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Episodic Future Thinking

I first heard of Episodic Future Thinking (EFT) in Jane McGonigal's book Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything, and I've incorporated it into the MIndshifting Courses and Problem Solving game. Here is a conversation I had with the AI engine GPT4 about EFT; my questions are in bold.

What should I learn about Episodic Future Thinking?

Episodic Future Thinking (EFT) is a cognitive process in which individuals imagine or simulate experiences they might have in the future. It involves constructing detailed, vivid mental representations of specific events, which can help in decision-making, planning, and self-regulation. Here are some key aspects to learn about EFT:

1. Definition: EFT is the ability to mentally project oneself into the future and imagine personal experiences or events in a specific context. It is closely related to episodic memory, which involves recalling past experiences.

2. Cognitive components: EFT engages various cognitive processes, including memory, imagination, and prospection. These processes help individuals to mentally construct and explore future scenarios, evaluate potential outcomes, and make choices based on these simulations.

3. Importance: EFT plays a crucial role in everyday life. It aids in goal-setting, decision-making, and problem-solving, as well as enhancing motivation and self-regulation. By simulating future events, individuals can better prepare for potential challenges and navigate complex situations.

4. Relationship with episodic memory: EFT shares neural and cognitive mechanisms with episodic memory. Both processes rely on the brain's ability to flexibly recombine elements from past experiences to create new simulations or memories. The hippocampus is a key brain region involved in both episodic memory and EFT.

5. Benefits and applications: Research on EFT has found various benefits, including improved self-control, better decision-making, and enhanced psychological well-being. It has potential applications in clinical settings, such as addressing addiction, obesity, and mental health disorders, as well as in educational and professional contexts to improve planning, goal-setting, and motivation.

6. Limitations: While EFT can have many positive effects, it is not without limitations. Overemphasis on negative future scenarios could contribute to anxiety or excessive worry. Additionally, some individuals may struggle with EFT due to cognitive deficits or neurological conditions that impair their ability to imagine future events.

7. Improving EFT skills: There are strategies to enhance EFT abilities, such as mental time travel exercises, mindfulness meditation, and cognitive training. These practices can help individuals develop a richer and more flexible capacity for imagining future experiences, which can lead to better decision-making and planning.

What are some examples of episodic future thinking?

Episodic Future Thinking (EFT) involves mentally simulating specific future events or experiences. Here are some examples of EFT across various domains of life:

1. Personal life:

   • Planning a vacation: Imagining the sights, sounds, and activities you'll engage in during a trip to a new destination.
   • Envisioning your wedding day: Picturing the venue, your attire, the guests, and the emotions you'll experience during the ceremony and reception.
   • Anticipating a social gathering: Mentally rehearsing conversations, interactions, and potential challenges you might face at a party or event.

2. Education and career:

   • Preparing for an exam: Simulating the testing environment, the types of questions you'll encounter, and the strategies you'll use to answer them.
   • Considering a job change: Imagining the work environment, responsibilities, and potential outcomes of switching careers or accepting a new position.
   • Planning a presentation: Mentally rehearsing your delivery, anticipating audience reactions, and preparing responses to possible questions or objections.

3. Health and well-being:

   • Forming exercise habits: Visualizing the process of going to the gym, engaging in your workout routine, and the feeling of accomplishment after completing a session.
   • Anticipating challenges in weight loss: Imagining situations where you might face temptation (e.g., parties, holidays) and planning strategies to maintain your diet.
   • Coping with stress: Mentally preparing for an upcoming stressful situation, envisioning potential obstacles, and developing coping strategies to manage the stress effectively.

4. Financial planning:

   • Saving for retirement: Imagining your future lifestyle, financial needs, and the steps you'll take to ensure financial security during your retirement years.
   • Preparing for a major purchase: Visualizing the process of researching, comparing, and negotiating for a new car or home, along with the potential benefits and consequences of the purchase.
   • Managing unexpected expenses: Anticipating future financial emergencies and simulating strategies to handle them, such as building an emergency fund or adjusting your budget.

These examples demonstrate how EFT can help individuals mentally prepare for future events, anticipate challenges, and make more informed decisions across a wide range of life situations.

How could a teacher use EFT with her class in elementary school, middle school, or high school?

A teacher can incorporate Episodic Future Thinking (EFT) into their teaching strategies to help students develop goal-setting, planning, and self-regulation skills. Here are some ideas for using EFT with elementary, middle, and high school students:

1. Goal-setting and planning activities:

   • Ask students to envision a specific academic or personal goal they want to achieve by the end of the school year. Have them create a vivid mental image of the moment they achieve the goal and then develop a step-by-step plan to reach it.
   • Have students imagine their future selves and write a letter from their future selves to their current selves, describing what they've achieved and the steps they took to get there.

2. Enhancing learning and memory:

   • Encourage students to imagine how they will use the knowledge they're currently learning in real-life situations, such as applying math concepts to manage a budget or using language skills to communicate during a trip abroad.
   • Before studying for an exam, ask students to envision themselves in the testing environment, recalling the material they've learned and answering questions confidently.

3. Developing problem-solving and decision-making skills:

   • Use hypothetical scenarios or case studies to have students mentally simulate potential solutions and their consequences, enabling them to make informed decisions.
   • Encourage students to imagine themselves in challenging social situations (e.g., dealing with peer pressure or resolving conflicts) and mentally rehearse appropriate responses and coping strategies.

4. Building empathy and perspective-taking:

   • Ask students to imagine themselves in the shoes of a character from a book, historical figure, or someone from a different culture, and consider how that person might think, feel, and act in various situations.

5. Promoting self-regulation and self-motivation:

   • Teach students to use EFT as a tool for managing procrastination. Have them envision the consequences of not completing a task on time and the satisfaction of completing it promptly.
   • Use EFT to help students anticipate and overcome obstacles they may encounter while working on a project, such as time management challenges or resource limitations.

6. Career exploration and planning:

   • Encourage students to envision themselves in different careers, considering the work environment, daily tasks, and long-term goals associated with each profession.
   • Have students research and present on a future job they're interested in, incorporating EFT to imagine the steps they'll need to take to enter and succeed in that profession.

By incorporating EFT into various classroom activities, teachers can help students develop important skills and strategies for academic success, personal growth, and long-term planning.

How could an organization use EFT to come up with potential solutions to complex or complicated problems?

Organizations can use Episodic Future Thinking (EFT) to generate potential solutions for complex or complicated problems by encouraging employees to mentally simulate various future scenarios, evaluate potential outcomes, and devise creative strategies. Here are some ways organizations can incorporate EFT into their problem-solving processes:

1. Scenario planning:

   • Organize brainstorming sessions where employees envision different future scenarios related to the problem, considering various factors such as technological advancements, market shifts, and potential challenges.
   • Encourage employees to develop detailed mental images of these scenarios, emphasizing the potential consequences and opportunities each one presents.

2. Mental simulations and role-playing:

   • Have employees imagine themselves in the shoes of different stakeholders (e.g., customers, suppliers, competitors) and consider how they would perceive and react to potential solutions.
   • Use role-playing exercises to simulate critical situations, allowing employees to practice their problem-solving skills and evaluate the effectiveness of different strategies.

3. Reverse planning:

   • Ask employees to envision the desired outcome or solution to the problem and work backward to identify the steps required to reach that outcome.
   • Encourage them to consider potential obstacles and devise strategies to overcome these challenges.

4. Encouraging creativity and innovation:

   • Foster a supportive environment for creative thinking and risk-taking, encouraging employees to imagine unconventional solutions and explore the potential benefits and drawbacks of these ideas.
   • Use EFT to help employees envision the long-term impact of their innovative ideas, considering both the potential risks and rewards.

5. Collaborative decision-making:

   • Facilitate group discussions and workshops where employees can share their mental simulations, discuss potential solutions, and collectively evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of these ideas.
   • Encourage employees to consider the perspectives of their colleagues and integrate different viewpoints into the decision-making process.

6. Continuous learning and improvement:

   • Encourage employees to use EFT to reflect on past experiences and project lessons learned into future situations, helping them adapt and improve their problem-solving skills over time.
   • Use EFT to anticipate potential future problems and proactively develop strategies to mitigate or prevent these issues from arising.

By incorporating EFT into the organization's problem-solving processes, employees can develop a deeper understanding of complex issues, generate creative solutions, and make more informed decisions that account for potential future challenges and opportunities.

Summarize three case studies of EFT in schools

While specific case studies on EFT in schools might not be readily available, I can provide you with three hypothetical scenarios that demonstrate how EFT can be applied in school settings.

1. Enhancing students' academic performance and motivation:

In a middle school, a teacher noticed that some of her students were struggling to stay motivated and engaged with their coursework. She decided to implement EFT exercises by asking students to envision themselves successfully completing a challenging assignment or acing an upcoming exam. The students were encouraged to create vivid mental images of themselves experiencing the satisfaction and pride that comes with such achievements. Over time, this practice led to increased motivation and self-confidence, resulting in improved academic performance and a greater sense of ownership over their learning process.

2. Promoting empathy and perspective-taking in a diverse classroom:

A high school social studies teacher wanted to promote empathy and understanding among her culturally diverse students. She introduced an EFT activity in which students were asked to imagine themselves in the shoes of individuals from different cultural backgrounds or historical periods. They were encouraged to think about the challenges, emotions, and experiences these individuals might have faced. This exercise not only helped students develop empathy and perspective-taking skills but also led to more respectful and inclusive interactions among classmates, fostering a positive learning environment for all students.

3. Building problem-solving and decision-making skills through project-based learning:

In an elementary school, a teacher implemented a project-based learning curriculum that required students to work in teams to design and execute a community service project. The teacher guided students through EFT exercises to envision the successful completion of their projects, anticipate potential challenges, and devise strategies to overcome these obstacles. Students were encouraged to mentally simulate the entire process, from initial planning to implementation and evaluation. By practicing EFT, students developed critical problem-solving and decision-making skills that not only contributed to the success of their projects but also prepared them for future collaborative endeavors.

These hypothetical scenarios illustrate how EFT can be integrated into various educational contexts to enhance students' motivation, empathy, problem-solving, and decision-making skills, ultimately contributing to a more positive and effective learning experience.

If I wanted to initiate a session to improve problem solving skills with middle school students by using EFT, what steps would I follow?

To initiate a session aimed at improving problem-solving skills with middle school students using EFT, follow these steps:

1. Set clear objectives: Begin by defining the specific problem-solving skills you want the students to develop or enhance, such as critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, or decision-making.

2. Introduce EFT: Explain the concept of Episodic Future Thinking and its benefits, particularly in relation to problem-solving. Provide examples of how EFT can help them mentally simulate future scenarios and generate potential solutions.

3. Present a problem or scenario: Choose a relevant, age-appropriate problem or scenario that the students can relate to and find engaging. The problem should be complex enough to require creative problem-solving but not so difficult that it becomes discouraging.

4. Guide students through EFT: Instruct students to mentally simulate the problem scenario and imagine themselves successfully solving it. Encourage them to create vivid mental images of each step in the process, including potential obstacles and strategies for overcoming them.

5. Facilitate group discussions: Divide students into small groups and have them share their mental simulations, discussing the different solutions they've envisioned. Encourage them to consider the pros and cons of each approach and collaboratively refine their ideas.

6. Encourage reflection: After the group discussions, ask students to reflect on the experience, considering what they learned about problem-solving, the role of EFT, and how their thought process evolved throughout the activity.

7. Provide feedback and support: Offer constructive feedback on students' problem-solving strategies and their use of EFT, highlighting areas of success and areas for improvement. Encourage them to continue practicing EFT in their everyday lives to enhance problem-solving skills.

8. Assign follow-up activities: To reinforce the concepts and skills learned during the session, assign follow-up activities that require students to apply EFT and problem-solving techniques to real-life situations or academic challenges.

By incorporating EFT into a problem-solving session, you can help middle school students develop the ability to mentally explore various solutions, anticipate potential challenges, and make more informed decisions. This skillset will not only benefit them academically but also in their personal lives and future careers.

And if you've made it this far and you're interested in the courses, the next MIndshifting 1 course will start on May 4: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mindshifting-1-growth-mindset-and-habits-of-mind-tickets-568188887257

Building Schools that Work for All

In the last post, you saw examples of an educational environment where the entire community, children, teachers, and administrators felt at home actively learning and teaching. Probably my favorite quote was one teacher, who was asked how she knew the students were learning in the absence of high stakes summative testing, replied, “at the end of the day, when I see the children’s eyes are smiling, I know I am doing my job.”

As I’ve talked to people back home, the immediate reactions were, “that’s great, but it can’t work here.” Here were some representative reactions, and my responses.

That works in Finland, but Finland is a monoculture.

The first school we visited was a neighborhood school in a diverse low SES community. There are migrants, there are students who are not fluent in Finnish.

Finland is small, that won’t work in urban settings.

Both schools were in Helsinki, which has a population over 600,000, and the greater metropolitan area’s population is over 1.3 million.

That might work if you were starting a school, but you can’t expect to change existing schools.

The second school was new, and was designed with this type of instruction in mind. The first school was over 30 years old and started its transformation about five years ago and was just as remarkable.

We have schools like that here, but only in schools where they can shuffle off non-performing students. We don’t have that luxury in public schools.

These were public schools. In fact, virtually all education is public education in Finland, and even private schools need to meet the same requirements and standards as public schools. When students encounter learning obstacles, the school works with the students to overcome them.

What if our first thoughts weren’t, “let me figure out why that won’t work here,” but,” what would we love to build?” What if our questions were vision-based instead of fear-based? In education, that would probably entail constructing an education system whose goal is to prepare students to be adults and that’s designed to operate the way people naturally learn and teach.

There seem to be three pillars foundational to the Finnish type of system: Humanism, Trust, and Fun.

Humanism values the worth of each person. The Deputy Mayor of Helsinki told us that their goal is to make Helsinki the most equitable and effective place to learn in the world. She herself was a refugee from Afghanistan. The Ministry of Education said that their goal was to help children become optimistic adults who find solutions to the problems they and society face. HAMI and Kiipula Vocational schools said there goals were to honor and value every single person by helping them find out how they can contribute.

The word Trust came up in each conversation. You saw in the last post what this looks like. Students working together without direct supervision, both in and out of the classroom. Teachers learning and trying new things and using the results as feedback for progress regardless of whether they matched, exceeded, or even fell short of expectations. Administrators and policy makers not knowing what exactly students and teachers were doing but confident that the system was working and everyone would adjust to whatever happened because the end goals were clear and the different actors could obtain help if and when they needed it.

Fun was evident in that administrators, educators, and students enjoy what they were doing to such an extent that they were internally motivated to work hard and excel.

These three pillars are not just lofty goals, they are guidelines for planning and practice. Here is how HAMK, an Applied Science University that prepares teachers, benchmarked education systems in order to target areas for continuous improvement:

Basing their focus on these priorities, here is how HAMK then grows their expertise and capabilities:

In the schools themselves, teachers across the school work together to create learning opportunities for children through Phenomenon-based learning, or inspiring students through problems that interest them.

And this is  the framework for how to guide students through learning activities: the children setting their own learning goals, self-assessing what they already know, obtaining the knowledge and skills they need, and then sharing their results.

In this way, children aren’t learning by artificially dividing their time into “subjects” like biology or geometry or literature, and groups of students aren’t being segregated or solely working individually, children and teachers are holistically and inclusively learning together.

Despite our immediate reactions of “this won’t work here,” the Finnish Educational framework can work in any country or society.

1. Begin with the end in mind
2. Value each person
3. Build and reinforce mutual trust
4. Learn through activities inspired by our natural curiosity

Isn't this a path worth considering? 

Considering this is possible is a mindshift. If you want to learn how to Mindshift, consider joining educators from Washington and New York State taking the Mindshifting class starting on November 1.

Is This the Way a School Should Operate?

Let’s say a school divided their school year into five parts as follows:

All learning took place in the context of one of these general phenomena, and the children (students) learned through solving problems in these areas. That type of learning might look like these pictures.

First graders working on their projects:

2^nd graders working on a wearable project

Students working outside of the classroom:

Fifth graders building and programming robots

Even a 2^nd grade math class looks different:

Where are the teachers in these pictures? The children are busy learning, the role of the teacher is to facilitate not to “teach”. This type of learning works when teachers trust the kids to come to them when they need them, so the teachers can stay in the background coaching when needed. Kids naturally tend to rise to whatever you expect them to do.

How do you set up schools for this type of learning?

That will be in the next post.

Uh oh, I think we have a problem

People ask me, “What is the benefit of learning how the mind makes decisions?” 

Persistence, self-initiative, critical thinking, creative thinking and innovation, collaboration, communication, and their opposites all begin in the mind. When you learn to recognize how the mind operates in each of these spheres, and learn how to move minds into resourceful mindframes, you will accomplish more and you will recover faster from conflicts, unanticipated obstacles, and detrimental emotional responses.

Here is an education example from real life.

A district was evaluating digital textbooks for science, and they asked for teacher volunteers to review a few offerings from respected publishers and make a recommendation. Each textbook was already in use at hundreds, or even thousands, of districts.

The teachers pull together and after a few weeks of reviewing the materials and sharing insights, they are close to selecting textbook A.

Just at that time, the district’s curriculum director realized that the district had received a grant for teaching science, and that the grant included purchasing textbook B. He cannot in good conscience pay for a different textbook when the district would be receiving copies for all students, support materials, and even PD for this one at no charge.

He informs the teachers, takes responsibility for the mistake, and says he is sorry.

The teachers are angry. They aren’t buying the apology.

Here is how a mindshifting practitioner would look at the situation.

At this moment the teachers are angry. Anger emanates from the more primitive areas of the brain, the limbic system. When the limbic system activates anger, it also secretes the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisone which focus the brain on reactions to the threat that is causing the anger, shuts off the innovative and critical thinking parts of the brain (which tend to exist in some of the more recent areas to develop, the prefrontal cortex) and direct those areas to generate reasons or stories the justify the anger.

These stories are phrases like:

• The district doesn’t respect teachers
• The district took advantage of me
• I’m going to show them that this textbook isn’t going to work
• They never listen to us
• That’s the last time I put in extra time or effort for them
• It’s always just about the money, they don’t really care about the children at all, only we teachers care about the kids and look where that gets us

While the teachers are angry, and while their critical thinking, creative, and resourceful parts of their brains are shut down, the teachers will not be receptive to anything that administration says or does to justify the decision or to move on; in fact those efforts are likely just to reinforce the negative stories that their brains are feeding them.

What can’t people just move on?

Before the teachers can move on, their limbic anger has to dissipate, and their limbic brain must reset.

There are three ways to reset the limbic brain and give access to calmness, resourcefulnes, or playfulness.

1. A person can be aware of when their limbic brain is controlling their reaction. Sometimes just realizing that you are angry (or afraid, or anxious, etc.) is enough to reset.
2. Mindfulness, or focusing on sensations such as breathing, sounds, the environment, meditation, trees, or the bodily sensations of the emotion may open up enough space to reset,
3. Positive internal chatter, talking to yourself in positive terms such as, “maybe this is really for the best,” “what does this now open up for me to best live my life,” “of course I am disappointed but I wonder how I can make the best of this now.” Note that this is internal chatter, no one wants to hear this from someone else, it has to be internally generated.

Along with the three ways of resetting the limbic brain, there are only two ways of getting over a past disappointment or negative outcome.

1. You can decide that this outcome was not really that important, choose to dismiss any slights or anger, and move on. In fact, over time, this often happens. In ten years (probably less), virtually all of the teachers will likely have moved on from this event; we all do.
2. You can find a gift or opportunity in this outcome. For example, the district will now have hundreds of thousands of dollars that they can spend on other things, can those actually be more beneficial than using textbook A? Or, in the process of reviewing the textbooks, the teachers were exposed to many different tools and teaching techniques, can any of them be incorporated into teaching along with textbook B?

When teachers are trained in mindshifting

they learn the skills to reset their own limbic systems and to move past disappointments. This significantly reduces the chances situations like this turn into crises. Imagine listening in to the internal thoughts of a mindshifting teacher:

• What? All that work for nothing?
• Wait, that’s my lizard brain working up to anger.
• Let me take a few minutes to calm myself.
• Okay, in the grand scheme of things, this really isn’t so terrible, what can we salvage from this?

These teachers were not.

If the administration had been schooled in MIndfulness

They would have recognized that the teachers would regard this as an empty apology; all form but no substance, or what behavioral psychologists might call a “denial” apology: “I’m sorry but it wasn’t my fault.” They would have either formulated their initial communications to the teachers in a form that would connect better with how the teachers would likely feel and react, or, if they overlooked that step, they would have quickly realized the situation and reacted in a way to restore the teachers’ sense of connection and value.

These administrators were not.

So either the teachers remain in anger mode until their anger dissipates over time, or the administration needs to use some mindshifting techniques to coach the teachers.

Here are two mindshifting techniques that could be used in coaching

Someone can coach the teachers. A good coach could connect with the teachers and help them move forward, perhaps with mindshifting techniques such as motivational interviewing.For example, one possible coaching technique would be starting a discussion of other times each of us has been angry, and times when when we were able to move out of anger and into calm and action. The process of recalling and recounting those instances would be a way to trigger a form mindfulness, and provide space, and then recalling instances when they diminished the anger on their own might give them access to their own resourcefulness.

The administration could provide a “gift or opportunity” to the teachers. For example, they could talk about their error, and that since the district has this extra money and since the teachers have been so helpful, they would like to give the teachers the opportunity to determine how some of that money would be spent for the students.

It’s not that these different possible solutions couldn’t be arrived without Mindshifting, but

1. With Mindshifting, if one understands the dynamics of how the brain is operating and the mechanisms for controlling the mind’s operation, the problem is framed in a way that naturally leads to possible interventions such as these.
2. If the teachers and administration were already skilled in Mindshifting, the recovery from issues such as this would be much quicker and likely autonomous.

Want to learn these techniques for yourself or your students?

The next class, Mindshifting 1: Growth Mindset and Critical Thinking for Educators will start on October 18 and run for 8 sessions. More info and register here.

I screwed up

Yesterday (Thursday, July 7, 2022) I had scheduled a FB live conversation with Angela Maiers on Mattering, Mindshifting, and the power within every person to positively affect our own lives and the lives of others.

There are certain people we all look up to. For me, Angela is one of those people, and I was eagerly anticipating the opportunity to discuss how MIndshifting and Mattering blend into each other to transform anxiety and fear into joyful energy. We can all use a little more joyful energy in our lives. Right?

Preparing for success

I’d set up the FB Live event with Angela as the Cohost. I’d posted in social media. I’d sent out an email and a reminder mailing.

I started the event on time, and then …

I couldn’t get Angela on stage.

There were about 25 people watching, many more who were interested and would want to watch the archives. And nothing was working.

Yes, I look confused, dazzled, and anxious, right?

What are the normal human reactions? How would you react if you’d set this up and it was completely bombing?

• Self Blame? I should have tested everything out, we should have had a test run during the week. I’m such an idiot.
• Anger? What was Angela doing wrong? What was I doing wrong? Why didn’t FB make their instructions clearer? What was wrong with me that I couldn’t see how to bring her on stage?
• Panic? Fear? What would people think? Didn’t this confirm my incompetence? Wouldn’t everyone see what a sham I am? No one would ever want to listen to me again.

We all have had these reactions, right? This is the default mode for our limbic minds. I felt all of these, and more.

Mindshifting: Switching Mindset,

And that’s also the beauty of Mindshifting and Mattering.

If you are aware of how your mind works, you can modify your first emotional reactions, and the more you practice, the better at this you can become.

I calmed myself with the following, taken directly from Angela’s Mattering framework:

We are all perfectly imperfect beings. We are all deserving of love, peace, and joy. We all make a difference in others’ lives. Whatever we are going through, we can turn into gifts, lessons, and opportunities.

Shifting the mind to these frames calms our survival brains and activates our resourceful sage powers.

Not every obstacle can be avoided. Not every eventuality can be prepared for. This was one 15-minute interval with a different result than anticipated, but we can, and somehow always do, come back; and when we do we feel triumphantly exultant.

Which mindset is more enjoyable and helpful?

How helpful would it be if we, or our students, could learn to exit from a fear and blame mindset into one of possibilities, exploration, and innovation?

The goal of the Mindshifting Course is for all of us to learn to switch into resourceful collaborative playful mode. You can get an overview in this 15 minute interview. You can dive deep, and also learn how to teach these techniques to others, in the full course starting July 12.

What was the gift?

We learned that what FB calls a “cohost” is merely someone who can invite others, not someone who will also appear on stage. To do a FB Live event with multiple speakers, you need a web-platform such as Zoom or Streamyard.

And we both had the additional opportunity to exercise our abilities to Mindshift, draw on the calming effects of Mattering, and strengthen our love and respect for each other. Those were the gifts.

Angela and I both have punishing schedules over the next few weeks. We will have to postpone our FB live conversation to the end of July or possibly August. But when we do host it, we won't be making the same mistakes. We'll have to invent new ones.

Brain Hacking Strategies: A technique five times more effective at changing others’ behavior

Imagine. As a teacher you assign a paper. It’s not an onerous assignment, and the topic is actually a fun one for the students to explore.

Despite your clear instructions and explanations about how to plan for assignments, and your efforts to make the work meaningful, the pattern is very frustrating. On the due date, the same 10 students have put the work in, perhaps another 10 made a perfunctory effort, and maybe another 10 didn’t submit anything, for a variety of reasons.

We all experience that or situations very similar right? Not just with students, but with family members, peers, colleagues, acquaintances, pretty much anyone. When we encounter people who are taking actions or holding opinions that are unhelpful or even damaging, it seems no amount of persuasion, cajoling, coaching, instruction, or whatever we try seems to work.

Or as my nephew Ben says, “you can’t fix stupid.”

Except you can, you just can’t do it using the methods we tend to use.

How to Reach Those Who Resist Efforts to Help

A technique called Motivational Interviewing works 74% of the time, 5 times as often as other techniques investigated.

Motivational Interviewing involves

1. Asking open questions
2. Using reflective listening
3. Affirming the person’s desire and ability to change

Why do people resist our efforts to help them?

Cognitive and neuro- scientists have mapped out what happens in the brain, and why our normal methods of influencing others’ behavior are often ineffective.

While our offer of criticism or coaching is generally from a genuine desire to help, what happens in the other person’s brain is that the survival instincts take it as a threat. Threats trigger stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline, which focus our resources on combatting the threat, shut down our ability to be resourceful or thoughtful, and trigger a flight or fight response.

This happens subconsciously, before their consciousness is even aware of what is happening.

With their ability to think through the issue essentially cut off, they are mentally and emotionally incapable of incorporating our efforts at their changing behavior.

How does motivational interviewing help?

Motivational Interviewing resets the brain from survival mode, establishes connection and trust, and then gives agency to the individual affected. All three components are necessary to enable a person to entre a resourceful state of mind, and be capable of reconsidering decisions or actions.

When a person is in a resourceful rather than anxious frame of mind, they become conscious of their own ambiguities toward their stance and actions, and able to consider alternatives and eventually choose a different path.

A deeper dive into Motivational interviewing and how to implement it in practice and in classrooms, along with 60 other brain hacking techniques that can accelerate your ability to motivate students, is part of the Mindshifting: Growth Mindset and Critical Thinking for Impactful Educators.

How to Make Better Decisions with Role Playing

The Decision Making Game

At the Serious Play Conference, I ran a role playing game that pulled 9 of the concepts taught in the Mindshifting: Growth Mindset and Critical Thinking for Impactful Educators Course in order to teach group-based decision making and problem solving strategies.

These were 9 of the 70 different strategies that are covered in the Mindshifting: Growth Mindset and Critical Thinking for Impactful Educators Course, which provides educators with the foundations for building the following in students:

• social emotional intelligence
• diversity and inclusion
• the growth mindset
• critical thinking
• perseverance
• innovation
• problem solving
• communications skills

Here is a link in case you want download the game to use it for your group or students. 

How the Game Worked

In the game, participants played one of 7 different roles, all serfs, in a village in the year 1023. During the game, the village faces problems. Players are part of teams that have to come up with a solution to the problem. For each problem, each team receives instructions on how to conduct their meeting, then, after each team presents their solution and what happened in their discussion, the entire group discusses the different strategies how they impacted the flow of ideas, and how they might use those techniques. When we ran the game, the discussions led to deep reflection on effective ways to communicate, persuade, and influence others. Thus, all participants are exposed to the 9 different strategies for brainstorming ideas or coming to decisions as a group.

Feedback from Participants

The feedback from participants was excellent. I asked them what they learned, and how implementing the concepts changed how the group handled challenges. 

Here’s what they said: 

Question: What do you think people learned through this game:

Feedback:

• Think outside the box. Listen to others. Compromise. 
• I think it would make the discussion process more equitable and positive.
• This reasoning ends with a solution that everyone can get behind.
• Compromise and flexibility 

Question: What were your thoughts on the game?

Feedback:

• Great idea and fun. 
• This is an inspired game. So fun and would help students understand discourse. 
• It was very well designed. I like that we discuss the various strategies afterwards. It gives a great understanding of worst case/best case strategies.
• It’s so much fun and forming relationships immediately. Great ice breaker 

Ready to try it in your classroom or organization? 

You can register for the course here: link

And, as an incentive, if you register before June 20, you can use this code for a $15 discount: Mindshift15.

The Path to Resilience Leads Through OODA Loops

Imagine students who can handle failure and persist until they are successful. If you’re interested in learning how, click here to sign up for my online course: Mindshifting: Growth Mindset and Critical Thinking for Impactful Educators.

What are OODA Loops?

John Boyd’s OODA Loops is probably the most effective way to learn resourcefulness, perseverance, and flexibility. Tens of thousands of individuals use OODA Loops, especially when faced with unexpected events or competition. But if you are not in the military or law enforcement, you probably have not heard of it.

That’s a shame, because we can all benefit from being able to adapt to almost any situation faster and more effectively - especially if you’re a teacher who wants to better equip your students.

How OODA Loops Work

In its simplest terms, the OODA Loop is common sense. When you go into a situation, you Observe, then you use all the information at your disposal to Orient or come up with alternatives, you Decide, and then you Act. As you act, you observe and start the process all over again. Which is why they are called loops, OODA Loops are an iterative process of experimentation until the objective is achieved.

Boyd reasoned that there were two key factors that led to success: speed and proficiency. The faster you could cycle through the steps, the more likely you are to prevail. The more areas of proficiency you have mastered, the more likely you are to prevail. When you combine speed of reaction with proficiency, you could outmaneuver any opponent and overcome practically any obstacle. If you can build up your unconscious skills, the actions you could make without having to stop and consciously think, you will overwhelm anyone or anything that gets in your way.

Boyd proved this in his career as an Air Force Colonel training fighter pilots. Fighter pilots taking his course felt OODA loops was too academic and not particularly practical. To overcome their reservations, Boyd offered a wager. He would engage in a dogfight, and the other pilot would have the initial advantage. But within 2 minutes he would use his OODA training to shoot down the other pilot. Then the two would trade places and he would prevail again.

In all the years he taught, he never once lost that bet.

Learning OODA Loops sounds simple, but there are dozens of problem solving and information gathering skills and common mistakes to avoid, and so it takes hours to fully understand how to implement or teach OODA Loops. Why is it worth it?

Why expend the effort to learn OODA Loops

OODA Loop techniques prepare you to

• Overcome obstacles
• Handle complex situations
• Overwhelm opposition and competition
• Effortlessly persevere
• Know how and where to put preparatory time and effort before important challenges
• Create and lead highly effective teams

Why teach OODA Loops to students?

If you teach OODA loops to students, they become prepared to 

• Overcome adversity
• Persist
• Practice until they are fluent
• Use failure or success primarily as feedback
• Work well in small groups

Isn’t this what you want for your students? Do you think that will reduce your load of classroom management and free up time for more important learning?

How can you become proficient in OODA Loops?

While John Boyd left no materials other than Foil slides, I’ve studied OODA Loops for over four years, read books, watched hours and hours of recordings, and organized all this information specifically for educators. OODA Loops are extensively covered in the Mindshifting: Growth Mindset and Critical Thinking for Impactful Educators online course that starts July 12.

Take a look and register.

An Opportunity to Reimagine Learning

We have a onetime opportunity to remake education; not just to modify aspects of what we already do, but to start at zero and imagine a system that supports humankind – from the report

Last June, the Augmented Society Network started examining the long term effects of the Pandemic. The Augmented Society Network is a Fellow Network of the RSA, and international organization focused on social impact with 260 years of history and over 30,000 problem-solvers.

Education is faced with a huge opportunity wrapped up as a monumental problem.

Together, 30 collaborators from 15 different countries representing five continents created a 100-page document to address both the problem and the opportunity. This report has eight themes. Here is a summary and intro for each theme. The report is free and can be downloaded here.

Theme 1: Basics for Fourth Industrial Age Human Success

We are entering into the fourth industrial revolution, where machines augment human mental and social activities. There is one lesson we can learn from the previous three industrial revolutions:

In the long run, each revolution has advantaged more people than it has disadvantaged, but there were severe disruptions that disproportionately negatively impacted the underprivileged. Many of them could have been avoided.

In the information economy, there is now an opportunity to give every human being access to high quality learning content, in any topic and field, and at any time they need it. However, the vast majority of individuals, schools, communities, and educators are not prepared for distance learning.

Theme 2: Foundational or Transversal Skills

Advancements in our knowledge of foundational skills, or skills that transverse all aspects of life, have exploded, and yet we are not scaling those skills.

Traditional methods such as planning, data analysis, goal setting, and expertise also lock us into ways of perceiving the world that end up limiting our ability to adapt to change or thrive during chaos. We cannot rely on the way we frame the past to prepare us for the future.

We need to develop the skill of creating alternative frames to make productive sense of threats and opportunities. This is the skill of unknowing, and it means embracing the unknown.

Let's embark on keeping the joy of learning, the excitement of trying something new, ignited in all people.

Theme 3: Solving Complex Problems and Design Thinking

The pandemic illuminated deficiencies that were always there if we had been looking for them.

Rigid educational systems are ill-suited to unleash creative thinking and problem solving.

The wicked problems we face tend to lend themselves to iterative design thinking, and the paper explores a five-step process of empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test.

Design thinking can both be used as a tool to rethink education (and an array of societal issues) and as a skill to be learned in educational settings.

Theme 4: Access, Diversity, and Inclusion

Today’s societies, and the paths toward success, have been structured  as much through exclusion as for advancement; we have been striving for the advancement of the included. But when progress is framed as progress for all, all progress. The pandemic has again illuminated the inequalities, but they were always there for people who experienced them or looked for them.

Diversity builds stronger futures for all: gender diversity, biodiversity, ethnic diversity, financial diversity, all diversity. Learning is the best way to advance, both for individuals and for society.

Through education, we can change our language to promote inclusion and progress for all. To do this, we have to learn about the ways we have structured inequality, and one place this learning can take place is in schools. The language we use, and often the language we use without even thinking about it, often reinforces inequality.

Too often schools today assume and reinforce the dominant culture, gender, and skin color. We have to change schools to value and explore differences, using that diversity to build a stronger future.

Theme 5: Purpose and Context of Education

Education is the main driver for human talents and societal skills. Access to high quality education, whenever it is needed, needs to be regarded as a universal human right.

Many areas of the world have already seen improvements in academic knowledge because of the educational systems they have implemented, but in this Fourth Industrial Age, we need to think of learning beyond the education of the population under the age of 18, and beyond the transmission of academic knowledge and skills.

Education is shaped by society, but society is also shaped by education, and we need education to lead society to success, resilience, and adaptability. For example: globally, people need to learn the modes and means of sustainable development.

Rather than any one solution, local trust between the broad community and the learning institutions create dynamic effective systems. There is no one right way, there will and should always be a diversity in curricula, technology, and structure.

There are many new technologies that are having a huge impact when deployed in support of societal learning goals and to overcome gaps in equity, access, knowledge, and skills.

The article looks at cases where education has and has not prompted beneficial change for a society, and what we can learn from each one.

Theme 6: Success, Failure, and Evaluation

We need a radical reappraisal of what we understand as success in education.

Measurement of academic proficiency based on narrow learning goals, tying rewards and punishments to results of measurement, and accreditation of competence often distort education away from society’s needs for learning. They can move the focus from competence and mastery to one concentrated on achieving positive results on the assessments themselves.

This calls for a shift of emphasis from attainment to inclusion. Instead of rewarding those who have attained, the practice of education can address the needs of those who have not yet secured success.

Assessment would move from a screening mechanism, on which redirects human beings out of the paths of success, to a way of furthering learning. There would be no failure, just measurement for the aim of determining the next best possible steps to increase knowledge, skills, and capabilities.

It’s easy to test the things we don’t particularly care about. Technology can be part of the answer to assess the things that are actually important. Technologies such as AI, voice recognition, and Augmented and Virtual Reality can be, and are being, deployed to assess learning, to address learning gaps, and to certify competence.

We can hope that we make progress humanely by being inclusive in our implementation, evaluation, and iteration.

Theme 7: Empowering the Educators

We need to recognize that we all educate. And as people who educate, we all need to improve in our ability to coach, train, and inspire.

There are those who educate as a profession. We need to provide those people with the knowledge, resources, tools, and support to be effective.

Areas for support and training include

1. knowledge and skills about teaching in an educational setting,
2. technical knowledge (which includes knowledge about a subject or domain as well as technology), and
3. critical reflection (models of reflections, ethics, and culture).

Educators tend to be most effective when they have access to high quality, differentiated educational materials and work collaboratively and supportively with diverse stakeholders toward common goals. Professional educators need the power, knowledge, and skills to make autonomous decisions about what happens with their students and within their classes. The report goes into some details as to what these are.

Theme 8: Lifelong Learning and the Social Fabric

We propose that a purpose of learning is enabling individuals and society to flourish multidimensionally, but that our current systems seem designed to produce “normal” people primed to follow social norms.

Education can address issues of equality, inclusiveness, and diversity, and it can be a factor in creating more equitable distribution of wealth, developing humans to their potential, and promoting multiculturalism.

A good start is to develop listening skills, to be able to listen and understand what we initially disagree with or dismiss.

Education should explore the differences between a society whose focus is financial to one where members define and develop their driving essence, purpose, and meaning in life. Learning should enable people to have work that matters, to embrace love unconditionally, and to be courageous and authentically vulnerable even in the face of difficulty.

Let’s start thinking of learning as unleashing each person to be successfully different in their own way.

How Does Technology Fit In?

Use of technology to further learning is a dominant theme of the report, and has the potential to

• Facilitate exploration of concepts, problems, and alternatives
• Augment the way people experience the world
• Provide for what-if scenarios
• Promote collaboration
• Be a communication media
• Improve technology skills, as 3D thinking and manipulation will be increasingly important
• Be a critical component in the design process, leading to design thinking and computational thinking
• Overcome obstacle of time, distance, and cost
• Expand practice opportunities
• Diagnose knowledge and skill gaps

During the pandemic, we have seen instances where technology has accelerated learning and development, and we have also seen how underprepared we all were to deploy technology at scale. If we are to level up, we are all going to have to become vigilant forces for progress.

What’s next?

The Augmented Society Network and the RSA are going to be planning a series of events for us to resolve how we are going to move forward. Contact [email protected] to stay informed.

Thank you Samaya Borom, Dr Tony Breslin, Zoe Camper, Nishan Chelvachandran, Jenna Fuentes, Gary Handforth, Nitzan Herman, Carlos Largacha-Martinez, Dr Lynda Leavitt, Rachida Merbough, Anna Morrison, Amy Moser, Julie Samuels, Jessica Slayback, Jenny Seelman Stiven, Tim Stiven, Benjamin Strawbridge, Ruth Travers, Jonathan Tavssberger, and Cyrill Wiget.

What a great beginning.

A Quick Question About the Future of #Education

I was having an interesting discussion with some Scottish educators during the Creative Bravery festival about different ways to teach. One of the topics resulted in the recent post Should We Let Pedagogy Die?. The other topic has taken a bit longer to percolate.

One of the educators suggested that practically anything can be reduced to a 2x2 grid, and that when you are considering how to teach or how to learn something, we should consider that on one axis would be: do we have the capacity (knowledge, skills, and resources) to solve something, and on the other axis should be is there a clear solution. It might look something like this:

If a person has the knowledge and skills, and there is a clear solution, then all that’s necessary to teach is perhaps reference material for refresher. If you know how to drive and follow a map, then all you need is some reference material on the route to your destination. If you know the material you need to take a test, then maybe all you need is some study aids to prepare for the test.

If there is a clear solution and a person does not have the knowledge or skills, teaching and learning should be pretty straightforward. Cover the material the person needs to learn. There is an end of year math skills test, cover the material needed for the test during the year in a way that the person will be able to do well on the test. If a person has to demonstrate competence in some science concepts, teach those science concepts.

The more interesting cases, and probably more common in life, are the cases where there is no clear solution.

What if a person has the general knowledge and skills, but there is no clear solution? What would you want that person to learn, and how would they learn it? Maybe learning different problem solving methods would be a start.

What if we wanted people to be prepared to solve problems where we don’t know today what the problems will be, we do not know the specific knowledge and skills they will need to solve those problems, and, in all likelihood there is no clear solution to the problem?

Isn’t that fourth quadrant what today’s children face with their futures?

Most of us would acknowledge that our current education system doesn’t do that well.

Here is the quick question about the future of education: What should we do about that?

I don’t have an answer, but I’d love to hear yours.

And, you could advance your understanding of potential solutions in future or archived (free) Edchat Interactives.