive level has significantly limited capacity for original/creative mental work. Tasks which can be performed on auto-pilot are best tackled when energy/cognitive levels have been degraded to this level. Detailed work can still be adequately performed. The possible introduction of errors in mental work is usually not a concern at this energy level.
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6 - "Degraded Thinking" - mental acuity is slightly impaired. The probability of the introduction of errors in mental work is a strong possibility. Abstract thinking capabilities are beginning to be impaired. Connections between concepts are not immediately obvious - and require greater sustained effort to see. Normal tasks begin to take longer to complete. A feeling of low energy is perceptible.
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5 - "Impaired Thinking" - this energy/cognitive level is typically reached during periods of high stress, significant fatigue, cold, flu, etc. Efforts to sustain intense mental work for 50+ hours per week - for periods longer than 2-3 weeks will result in a degrade to this level. Mental acuity is definitely impaired. The introduction of errors during intense mental work is no longer a possibility - it is a certainty. Only repetitious type tasks should be performed at this energy level.
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4 - "Zombie Thinking" - at this energy/cognitive level, or below - mental acuity is significantly impaired. Mission-critical, high-value, detail-intensive mental work should be halted - rest and recuperation are required. Recommended treatment: 1-3 weeks at Hotel Playa Mazatlan.
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Supporting Citations:
2020-04-18 Saturday
- Medium Article: Effective Work: Secrets To Working Effectively in the Age of Information Overload - by Dotan Nahum, (Amazon Book, Kindle)
2020-10-10 Saturday
- Energy demands limit our brains' information processing capacity, University College London
- "Our brains have an upper limit on how much they can process at once due to a constant but limited energy supply, according to a new UCL study using a brain imaging method that measures cellular metabolism."
- "The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, found that paying attention can change how the brain allocates its limited energy; as the brain uses more energy in processing what we attend to, less energy is supplied to processing outside our attention focus."
- "If there's a hard limit on energy supply to the brain, we suspected that the brain may handle challenging tasks by diverting energy away from other functions, and prioritising the focus of our attention."
- "Our findings suggest that the brain does indeed allocate less energy to the neurons that respond to information outside the focus of our attention when our task becomes harder. This explains why we experience inattentional blindness and deafness even to critical information that we really want to be aware of."
2021-06-03 Thursday
2021-09-26 Sunday
- This guest post by Susan Shu Chang, on Eugene Yan's blog - led me to a post by Susan ("Why my top productivity multiplier is sleep") - which resonates strongly with what I have written above. Also see this post by Susan: ("How I optimize my day with routines and tools: Lessons from balancing multiple projects") - in which this quote caught my attention: "my productivity and mental sharpness nosedive if I am in focus mode for too long"
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