| Exactly. I did indeed see the article as trivial. From the actual article itself : "If you’re a knowledge worker, you can’t pick up the pace of mental discriminations just because you’re under pressure. Chances are good that you’re already going as fast as you can. Because guess what? You can’t voluntarily slow down your thinking, either." --- Now we both know that what you say must be true. But it goes beyond anecdotal evidence. We can scan the brain with an fMRI and we see different parts of the brain light up as we think. We're not seeing thinking here - we're seeing the brain cells consume energy. Wikipedia - "Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow.[1][2] This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area of the brain is in use, blood flow to that region also increases.[3]" If the brain was always at 100% capacity, your entire fMRI would always show complete engagement. Like a muscle, you can overexert your brain, so like you say sustainable pace is important. --- However, if you average over days and weeks, you could say that your level of thought IS fixed at this long term sustainable level. I think that the article is considering a project that is "man-months" long and not just thinking over the course of a minute or a day. -- Wikipedia link for fMRI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_magnetic_resonance_... |