John B
Consultant
Posts:19
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| 18 Jun 2010 12:18 PM |
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I am looking for an exercise on teaching people how to save time by focusing their entire effort on it. Has anyone got some ideas on this?
John |
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Peter Reed
Researcher
Posts:37
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| 21 Jun 2010 4:23 PM |
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| John, you can give them some puzzles to solve. Do it in two stages. In stage 1, distract them or arrange so someone comes in and interrupts the group. In stage two, let them solve another similar puzzle, but this time with no interruption. |
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John B
Consultant
Posts:19
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| 22 Jun 2010 1:58 AM |
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Thanks Peter for the advice, but this is not quite what I am looking for. Let me clarify. What I want to teach them is not how to handle interruptions, but to focus their entire attention on something when they are doing it. This is totally under their control. I don’t want to interrupt them, just to show that if they focus 100% on a puzzle they will be better of at solving it than if they do not.
John |
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Ehsan Honary
Site Admin
Researcher
Posts:43
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| 22 Jun 2010 6:45 AM |
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You can use a similar setup to the research that led to what is known as “Parkinson Law”. As you may know this states that !”Work expands to fill the time available to it”. You can use the following setup. Divide the class to two groups. Make sure they sit apart so they don’t hear each other well. Give two different puzzles that are of the same difficulty to the two groups. To group 1, give 3 minutes to solve it, to group 2 give 10 minutes. Don’t let them see each other’s puzzles. Then give a new puzzle. To group 1, give, 5 minutes and to group to give 5 minutes too. Finally give another puzzle. To group 1 give 10 minutes and to group 2 give 3 minutes.
What you should expect to observe is that group 1 will have no problem solving puzzles, while group 2 will be constantly under pressure especially when solving puzzle 3. The reason is that group 1 learned to spend less time on a puzzle to solve it and so they got used to 100% concentration. On the other hand, group 2 was given plenty of time to drift and so as the time limitation shrank, they felt more under pressure and were stressed. It is quite likely that they may not be able to solve the puzzle at all.
Anyway, some ideas for exercises. |
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John B
Consultant
Posts:19
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| 23 Jun 2010 3:33 PM |
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Ehsan, that was a fantastic setup. Sounds very interesting. I like to give this a try next time I have a course. I am wondering what puzzles to use though.
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Peter Reed
Researcher
Posts:37
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| 28 Jun 2010 1:15 AM |
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| I like to try that too. I usually use word puzzles for this kind of activities. They work fine. |
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Ehsan Honary
Site Admin
Researcher
Posts:43
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| 28 Jun 2010 4:10 PM |
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| John, thanks for your comments. As Peter said, word puzzles are a possibility. You can also use gadget puzzles. They are usually made with woods and a bunch of strings and the idea is to go from one configuration to another. They used to be very popular as toys years ago, but you can still find a good variety these days. Just make sure the difficulty level matches the time they have. Some of these puzzles can be quite intriguing. Ideally, it should be possible to easily solve the puzzle within 10 minutes. |
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PX Trainer
Trainer
Posts:7
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| 01 Jul 2010 5:20 PM |
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| Very good ideas here. You can also use 3D jigsaw puzzles. They are usually straight forward to explain and it also encourages team work and participation. |
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Ehsan Honary
Site Admin
Researcher
Posts:43
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John B
Consultant
Posts:19
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| 05 Jul 2010 5:12 AM |
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| Thank you for all of your wonderful ideas. Very inspiring. |
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