4
The Power of Playing Alone

Even being pack animals, as humans are, the need and desire to be alone is often very strong. How many times have you asked a co-worker what they’re doing for a night or weekend and heard, “I’m just going home and shutting the door”? This is a completely natural impulse, and like the craving for a specific type of food, is at times an absolute necessity. Especially in the contemporary work environment, where so much emphasis is placed on teamwork and group activity and collaboration, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the constant onslaught of information and interaction and sensory stimulus, whether directly or indirectly related to job function.

In many work environments, this can, and often does, take the form of too many meetings, so many demands on one’s time, and a steady bombardment of input, whether in-person or electronic. And that’s just some of the work-related stuff. Socializing in the office, politics, personal demands during the day, and more all come into play. In today’s world, people are simply not able to segment their lives into work time and non-work time, try as they might. One of the problems we hear from people in business all the time is the many ways their attention is diverted from tasks at hand—and the stress that causes.

In terms of play, this is akin to being in a never-ending playgroup where the level of stimulus keeps a child on full alert at all times. As humans, we’re simply not made to function on that level at all times, and indeed even in play groups, we consistently observe that one or two children, always dependent on the size of the group, may pull back or play alone during that time. This can be construed as either anti-social or indicative of a child’s not being accepted by the group. Too often we see, particularly at the kindergarten level, an adult rush in and try to “fix” the situation, which can be at once disruptive to the dynamic of what’s going on and confusing to the child who has actually absented him- or herself from the activity by conscious choice.

Moreover, in today’s culture in the United States, children seldom have time to be alone, and this is most pronounced among more affluent sectors of the culture. Children are shuttled from activity to activity, and what suffers is unstructured time. Parents live in fear that either the unaccompanied child is vulnerable to danger, as author and blogger Lenore Skenazy points out in her book Free-Range Kids and her writings, or it assumed that there is something negative about being alone.

Assuming that there are no underlying psychological or social problems, solitary endeavors, and particularly solitary playtime, is as essential to healthy development as an ability to function within a group. So why is solitary playtime so often avoided with today’s children? If you’re a Baby Boomer, you probably remember significant blocks of time when you were unsupervised, but in today’s world that’s virtually gone. In large measure the constant attention to doing things and “being productive” is created by the idea that downtime is wasted time. Today’s parents are very often driven to make sure that everything a child does is toward a specific end. If children are going to get into the best schools, compete effectively, and win, they need to be managed and guided and shaped and molded. As a result, consider in our current culture how many things children are engaged in that are run by an adult expert. The goal is not the exploration of something or having time with one’s own thoughts and imaginations because that isn’t “helping them get anywhere,” which as we’ll see in a moment is an illusion. Instead, the focus is on resume-building and the mastery of specific skills, whether in dance, sports, test-taking, or any other discipline. School time and after-school time are consumed to the point that every moment is scheduled. Summer vacation time, as well, for many kids is filled with activities, classes, and experiences. When we interview parents, there is either a misunderstanding or rejection of how important it is that children have unstructured time. And they live in fear of a child saying, “I’m bored.” (My mother’s response to that statement was always a crisp, “No, you’re not. You’ve got a room full of books, all of outdoors, your bike, and your brothers. Figure it out.”)

All of this, in many segments of the culture, leaves virtually no time for kids to be alone and left to their own devices, as the saying goes. The challenge is that they ultimately don’t know how to be on their own or draw on their resources, which can leave them stressed out and ill prepared for a workforce that balances both group and solitary play, as it were.

What’s the effect of this? For one, we have interviewed many managers who indicate frustration with some of their younger employees. Though these young workers may be very smart and very accomplished, they have a hard time functioning without constant direction. They are perfectly capable of doing tasks as assigned, but they need guidance and oversight at every step of the way, and they have been habituated to look for—and expect—feedback and validation at every step of the way. This certainly causes frustration with older managers and especially those who like to manage by exception—in other words, give an assignment and not have to figure out how it is accomplished. Now, of course, we’re talking about somewhat extreme cases, and these young people certainly can and do learn to function effectively in these business environments, but the need for constant engagement is changing the dynamics of management in some companies. This is endemic as well in companies that have cultures driven by meetings and reliance on collaboration. In fact, for many of the managers we interview, the need for constant engagement, direction, and reinforcement is the new reality. One senior executive said, “These kids—we call them ‘kids,’ though they’re adults—are often not able to function without their managers being more involved. Certainly, they are not as self-reliant as I was when I was starting out.” What this means is not that one way is right or one is wrong, but there’s a new reality that needs to be accommodated. It’s understandable that there are levels of frustration, but inter-generational problems in the workplace are nothing new. So rather than fretting about it, perhaps it’s time for managers to consider balancing the need for attention and reinforcement with more time for solitary play. After all, it’s not like these things can’t be learned after childhood.

But going back to understanding the importance of solitary play, consider its benefits and the important developmental functions it serves in childhood. Solitary play—without the constant bombardment of stimuli—overall helps children locate and identify themselves in the context of a group or a culture. This is absolutely necessary for social survival. On the individual level, solitary play fosters imagination, self-reliance, experimentation, information-processing, decision-making, and testing. This is well understood among play theorists and educational psychologists, but not so well understood among parents.

Becoming Part of the Group

None of us are born with knowledge of how we fit into a culture. Indeed, even the most rudimentary understanding of anthropology indicates that from the earliest days, children have to be socialized into a culture and cultural practices. From instruction to modeling and mostly through observation, children learn the essential lesson of survival in a group. As children get older and begin to be socialized outside the home, observation becomes one of the primary ways children learn to integrate themselves into a social structure. This observation is critical, as it allows the child to have an individual sense of self and project him- or herself into the group before actually participating. This can make some parents uncomfortable because they’re afraid the child is hanging back and won’t participate.

Let me give you one example: Observing her child at a play group sitting out of the group activity and watching, one parent assumed there was something wrong with her child—that she wasn’t comfortable or fitting in. Actually, something else entirely was going on: The child, who was a few months younger than the other kids in the group (a huge difference in children versus adults), was actively observing everything that was going on. All the while, the child was gathering information, understanding the group dynamics, and trying to decide how to interact successfully. In order for the child to be accepted, it’s imperative to learn how the group functions, and that only happens through observation. To bring it down to an elemental level, fitting into the pack and its structures is critical to survival. Thus, the time to observe and process how the group works is critical to success.

You may have seen this work for both good and bad in an office situation as people are brought into the pack or rejected from it. A new manager who doesn’t take time to figure out the lay of the land and who doesn’t work with the established systems, whether explicit or implicit, is likely to have a difficult time in management. The natural tendency for people is to resist change until such point as its necessary.

A new manager, the ink barely dry on his MBA, was brought into a toy company to modernize a legacy brand and expand its categories. Sales were strong and consistent, and the brand was profitable. In fact, sales in the previous year had been significantly up over the previous year. Certainly there were new opportunities, and the new corporate owners wanted to “modernize” the brand—not, it should be pointed out, based on research but because of the personal opinion of one of the new owners. Many of the people involved had spent many years in the toy industry and had insights into the sometimes peculiar ways it worked. In his very first meeting with the various department heads who would be reporting to him, however, the new vice president gave a scathing review of the current state of the business and announced wholesale changes. Not surprisingly, this didn’t go over too well. He was seen as an aggressor who threatened the stability of the pack, which very naturally made people defensive and resistant. The vice president ultimately didn’t last in the position and was resisted, albeit covertly, pretty much across the board. This was exacerbated by an attitude of superiority and condescension to virtually everyone who reported to him. Ultimately, the business was saved and successfully expanded by the second-in-command, who had been promoted from within and who knew who to work within the dynamics of the group. Ironically, the “solution” was to update the look of the product and the packaging, which was part of the regular line review process.

We’ve collected many versions of this story from different workers and middle managers over the years. But the point is, just like the child who observes a group before diving in, effective managers understand that they are entering into a human situation first and a business situation later. Early in my career, I worked for a publisher named Larry Danziger. In meeting after meeting he stressed the importance of treating people well. His catchphrase was “Your business goes up and down in your elevator every day,” which of course means that your business is in large measure your people, and managing those dynamics is as important as managing your P&L. One of the pivotal moments in A Christmas Carol is when Scrooge realizes that he and his fellow apprentices would have done anything for their boss Fezziwig, not because he lavished money on them but because he led them with an acknowledgment of them as humans. In fact, Scrooge’s epiphany is that it was not something tangible but an attitude and a set of behaviors that created value.

This is important to remember not just when you are new to a situation, especially when you’re brought in over other people but with anyone who is new to a situation. People need time to observe and adapt. This was brought home to us in our own business with a new hire who had all the skills and work ethic we needed, and was doing an excellent job getting acclimated to the professional skills. He worked very well on his own, but when anything collaborative came up, he tended not to engage with the group, which created a problem in the more creative elements of the business. About a month into his employment, he spoke up in a brainstorming meeting and was not only directly on point, but very funny. (Appropriate humor is something we always value and enjoy.) He got a lot of approbation for his participation, and that was a turning point in his work. He has become a vital part of our business and a highly valued employee. Taking the time to find his way and understand, either consciously or unconsciously, the dynamics of relationships, the office hierarchies, and himself within the context of our organization gave him the tools he needed to succeed as a member of the team. Some peers and colleagues said, “He’s come out of his shell.” It’s important as a manager to recognize this is a natural process—as natural as a child in the first days of kindergarten. Like a good parent, the savvy manager is attentive to the interactions among his employees, facilitating and supporting when necessary, and also knowing when to allow the process to take its time. We’ll discuss the value of group play later.

Imagination

As we’ve been discussing in other chapters, the imagination is the source of all play. It is the source of all creativity and most like magicians or the gods in that it creates a reality out of thin air.

In solo play for kids, the imagination is where they are the most free and, in many respects, the most powerful. In imaginative play, kids are freed from the constraints of their world—the parents, teachers, and activities that control so much of their daily lives—and allowed to pursue wherever their thoughts take them. This does not happen out of context, however. It happens within the context of culture, knowledge, parental modeling, and the accumulated information at whatever age the child is.

Unlike imaginative play within a group, where the child is contributing to something larger than him or her, in solo play the child is in complete control. He or she doesn’t also have to negotiate a group dynamic, which can have a significant impact on the experience.

If, as we suggest, play serves three functions—exploration, experience, and expression—solo imaginative play is where the expressive function finds its life. At the same time, play is always a reflection of its time, as are toys. The function of this play is to prepare children to enter the adult culture, and even if it is fantastical—as with superhero play—it is generally grounded in the larger zeitgeist, as perceived by the child and refracted through the imagination.

Talk to many Baby Boomer boys about their play, and you’ll hear about a period in the early to mid-1960s when imaginative play centered on being secret agents. This was inspired by shows like The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which in turn were inspired by the realities of the Cold War. The secret agent was a powerful and resourceful figure, usually in a black turtleneck—the perfect boys’ fantasy. Seeing themselves as secret agents made them special and powerful. The feelings engendered were as real as if they actually happened, and the play was the catalyst, facilitating experiences that might be outside the daily reality of the child, where there’s always an adult dictating parameters on behavior and guiding activity.

In the grown-up world, one of the best examples of imagination in solo play is the athlete visualizing something before actually doing it. This is nothing other than play, pure and simple. It allows the athlete to have an experience of running the course, sinking the putt, or whatever. The benefit is that having done it in the imagination, the mind and the body already have had the experience, so that when the athlete does it in the real world it’s not entirely new. In other words, by the time you have to do something, you’ve already done it, and there are few predictors of success as reliable as experience.

You probably already do this, whether you’re planning your day, thinking about how an interaction with a co-worker or employer will go, and so forth. As adults, we call it planning, but really, it’s nothing more than imaginative play.

In practice in business, however, we find that imaginative play often gets short shrift. Why this happens is not completely clear. Anecdotally, we find that time pressures and demands lead people to shortchange preparation. The idea that this saves time is not borne out by our interviews. Rather than spending the time preparing, some people we spoke to instead spend the time stressing. Lying awake at night worrying about a presentation for which you feel ill prepared is not a good, or productive, use of time.

Moreover, this is not something that others can do for you, which is why this is really solo play. The idea that spending time being imaginative is wasted is one of the real problems of our current business climate. Imagination is productive when it’s focused and intentional. Just as in children, it builds confidence because, by the time a situation is “for real,” you have experienced as much as you can from your perspective, which in turn allows you to be able to respond to those things that are outside your control. Going back to the secret agent play, part of the fun of the fantasy was always imagining the unforeseen challenges that you had to overcome and, because you were the hero in your imagination, overcoming them.

One way to think of the essential power of the imagination is in the difference between a map and a GPS device. Before the advent of the GPS, if you were taking a trip, you looked at a map and saw the route in your mind. In other words, you imagined where you were going in the context of the overall geography. Those little squiggles on a piece of paper became part of the information you were working with so that when you were actually driving, you knew where you were in context and where you were headed. In other words, you had a sense of the totality of the project of getting from point A to point B. With the GPS, you give over that visualization/play/preparation process to a machine. Yes, you may get where you’re going, but you’re doing so in response to a technology that directs you, so your engagement is different. You may not know the context of the surrounding area, so if, as happened to me in Georgia, the GPS wants to take you down a dirt road or doesn’t know a road is closed, you are at the mercy of the technology to get you out of it. Don’t get me wrong: I love the GPS, particularly in Washington, DC or LA, but I also generally like to look at the map so I have an idea of where I’m going.

It may seem counter-intuitive to some, but allowing time that could appear to be non-productive, as in, not about taking direct action to produce something tangible, but particularly in creative fields, the time for imagination can be highly productive. It also requires patience because the process, if fully engaged in, takes time. Linda Kraus-D’Isa, who owns a small, successful marketing consulting firm, describes one of her early bosses, who was a great believer in providing the room for people to use their imaginations: “We would have a meeting to go over a project, and then we’d see one of my co-workers sitting in his office with his feet up, staring into space. In other work environments, that might have been a reason to get fired. Depending on the person, it might have been a reason to get fired in that office. However, my colleague would eventually emerge with some of the best and most successful ideas for programs—programs that ultimately took shape in ways that were very similar to what was imagined.”

Just as one other example of the efficacy of the imagination in the adult world, in the process of addiction recovery, the imagination is crucially important to people who are successful at it. When there is the urge to take a drink or drug, people are encouraged to use their imaginations to follow through to what will happen if they do. In most cases, this dredges up memories of unfortunate—if not catastrophic—outcomes and can be a governor of behavior. The imagination can be a literal lifesaver.

Just as with kids, information, context, objectives, and a willingness to follow ideas through to various conclusions are what imaginative play is all about. Most importantly, it doesn’t cost anything—other than time—and it can be enormously empowering and beneficial to a work environment both in terms of actual ideas generated and the creative contributions individuals can make.

Self-Reliance, Experimentation, and Testing

I’ve put these three components together because they are closely interrelated. For children, play is an essential part of building self-confidence. In particular, unstructured free play allows children to draw on all of their experience and imagination to create, well, whatever they like. Mostly, though, this kind of play gives children the confidence that they can solve problems, from babies figuring out how to put a piece into a shape sorter up to school age and beyond when toys become more complex and they can figure out how to put together a LEGO set, for example. And failure is an important part of this process, as is overcoming that failure.

Broken down into its component parts, this type of play can really be stated as: analysis, action, and assessment. You can substitute “experimentation” for “action,” or “testing” for “assessment.” For a small child, naturally, this is a mostly subconscious process, and it happens very quickly. Just watch a baby unable to reach for something he or she wants and then get that quizzical expression before trying to figure out another way to achieve the goal, which can result in Mom racing to save the fragile item from Grandma’s coffee table (but that’s another story).

Still, this process is an important building block of learning and is in its own right a fundamental part of creating new experiences, as each success lays the foundation for future successes and builds the confidence to handle ever more complex problems and processes.

In the adult world, and particularly in business, we don’t always get the kind of fast response to our actions a curious infant gets, so the process from experimentation to results takes time. But the principle still applies. In many smaller companies, there is so much pressure to get things done that the tendency is to jump from one item on the checklist to the next without taking the time to determine what happened and make adjustments. Particularly in today’s world, business is dynamic, and changes happen quickly. Being able to respond to changing conditions is key. Here, however, we want to make the distinction between a response and a reaction. This may seem like a semantic difference at first, but in reality it is anything but.

Reactions are unconscious. Someone startles you and you flinch. A person tosses something to you unexpectedly and you automatically reach to catch it. Someone snaps at you and you snap back. These generally come out of our instinctive need to protect ourselves and are programmed into us as defense mechanisms when we don’t have time to think about something. Reactions are very useful in many situations. They can even be useful in business when you’re assessing creative work, for example. They are less effective, however, with complex problems, personnel problems, and issues that require more thought.

A response, on the other hand, takes more time, is generally more considered, and is a very conscious process. If a speeding car is bearing down you, you don’t have time to consider options; you just get out of the way. If, however, you’re trying to solve a personnel problem or create a branding strategy, that takes time.

Too often we observe business environments where there isn’t the time for responses, and the corporate culture thrives on always being in a state of reaction. We’ve seen this in private companies and large corporations, and the effects can be damaging. Planning gets shortchanged, and there are no opportunities for people to process information. They are forced into a system of constant reaction, or as one manager described it, “the never-ending fire drill.” Generally, these situations have one common denominator: an owner or manager who doesn’t trust his or her people and is always trying to control everything. As we’ve seen repeatedly, this is ultimately unsustainable, like the president of a large division of a consumer products company who would call his managers at midnight to say he disagreed with the choice of the color plastic for a minor part of a product. As any parent knows, part of building self-reliant kids is knowing when to step back and how to determine what’s really important in any situation.

Fostering an environment that encourages solo play as we’ve been describing it has many benefits, from increased self-confidence to more active participation. Like the parent who tells the kid to go play outdoors, if you’re going to be effective as a manager, it’s wise to give your employees a chance to solve problems on their own. Few things are as de-motivating as micromanaging—unless it’s being micromanaged. Empowered employees, like empowered kids, tend to be more creative, contribute more, and are more engaged.

The other benefit to creating an environment that fosters self-reliance is that it can foster greater creativity in group efforts, such as brainstorming. This doesn’t come as any kind of surprise to people who study play. The child who is confident and reinforced in his or her problem-solving abilities, and as a result has a strong sense of individual identity, tends to make the transition to group play more easily.

Information Processing

Have you ever seen a baby surrounded by people all trying to play with him or her suddenly burst into tears? Or a preschooler in the midst of a playgroup suddenly start yelling? How about a slightly older child, after sitting at his or her desk in class all day, start to act out? To most adults, these seem like problems, and very often they interpret the event as the child being in the wrong. Too much of this, and an older child is seen as a behavior problem and sometimes even medicated. This is as unfortunate as it is unnecessary.

The problem is information overload—too much incoming stimulus and not enough time to process it. No wonder the synapses go haywire. Moreover, this is probably not a completely alien experience for you as an adult.

What solitary play does in this situation for kids is allows them to step back and process everything that’s coming in. Kids have different abilities to process information, and individual kids have different thresholds for processing information. Solitary play allows them to shift their focus and sort through everything that’s been coming in. This can be a subconscious process, much like data processing in the background, or it can be active.

Subconsciously, information, feelings, and so forth are essentially sorted and put into the context of previous experience. In a more active process, the child is trying to achieve the same result but through a play experience. This can be a story with action figures or dolls, gross motor play such as riding a bike, or simply running around or engaging in arts and crafts. The end result is that through solitary play, the child who has been challenged by a situation must process the information and add it to his or her every expanding wealth of experience.

Psychologist Jean Piaget was one of the pioneers of the theory that intellectual and biological development were interrelated. His work formed the basis for the theory of constructivism, which says that what children know is based on their experience. Thus, every new experience adds on to what has gone before to build knowledge out of what they experience and the ways in which they process or integrate that into their consciousness and personality. He suggested that learning has two component parts: assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation occurs when something new is incorporated into one’s existing basis of experience, or frame of reference. Accommodation, on the other hand, occurs when what is known has to be adjusted to incorporate new information.

Piaget theorized that when a child encountered something outside his or her experience, it unbalanced perception—what he called “disequilibration.” However, because as humans we naturally seek balance, also known as “equilibration,” the challenge for the child is to integrate the new information to restore balance. As children become more mature, they become more adept at this and can handle greater and greater challenges, ultimately becoming habituated to the process of being thrown off balance and finding it again.

Piaget makes fascinating reading, and I’m a great believer in his theories, having observed them operating in children of many ages—as well as in adults. If you’ve ever said or heard someone say, “Well, that knocked me for a loop,” you have firsthand knowledge of the process of disequilibration, and it goes on throughout life.

This process is highly individual, and constructivist theory rests on the premise that the individual must find his or her way back to equilibration based on the unique experiences that have shaped him or her. The thing about that is that it really must be done alone, and it takes time. By the time most people are adults, they are so accustomed to the process that it seems like second nature, as it should. Constructivist theory would hold that this process becomes almost automatic because it builds on what has gone before.

The downside, however, is what happens in many work situations where change comes so quickly and so often there really isn’t time to integrate it. People we interview complain that the contemporary office environment is so changeable that there isn’t any time to do anything but respond to changes. E-mails come pouring in steadily. Meetings consume hours and leave people exhausted. When this cycle keeps repeating and there isn’t time for balance to be restored, it leads to declining productivity and burnout. Though burnout is an extreme, many professionals report that they are consistently overwhelmed with new information, and there is no time between meetings. In fact, middle managers at one company said that on any given day, they may have four to five meetings, each approximately an hour. This means that any independent work needs to happen outside of these times, which often means early mornings or late evenings, working through lunch, and so forth. In addition, they feel compelled to pay attention and respond to e-mails and texts at all hours of the day or night. This is not a particularly new observation; it’s been analyzed in business articles for several years, certainly since the first years of this century when the BlackBerry was introduced and delivered e-mail to purses and pockets any time. The launch of the iPhone in June 2007 accelerated the pace, and today there is virtually no worker at any level who doesn’t have 24/7 access to incoming communication. That’s a lot of stimulus.

At the same time, the smartphone has created an atmosphere in which workers feel they need to be accessible 24/7, and indeed “fear of being out of the loop” is something that keeps middle managers especially feeling the need to respond to every buzz and beep. This attitude in business has trickled down even to kids, and the very real phenomenon of “FOMO” (fear of missing out). Partially driven by social media, which people check obsessively even when they’re not receiving inbound communication, it’s possible in today’s world never to be cut off from the incessant stimulus of the outside world.

When we talk to managers and workers, many of them attribute their stress levels to the pace of business. Well, business is going to stay fast, and if recent years are any indication, it’s just going to get faster. Yet it’s not the pace of business that we think is creating the stress, or even the amount of information that is coming in; it’s the lack of time to—in Piaget’s terms—either assimilate or accommodate what’s coming in. This constant bombardment of stimuli creates a level of stress on our systems that keeps us in a constant state of alertness and preparedness. We are constantly responding to one thing after another, and especially if there is an emotional component brought on by such issues as FOMO, we are constantly working at elevated adrenal levels, which is exhausting.

One of the examples I use when I speak to groups about this is the lion in the wild. In pursuit of a wildebeest snack, the lion exerts maximum energy and all its strength in capturing and killing its prey. Sated, however, it is content to sit in the sun for hours, without exerting any energy. And, while the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet may feature dramatic video of lions attacking their prey, in fact, only about 50 percent of their diet is gotten this way. The rest if from scavenging, a relatively low-impact activity. Lions have an instinctual ability to use energy as needed and as appropriate. More importantly, when they are not called upon to use that energy, they don’t. Instead they rest and recharge. You can observe this in virtually any species. (Well, I’d except ants, having had an ant farm on my desk for quite a while that seemed to put me to shame when I would daydream. Ants seem to work non-stop all day long—at least until they collapse and die. I recommend the ant farm as a cautionary tale.)

The other example I like to point to is torture. The practices employed in the Abu Ghraib prison or at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp included non-stop stimulation. Over-exposure to light and noise was designed to provoke sensory overload. Although this can in no way be condoned, and I shudder at seeming to minimize the gravity of the situation, these practices purported to achieve results by wearing people down and essentially short-circuiting their systems so that their emotional and intellectual facilities were undermined.

I do not want to minimize the suffering these prisoners underwent in any way, but I use it as an extreme example of what can happen to the human body when exposed to such extremes. The adrenal system is overtaxed and given no time to recover, and I do want to suggest that by keeping ourselves in a constant state of alert, we are, to a certain degree, torturing ourselves. The body doesn’t know if your life is actually threatened or if you’ve forgotten to return a phone call. The chemical reaction is the same: Adrenaline goes pumping into the system. Over time, the body becomes accustomed to these heightened levels, and the drop, rather than the constant rise, in them becomes the issue of concern. At that point, the emotions kick in and there is fear that people aren’t doing enough, and the cycle continues. Ultimately, it’s possible to become addicted to adrenaline, and as with any addiction, untreated it will ultimately ravish the body.

If you question this is happening as part of our culture, look around. Walk down the street in New York City any day and any time, and you’ll see people tapping away on their screens. Go to a Broadway show, and at intermission (and sometimes during the show, maddeningly), you’ll see screens lit up with people either working or posting to social networks. Sit in any meeting and observe individuals tapping away on their devices while someone is presenting. Aside from being rude, this scattered focus stresses our systems and is ultimately counter-productive because there is no time for the brain to store and sort the information. Going back to Piaget, it all comes in, and because so much is coming in, the brain doesn’t know whether to assimilate or accommodate, and as a result it is not perceived as important and often discarded. Have you ever said to someone, “But we went over that in the meeting”? That’s the impact of too much information and not enough time to process. That’s one reason we have a policy of no referring to devices in meetings, with the exception of referring to calendars as part of a scheduling discussion. What we find is that meetings are shorter, are more focused, and lead to more concrete action steps—and need less repetition, aside from a meeting report.

Interestingly enough, humans are really the only species that can override the natural process of information processing that leads to the kind of problems outlined above. In our experience, it’s largely ego-driven, and it dates back millennia. Known as anthropocentrism, the idea is that human beings are superior to every other animal on the planet, and the person who thinks he’s a superior human can be incredibly insufferable to work for. (Admit it: You know more than a few of these.) The problem, of course, is that this sense of superiority is little more than an opinion, but like any belief it’s powerful enough to alter the natural process of information processing. In simple terms, we tend to see and hear what we want to that coincides with our opinions. This is not to completely short-circuit Piaget, but it sure makes it harder to learn.

A few years ago, I was giving a presentation at a conference, and I looked out in the audience and saw one of the participants tapping away on his e-mail. At this point, I’ve become conditioned to that; it happens all the time. However, at the dinner that night, I happened to be seated across from the guy who had been working on his device.

I said, to him, “I noticed that you were working on your phone throughout the whole presentation. Why was that?”

He said, without a trace of irony, “When I attend a presentation, I give the speaker 30 seconds to get my attention, and if he doesn’t, I figure there’s really nothing I can learn.”

“Really?” I replied. “So your employer gave you four days to attend this conference; paid for your travel across the country, your hotel, and meals; and you believe that each of these speakers, some of whom are people I’ve been excited to hear, gets only 30 seconds to prove themselves to you?”

“Yes.”

Now, setting aside that it’s virtually impossible to set up the subject of a presentation in 30 seconds, we also have the problem of information processing that takes a bit longer than that. I mention this case because it is extreme and, in my experience, rare, and had more to do with one individual’s opinions than a failure of communication. But the extreme illustration shows how one’s ego can both shut down the process of information processing but the reception of information at all.

For an intellectual proposition, it takes a bit of time and concentration to determine whether or not one is going to assimilate or accommodate the information, and that happens in the subconscious. After the experience just described, I toyed with the idea of being shot out of a cannon into a stream of fireworks surrounded by the Rockettes as a way of opening future presentations, but the logistics seemed daunting and, fortunately, largely unnecessary.

Here’s the thing: We can make snap, pre-conscious decisions in an instant, what we discussed earlier as reactions. That’s the basis for virtually all advertising and what passes for political discourse in our current culture. A reasoned response takes time, and we need to give it that time.

When kids get overwhelmed and act out, we give them a time out. We separate them from all the stimuli, and give them a chance to calm down and process what’s happening. Adults need that too, but we seldom give ourselves a time out—even when we need one. Build in time for recovery.