Thinking on the Margin

Decision tactics
to Beat Back Black and White Thinking and decision anxiety
so you can move forward

 

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
Another of The Black & White topic articles
from the Challenges Inventory™ Series

Balancing our Books by Thinking on the Margin

Found HERE

Most frequently associated with economic theory, “thinking on the margin” is also a handy concept that can help break the back of black and white thinking for those of us with Executive Functioning Disorders.

It’s an interesting theory of how we make decisions that relates to increasing personal productivity, avoiding an increase of the time we spend on task. It is worth taking the time to understand.

So let’s check it out!

Costs and benefits

Most of us have probably been exposed to the concept of performing a cost/benefit analyses to help us determine whether something is worth doing.

That technique can be simply described as one where we tally up the costs and downsides to an endeavor and compare them to a tally of the benefits and upsides that might be derived if we went forward with something we have been considering.

That’s not exactly what “thinking on the margin” advocates.  Once some basic data has been gathered, this second concept asks us to compare the cost and benefit of any additional action.

It means to think about your next step forward, not ALL possible steps forward.

Lemonade Economics:

Found HERE

Let’s pretend you are an unusually economically savvy kid operating a lemonade stand at the end of an especially HOT summer day.

You’ve done the math and determined that, based on the traffic in your neighborhood and how many cups you expect to sell, you need to get no less than 25 cents each to cover the cost of cups, ice, lemons and sugar – and pay yourself enough for your time to make it worth doing at all.

So you make your sign:
Ice Cold Home Made Delicious Lemonade,
only a quarter a cup!

But once you’ve recouped your costs, the equation changes.  Everything from that point on is profit, right?  So when you are offered a measly dime from the kid next door, you have a different decision to make.

• Based on the traffic today, how much longer are you likely to have to tend your stand to sell the rest of your lemonade at full price?
• How much longer before your ice melts?
• How eager are you to sell it all and get into the air conditioning?
• Even, how much do you like the neighbor-kid with the dime?

The optimum benefit for you would be where the marginal benefit (what you receive as a result of your decision) equals the marginal cost — which, in this case, is settling for less than what you’d hoped you would receive for every cup of lemonade.

Were you this young entrepreneur, economists who advocate “thinking on the margin” would advise you to accept less than 25 cents a cup exactly when the marginal benefit of selling an additional cup of lemonade at your original cost equaled the point where staying out in the sun much longer was no longer worth it to you — regardless of what the average benefit from your work had been to that point.

They say that, to work smart, we always need to work at the margin.
I say, it’s a good concept to keep in mind for some decisions.

Change your Clothes, Change your Brain?

Fashionistas & their Opposites
A brain-based look

© Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
from the Brain-Based Series
Collaboration with Jodie’s Touch of Style

Fashionistas First

You’ve seen them on television, on the internet, in the tabloids, maybe even in your own neighborhood, right?

Whatever we think about how they put themselves together, we tend to notice that we see them in a different outfit every time we see them – even if we see them several times on the same day.

Many of us who like to think of ourselves as serious thinkers love to make fun of them.  We frequently believe they’re vapid, self-focused vanity plates wasting time and energy on items that don’t make one whit of difference.

And we’d be wrong.

They might not be changing the world, but they certainly are changing their clothes!  And that’s not such a bad thing, you’ll come to find out as you keep reading.

Frozen Fashionitas

Most of us have met at least one of these ladies.  A perfect example is the college beauty queen who hasn’t changed her style since her heyday, despite the fact that she is now middle aged or older.

Her hairstyle is practically the same, often chemically processed at considerable trouble or expense to remain exactly the same color.  Her wardrobe usually has a slightly “Delta Dawn” feel to it – frozen in time.

Youngsters sometimes point them out in a manner you wish they wouldn’t, and often at the top of their lungs, “Look Mom – that old lady looks just like Aunt Theresa!”

Another example is “Sensible Susie.”

She has decided what is appropriate and what is no longer suitable for any number of reasons: since she’s gained or lost weight, now that she’s older, the kids are in middle school, her husband got a promotion — whatever!

She may well be right, but the problem is that she turns what might have been a good idea into a rule book from which she never varies.

She may be easy to shop for, but nobody would ever accuse her of being “fashion forward,” and she’s often one of the first to point out the supposed flaws in the outfit of a contemporary.

Make way for “Matching Molly”

My own grandmother could have been the Matching Molly poster girl.  If an ensemble was purchased as an outfit, the various items might as well have been sewn together.

Suggesting to her that she could wear the jacket from Outfit A over a dress – or with the skirt from Outfit B – was practically enough to give her apoplexy.

She had a fit if I mixed and matched in my own wardrobe too, especially with items that she had given me as birthday or Christmas presents — there was no such thing as “separates” in my grandmother’s closet or her world view.

When Acknowledgment Backfires

Owning our Brilliance
How come that is so much harder than owning our Challenges?

© Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
from the Black & White Thinking category
part of The Challenges Inventory™ Series

Found HERE

Performance Pressure

Most of us can’t get ENOUGH positive feedback, even if we deflect it for one reason or another – as most of us tend to do.

WHY would anybody toss aside positive comments, you ask?

Check inside.  Why do YOU?

The causes of deflection are varied and individual-specific, but there are a few categories in which they tend to cluster.

For example, because:

• We aren’t developmentally ready to let our awareness of our own expertise, learned or innate, really sink in
• We’ve internalized the cultural meme that there is something intrinsically wrong with “owning” our brilliance.  Admitting that we are aware of what we do well is frequently considered conceited, ego-based, or heaven forbid narcissistic! (Odd, isn’t it, that owning our Challenges is laudable?)
• We’ve learned that people who compliment frequently have an agenda beyond encouraging us to bask in the glow of accomplishment — and we’ve equated “compliment” and “acknowledgment” (NOT the same things at all).
• We’ve learned in the past that acknowledgments are some kind code — a sneaky way that others let us know that somebody’s trying to raise our bar — usually them.

Acknowledgment Avoidance

As I explored with you over two years ago in Doling out the Cookies (one of the reward and acknowledgement articles in the TaskMaster™ Series):

Besides the feeling that there is something wrong with endorsement, our knee-jerk responses often point to a paradigm leading us to embrace the idea that unless we are perfect, we might as well be worthless, undeserving of acknowledgement: a perfect example of black and white stinkin’ thinkin‘.

The underlying concept that keeps that particular example of black and white thinking in place is the idea that things of value are pure examples of absolute consistency. That’s insane!

Breaking the back of Black and White Thinking

Three Tiny Things

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
Another of The Black & White topic articles from
The Challenges Inventory™ Series

click image for source article

In last week’s article [What GOOD is Black and White Thinking?], I introduced the idea of maintaining your own version of my Three Tiny Things Gratitude Journal™

The Three Tiny Things™ process encourages us to pare down the scope of what we explore when we look for things for which we can be grateful.

This concept focuses on a slightly different objective than other gratitude suggestions you may have heard: this idea is going to take on the task of breaking the back of black and white thinking (and lack of ACTIVATION).

As I implied in my introductory article, Black and White Thinking is probably the most insidious of the Nine Challenges identified by The Challenges Inventory™.

In Moving from Black or White to GREY I went on to say:

• Until addressed and overcome, black and white thinking will chain one arm to that well referenced rock and the other to that proverbial hard place. At that point, every single one of life’s other Challenges will loom larger than they would ever be otherwise.

• With every teeny-tiny step you take into the grey – away from the extremes of black and white – life gets better, and the next step becomes easier to take.

What I want – for me, for you, for EVERYONE – is to be willing to change the experience of life by transforming our black and white thinking – one small step for man, one giant leap for man-KIND!

Be sure to check out the sidebar for how links work on this site, they’re subtle ==>

What GOOD is Black and White Thinking?

If Black & White Thinking Never Works
How come so many people DO it?

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC

Image from Kozzi.com

I have received some version of one of the two questions above more than a few times recently.

Since I’m now guiding my writing by the number of blog comments or questions a topic generates, I’m thinking it’s time to turn my attention back to Black and White Thinking.

As I implied in my introductory article, Black and White Thinking is probably the most insidious of the Nine Challenges identified by The Challenges Inventory™.

In Moving from Black or White to GREY I went on to say, “It’s like a VIRUS: it infects, proliferates, and spreads to others.”

• Until addressed and overcome, I asserted, black and white thinking will chain one arm to that well referenced rock and the other to that proverbial hard place. At that point, every single one of life’s other Challenges will loom larger than they would ever be otherwise.

• With every teeny-tiny step you take into the grey – away from the extremes of black and white – life gets better, and the next step becomes easier to take.

• By the end of the Black and White Thinking Series, what I want for you is to be in a place where you are ready to change your life by transforming your thinking – one small step for man, one giant leap for man-KIND!

Be sure to check out the sidebar for how links work on this site, they’re subtle ==>

But does it EVER work?

Black and white thinking? Sure, it works sometimes.  I’m sure you’ve heard about “the exception that proves the rule.” 

Here is the short version of my answer to the implied question of
WHEN it works:

Although there are better ways to get the job done, it can work for you when you are mired in a decision quandary and absolutely MUST move forward.

• It reduces rumination as a result of “choice overload” in a manner that unlocks brain-freeze.

• It lowers the expectation that you will be “perfectly satisfied” with whatever choice you make, ultimately leaving you happier than you might have been otherwise – either way.

• Parenting small children aside, it usually works best when the individual making the choice decides to employ it – not as well when others force a black and white decision upon them. (Ask any parent about how well their teens react to either/or enforcements: they can sulk for days!)

• It is helpful when making decisions during bona-fide crises situations, where choices are reduced dramatically to begin with (the reason that many of us can say that we are “good in a crisis”)

Moving from Black or White to GREY

Moving toward Balance:
How Much of a Challenge IS Getting to Grey?

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
One of The Black & White topic articles from
The Challenges Inventory™ Series

As I implied in my introductory article, Black and White Thinking is probably the most insidious of the Nine Challenges identified by The Challenges Inventory™.

It’s like a VIRUS: it infects, proliferates, and spreads to others.

• Until addressed and overcome, black and white thinking will chain one arm to that well referenced rock and the other to that proverbial hard place. At that point, every single one of life’s other Challenges will loom larger than they would ever be otherwise.

• The good news is that turn-around is not only possible, with some concentrated attention to what’s going on, turn-around is inevitable.

• With every teeny-tiny step you take into the grey – away from the extremes of black and white – life gets better, and the next step becomes easier to take.

By the end of this segment in the Black and White Thinking Series, what I want for you is to be in a place where you are ready to take the first step toward CHANGING what’s going on now by transforming your thinking – one small step for man, one giant leap for man-KIND!

Since awareness is always the first step on the road to change, let’s take a closer look, considering what well might have been a huge contributor to the development of what’s going on now.

No One is Immune

Black and White Make-wrong

One of The Black & White articles from The Challenges Inventory™ Series
Foundational Concepts of the Intentionality Series: Opinions vs. Facts

Blog Belittlement — yet not here!

© by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC

A overdue THANK YOU
to my Readership!

NEWS TO KNOW — in the over two years of this blog’s life (born, essentially, in March 2011), I have gotten only THREE comments that crossed the line separating disagreeable from disagreement.

(Not counting, that is, whatever is inside the thousands of auto-spammed comments I’ve never seen — caught by the Akismet spam filter on this blog — check out the spam counter near the top of the skinny column to your right.)

Think about that for a moment.

From YouTube to The Huffington Post — to Scientific American, for heaven’s sakes — the comments section seems to be developing into little more than a place to indulge in a snide and sarcastic form of cyber-bullying, discounting entire articles and comments from others with a sneering couple of words that add nothing but nastiness.

Sadly, many sites have felt the need to disconnect the comments feature because of the abject churlishness of the comments that have been posted. Moderating and editing thousands of comments can be a tedious task indeed — NOBODY has the time to sift through and delete all that stuff when the “trolls” and haters decide to descend.

• YET on ADDandSoMuchMore.com, where the readership make-up is primarily those whom we would expect to have more than a few issues with impulsivity (and more than a few frustrations to take out on the closest available victim), it is practically non-existent.

• WE seem to be a community of civilized, respectful and supportive, grateful-for-anything-that-might-help band of brethren.

How cool is THAT!?

Confirmation Bias & The Tragedy of Certainty

“If you board the wrong train,
it’s no use running along the corridor
in the other direction.”
~ the fascinating & courageous theologian,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

How do you KNOW?
And what do you do with that belief?

© By Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, A.C.T., MCC, SCAC
Foundational Concepts of the Intentionality Series
Opinions vs. Facts

Facts, Suppositions, Extrapolations & Opinions

In the past two years, I have been reading a large number of “neuroscience” books — which means, of course, that I have been reading the opinions of neuroscientists that they have put forward into book form.

Here on ADDandSoMuchMore.com, I shared my reaction to the various opinions in the first of what will become a Series of writings about opinion and fact:

(Science and Sensibility – The Illusion of Proof: Observation: Anecdotal Report and Science ).

Processing slower or more to think about?

How FAST can you sift & sort?

Intro by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
Part THREE of the Brain-Based Processing Series

How fast can you FILTER? 

THAT is the question.

CLICK HERE for Part I: ABOUT Processing Speed
CLICK HERE for Part II: Processing Efficiency

Introduction

EFD: TBI & ADD (and more!)

There are a great many disabilities that are manifestations of Exectutive Functioning Disorder [EFD] – some inborn, and some acquired subsequently.

Some EF struggles are a consequence of damage to the frontal cortex, others are a consequence of another disease or disorder and its impact on hormones or glucose metabolism — or anything that has an effect on the neurotransmitter balance in the Prefrontal Cortex [PFC].

Processing Efficiency is all about Juggling

Measuring Processing Fluency?

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
Part TWO of the Brain-Based Processing Series

*attribution below

How fast can YOU juggle?

Science is rapidly approaching the level of urgency in its attempt to understand the dynamics of cognition that those of us with processing disorders have lived with 24/7 for some or all of our lives.

Almost everyone in the industrialized world reports being “stressed to the max,” which seems, as many are beginning to point out, to have some connection with productivity effectiveness.

Glory hallelujah!

Since the consequences of chronic stress have come to public awareness, personally affecting almost every individual in industrialized societies, corporate heads and productivity gurus have been searching unsuccessfully for ways to lower stress levels without abandoning their preoccupation with capital and profitability.

• Only a very small subgroup has connected chronic stress to
  human processing limitations.

• Only a few of those individual have any idea what might work
  to extend the capacities and work around the limitations
  of the human brain.

So, of course, NOW is a good time to apply for funding for cognition studies.  We’ll hear about more and more of them in the next few years.

ABOUT Processing Speed

Measures that Don’t . . .

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
Part One of the Brain-Based Processing Series

How fast do YOU process?

Instructions per second [IPS] is a long-standing measure of a computer‘s processor speed – how many binary elements of information it can put through the input/output process each second.

IPS is no longer useful – at least it is no longer the most useful measure of computer “processing speed.”

WHY NOT?

Because computers (and the computer field) have reached the point of complexity where OPERATIONS per second have become the measurement that will “scratch the itch” of the goal of the measurement: allowing human beings to work faster because our computers “process faster.”

Computers that work more efficiently, requiring fewer individual “instructions” to accomplish an operation, “process faster” from the user’s perspective.

Computers that optimize the bootstrapping process efficiently can out-perform computers with faster IPS speed, hands down, to the delight of the computer chip manufacturing industry.

Will that work for US?

ABOUT Black and White Thinking

Remember – links on this site are dark grey to reduce distraction potential
while you’re reading. They turn red on mouseover.

The Challenge of Gray —

from Black and White to Balance

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
The FIRST of The Black & White articles from
The Challenges Inventory™ Series
(updated content March 20, 2013)

• A or F
• Perfect or worthless
• All or nothing
• Good or bad
• White or black
• Always or Never!

Perfectionism and Black & White Thinking can turn a bright, shiny day into a thunderstorm!

One of the Nine Challenges (from my Challenges Inventory™), Black and White Thinking is an area that will be explored in one of the eBooks in my upcoming eBook Series.

ADDers (and those involved with them) seem to fall into the black and white thinking trap more than most – especially where the functioning of the ADDer is concerned.

That’s a shame, too, because the damage inflicted by black and white thinking seems to stop ADDers dead in their tracks more quickly than than those with the so-called “neurotypical” brain-style.

Maybe it is because we have heard it levied against us so often in our lives.

• Why can’t you ever be on time?
• You always interrupt me!
• You are the messiest person I have ever known!

Utter NONSENSE!

Expectations Mismatches & Moon Men

Frustrated expectations are difficult to overcome.

by Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC

Graphic: Johnny Automatic

“You do something right ONCE and they
hold it against you for the rest of your life!”
~ Mel Levine

One of the complaints you often hear about ADD/EFDers (and all of us struggling with kludgy Executive Functioning) is that our cognitive and functional abilities are erratic.

In posts to come, I will share with you what I have discovered about WHY that it so: why our behavior seems so unpredictable, and what we can do to change that perception.

I would like to introduce you to some of the theories and concepts that underlie the manner in which I work with Executive Functioning Deficits of all types — a way that allows you to put the pieces together so that you understand what you need to DO to be able to drive your own brain — without the constant fear that it will break down on the road!

Prediction is key

An ability to predict the impact of your particular combination of cognitive challenges allows you to realign expectations realistically, so that you can design action plans that are likely to succeed. Almost more important, through prediction’s crystal ball you will be able to design action plans that produce the kind of results that are more likely to be perceived by others as successful.

Subsequent posts will say more about learning to predict yourself. I want to begin by tackling the “perception of others” part of the equation.

In this post I want to describe an unconscious dynamic in our society that makes it tough for ALL of us, but especially for those of us with Executive Functioning Deficits.

It is very difficult to allow yourself the experience of success when the feedback that surrounds you focuses primarily on real or imagined “shortcomings.” And it happens ALL the time. What’s up with THAT?