Month: October 2009

interrupted by an email?

or rather, do you let yourself be interrupted?

then it takes time to get back to what you were doing, and then more time to get back in the flow.

The October issue of Real Simple magazine quotes a Microsoft and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign study that claims it takes 17 minutes “for a worker interrupted by e-mail to get back to what she was doing.”

Unclutterer: Recovering from an email interruption

on the tip of your tongue?

don’t try to dig deep in your memory…

look it up right away, or just stop and let it go.


the
longer you try to come up with the word that’s on the tip of your
tongue, the more likely you’ll be to get stuck on that word in the
future.
….
[this
has] implications for the classroom …  “If the student can’t learn
something or can’t remember something… then you often see the teacher
encouraging them to work through it. ‘Just keep trying. It’ll come to
you.’
….
[but] Instead of trying to remember, students should look up the correct answer.
….
[and when you can’t look up right now?]
For those situations, Humphreys’ advises that you “don’t keep trying. Just stop.”
….
So
remember, if you’re trying to help out somebody who’s stuck, you should
give them the answer. Humphreys also says you should “get them to
repeat it back to you. But don’t leave them in this state where they
just have to keep trying, because they’re just going to be digging
themselves into that error again.”

Tip of the Tongue Learning: Science Videos – Science News – ScienCentral