Ruminations-Atelic Vs Telic

The term atelic activity came to me while reading Oliver Burkeman’s book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (Burkeman 2021). The book is about the very contemporary malaise affecting our society: the lack of time, or more accurately, our lack of success in “managing” our time. Burkeman approaches time management from a different perspective, an alternative one, as Burkeman is wont to do. The definition of atelic appears in Chapter 9: Rediscovering Rest. Burkeman cites Kieran Setiya’s book (Setiya 2018) for the original definition, which is: an activity whose value does not derive from its telos, or ultimate aim. We are conditioned to live our lives in a goal-oriented world, a telic world, which is a world where we have lost our ability to pursue an activity for the sake of taking part in the activity. One synonym that is often equated with atelic activities is that of a hobby, because a hobby is something we do just to do. The example Burkeman uses is hiking: just hiking, to partake in nature, to just do rather than hiking for the sake of something tangible, like better health or to travel from one point to the other.

Hobbies have come to have a negative connotation in our society; hobbies are judged to be purposeless and inconsequential because hobbies are something we do outside of our serious mission of being cogs in the economic engine. This bias becomes obvious as we seek a definition for atelic. Words like unfinished, incomplete, dreadful, revolting or repulsive are used to define the term. Atelic pursuits have been judged as an activity best befitting a dilettante; someone whose interest in any subject which is considered to be of a superficial rather than professional nature. Which leads us to another distinction that is also assumed in our culture, that of the generalist.

David Epstein’s Range (Epstein 2019) dives into the distinction between generalists and specialists: a generalist would be more likely to pursue a subject, any subject in an atelic  manner. Epstein discourses on the advantage that a generalist, an amateur who is more likely to study a topic as an outsider; someone, who by virtue of their ignorance of the prior arts, are concomitantly, more likely to treat any problem with curiosity while not being affected by opinions and experiences that are distorted by insider bias. This is often the difference between having unconventional ideas for solutions versus staying with the same solutions that loops around the same assumptions and well-trod solutions.

The generalist, i.e., amateur, is more likely to pursue subjects in an atelic manner. Their purpose is not to search for A solution for specific situations within specific contexts. Their purpose is to learn and gather information, accrue experience, integrate those into knowledge, with their sights set on learning and doing for the sake of learning and doing.  The amateur solutions may often be unfeasible, unrealistic, or illogical, but that is where the most original thinking comes from. It also goes without saying that the amateur’s process is probably the least efficient and most time-consuming.

Burkeman specifically emphasized that we hobbyists/dilettantes/atelic activity pursuers are more likely to be only good enough at whatever it is that we choose to indulge in, but not be at an expert level. We are amateurs in the best sense of the word. The key driving force is our passion rather than necessity, hence the aversion to deadlines and timetables. Deadlines and timetables dampen, defuses, and deflates the passion.

It wasn’t until I was knee deep in the muck of my professional engineering life that I discovered that I not only did not fit into my well-defined and constrained role as R & D engineer as dictated by the industry, but the role was also antithetical to my natural inclinations. Of course, I didn’t know enough at that time to classify my passions as being atelic or that I was better attuned to be a generalist. One of the first indications that I was a round peg trying to fit into square holes was early in my career while I was having a conversation with a fellow engineer. We were speaking about Number Theory, he just could not understand the value of something that cannot obviously be applied to engineering, asserting that if it doesn’t serve a practical purpose then it is just a waste of time. While I had always marveled at the broad vision and insight demonstrated and are needed by mathematicians. This is not to say that my head was completely in the clouds. After all I was trained in engineering and not in the pure sciences, I appreciated engineering and more often than not, I indulged in the same applications orientation.  Even as I reveled in my role as a problem solver, I also enjoyed the opportunities that my “hobbies” gave me to wander aimlessly.

Nothing made me happier than when I was researching and learning for my job, ostensibly in search of practical solutions to the short-term problems that occurred in my daily engineering responsibilities; but I found my thrill in the act of learning, the application of the result of the learning was a natural follow-through. I reveled in the discovery rather than the implementation of the solution. 

This is the reason that David Epstein’s idea of the generalists versus specialists resonated with me. I finished reading his book after I came to the realization that my efforts at being an engineer in the corporate environment were desultory, that my intellectual inclinations were mismatched with the needs of my chosen role in an industry-oriented profession, which caused me to be intellectually disengaged. My temperament was more aligned with that of a generalist, someone who Stays Calm and Know Things. Someone who has a hard time justifying their existence in a corporate culture, where answers to specific questions in a timely manner are required. No one knew what to do with someone like me, someone who has a broad general knowledge of many things. I was fortunate that I worked with many managers who saw value in my skills and temperament, even though I hadn’t been aware of those skills and temperament myself. I served my employers well when their needs and my talents aligned, they did not waste their time or money on me, but I also did not fully develop into what they wanted. It was at this point, after I made the connection, that I narrowed the focus of my attention to my atelic pursuits.

My passions were for learning, for the accumulation of knowledge which served to satisfy my own curiosity rather than satisfying external needs. The word curiosity appeared prominently on my radar at that point in my life. I indulged in reading, researching,  and learning to answer my curiosity. Yet, as happy as I was doing what I was doing; I was still feeling guilty about not having an anchor, a project-oriented focus to my intellectual life, a timeline to measure against. I convinced myself that I was doing all these things to help my teaching and coaching just to justify the time that I was using to happily meander, pick up digressions and tangential topics at will as they piqued my curiosity. Even though my research did eventually help me in my teaching and coaching, the result was beside the point rather than being the point.

Indeed, my experience as a generalist and practicing atelic work has an added benefit. Doing for the sake of doing put me in the rarified space that many have experienced, and I had previously spoken of: being in the flow. (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2023/01/volleyball-coaching-life-thoughts-are.html).

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defines the state of flow as: “Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away.  Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.” (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) Which nicely links the atelic with being in the flow.

Edward Slingerland defines wu-wei , the Taoists term for the idea of flow as: the dynamic, effortless, and unselfconscious state of mind of a person who is optimally active and effective. (Slingerland 2014). Which also ignores any mention of results or constraints, time or otherwise.

I will inevitably lose myself to the flow as I apply myself to my atelic activities. Time disappears and labor is not labor but joy. In other words, I was Doing by not Trying. Applying effortless effort to my activities. Accomplishing without trying. The ideas have intertwined in my mind so that being atelic is  synonymous with being in the flow.

My opus operandi now are to have open-ended inquiries at various stages of disarray, both in my mind and in what I had written down. Termination dates of all the inquiries are not even secondary or tertiary, they just aren’t important, as my curiosity drives me to continuing the path towards just doing without end. Completion or mastery are not the central questions, my curiosity comes first. The benefit of this approach is that I never give up on any activity, I just put them to rest for a bit as I contemplate the intellectual difficulties and conceptual challenges.

I still have telic tasks, and I do them diligently, with the internal logic that the sooner I can get it done the sooner I get to wander and wonder. It is impossible to just do the atelic things in our lives, one just cannot survive in the world. Burkeman acknowledges this, his point is that societal pressures and pragmatic considerations have driven us to the point where even if we were to pursue anything in an atelic vein, most would be unable to do so because our socially programmed and acculturated response would be to subconsciously treat the atelic as telic. We would set goals, create Gantt charts, and place undue psychological pressures on ourselves because that is what we do through our procedural response to anything.

I would conjecture that my life is now split evenly between the atelic and the telic. Too much of a good thing can become mundane and rob me of the pleasures of the change of pace. We should not nor do not live by bread alone.

1.     References

Burkeman, Oliver. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Dublin, IRE: Vintage, 2021.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. NYC: HarperCollins, 1990.

Epstein, David. Range, Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. New York : Riverhead Books., 2019.

Setiya, Kieran. Midlife: A Philosophical Guide. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018.

Slingerland, Edward. Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity. NYC: Crown, 2014.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learning and Teaching-Cognitive Load Theory: Part 2. Minimizing Extrinsic Load by Honing the Presentation.

In Part 1 on Cognitive Load Theory (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2023/02/learning-and-teaching-cognitive-load.html), the framework of WHAT Cognitive Load Theory is was laid out in principle, following  Oliver Lovell’s book on the subject (Lovell 2020).

Part 3 is on how teachers can minimize the extrinsic load on the learner through structuring their practices and lessons. (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2023/05/learning-and-teaching-cognitive-load.html) 

Part 4 is on how teachers can optimize intrinsic loads on the student. (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2023/08/learning-and-teaching-cognitive-load.html)

This article follows the book in examining how the teacher or  coach can apply  cognitive load theory to minimize the extrinsic loading on the working memory by honing their presentation. What follows is my interpretation of what was laid out in Lovell’s book, any misrepresentation is entirely my fault.

The definitions of intrinsic and extrinsic loads are reiterated below.

The extrinsic cognitive loads are:

·       A part of  the manner and structure of how the information is conveyed to the learners.

·       Disruptive to the learning task because it distracts the learner from learning by occupying valuable working memory space.

Whereas the intrinsic cognitive loads are those that are critical to learning whatever it is that we need to learn. They are:

·       Part of the nature of the information that we are learning.

·       Core learning.

·       Information that we WANT the learner to have in their working memory.

The critical limitation is that the working memory has a finite capacity; that is, the intrinsic and the extrinsic loads are vying for the same finite resource. One emphasis should be  placed on minimizing the extrinsic load; that is, to offload unnecessary extrinsic cognitive load, to make space in the working memory before optimizing the intrinsic loads.

Note that even though Lovell’s book is relatively short, he presents quite a bit of results, and information, and examples from many different subjects, so it is worthwhile to read through the book.

Since I come from two different but related points of view: teaching at a university level and coaching, I will apply the rules for honing the presentation within both contexts whenever they are applicable.

Minimize Extraneous Load

My experience in both teaching and coaching showed me that de-cluttering the learning experience and eliminating the non-essential components is critical to helping my students/players learn. The actions of the teacher/coach in teaching/coaching often distract the student/player, which dilutes their attention. Minimizing the extrinsic load on the student/player is a large job for the teacher/coach. It was a hard lesson to learn.

Lovell split the task of minimizing the extraneous load into two parts: Honing the presentation and structuring the practice. This part is about honing the presentation.

Honing the Presentation

How the information is presented is critical as they need to focus all of their working memory on the learning task rather than any unintended extrinsic loads added by the presentation modes of the teacher/coaches which distracts the learning experience.

Here are the key points presented in Lovell’s book.

·       Redundancy Effect: Eliminate unnecessary information and avoid replicating necessary information.

Most teachers/coaches feel that anything they present is critical to learning; that is, they don’t recognize that the way they present the information can be redundant. An example from the author is: When information is presented simultaneously in written and spoken forms, both forms of presentation are competing for the same working memory resources, which results in interference with each other.

o   In the case of coaching, it isn’t the mixed medium for presentation which is redundant, it is that coaches often get into the habit of repeating themselves because coaches think that they need to fill in the silence with chatter to make sure that the players get the point.  In my experience, the incessant repetition of information and instruction has just the opposite effect: it pulls the player’s attention away from processing the information to actively thinking about the things that the coach is saying.

o   The definition given in the book does apply in the classroom teaching context. We tend to present written information and we also have a tendency to read that information to the students. This goes back to the cardinal rule of making presentations: do not read the slides verbatim during a presentation.

·       Bullet-Proof definitions: Clearly and simply define each concept introduced. The book recommends a “bullet proof definition”, which is a one sentence summary of the key concept. Detailed definitions and long well-thought-out explanations, while complete, will overload the student’s working memory because they are overcome with the amount of  information being presented and will try to process the all the detailed information in real time, an impossible proposition. It is critical to keep it simple but to the point, at least while introducing new concepts.

o   In the coaching context, the coach needs to avoid giving all the instructions at once. Coaches will sometimes give the players instructions for the complete skill or tactics rather than feeding the instructions to the players in pieces.  While presenting whole and complete pictures are important, they are more important to the experienced players who are refining their  understanding of the skills after having achieved a level of competency. The nuances and holistic understanding come later in the player’s skill evolution, not while they are first exposed to the task.

o   The idea is identical in the teaching context, the teacher needs to learn to construct a basic scaffolding for the student, who needs to establish their fundamental understanding. Each piece of bullet-proof definition serves to serve as the foundation for their future development. These bullet-proof definitions  also need to be placed in relation to the other bullet-proof definitions to show students the linkages between the parts to facilitate the synthesis of the coherent structure. This is especially critical in teaching the student the problem-solving process, because it is never obvious how one problem-solving step leads to the next step.

·       Expertise Level Reverse Effect: What may appear to be vital to the expert is not vital to the neophyte.

Successful learning must be based on the level of the learner.  Details matter to the learning process of the expert, they don’t matter to the neophyte, yet.

Guadagnoli and Lee’s  explains in their paper (Guadagnoli 2004) that those learners who  are learning new skills and concept without any previous experience are more likely to be lost and confused while learning the basics because their long-term memory is do not contain any tangible memory to retrieve and extend into new knowledge.  The presentation must be honed to meet the level of the student and not that of the teacher.

In both the coaching and teaching context, it is incumbent on the teacher/coach to understand that they need to anticipate the difficult concepts which may confuse a beginner and steer them through the complexities. It is better to underestimate the amount of knowledge that the beginner may have rather than to over-estimate.

·       Split Attention: “Information should be placed together in space and time, if and only IF the information cannot be understood in isolation and is essential rather than redundant.” In other words, when presenting complex information to students, the information needs to be  presented together if presenting them separately would lead to confusion. This is more applicable in the classroom teaching context.

Rather than presenting complex information separated by space and time, putting them close together in space and time is more effective in helping the student to learn.

o   Split Attention in Space: This is more applicable in the classroom context. The recommended practice is to put all the information in close proximity to one another so that the student’s visual field contains all the necessary information so that the complete set of  information can be seen and absorbed together. The key is to keep the information within the visual field of the student so that they don’t have to search for pertinent information, while also making sure that the information presented together is not redundant.

o   Split Attention in Time: Refers to the timing of the information presentation. Rather than presenting in a manner which makes logical sense to the presenter; for example, presenting in an orderly bullet list form first and then going returning to the list after the initial presentation to define each item, it is better to present each term and follow up with the definition immediately. Oftentimes, orderly presentation writing practices can cause the student’s working memory to be overloaded.

·       Transient Information Effect: When information disappears, and students must hold it in working memory, this will also cause extraneous cognitive load. This effect occurs almost exclusively in a classroom setting when the teacher improvises and passes on information verbally without presenting that information in a tangible way. This is where improvisation needs to be regulated and digressions avoided unless the students have significant experience and background to process the digressions in parallel.

In the coaching context, the coach should suppress the urge to extemporaneously progress beyond the specific instruction on the fly.

·       Modality Effect: Modality effect is defined as presenting information via the auditory and visual channels in tandem via to eliminate visual split attention and expand working memory capacity. The idea is that the visual and auditory channels work separately, so that both channels can be deployed together to make more effective learning. The auditory and visual channels can be used to enhance the student’s learning process; they are greater than the sum of their parts.

The deployment of the modality effect may seem to be contradictory to the redundancy effect, it is a nuanced difference between being redundant and advantageous. They are only contradictory if the teacher/coach falls into two distinct redundancy traps.

1.     Simultaneous presentation of written and spoken words. They both involve the use of the language processing center of the brain, which overloads the working memory.

2.     Simultaneous presentation of redundant information.

To successfully deploy the dual modality presentation the information presented with the auditory and visual channels are essentially complementary, i.e. if they can be understood separately, then they need to be presented separately.

An example of dual modality presentation in coaching is the time-honored tradition of skills or tactics demo as the coach explains what the coach wants the player to see. The players should be absorbing the visual demo while also getting essential reminders of what they are seeing. The information from the visual and the auditory  channels should complement one another rather than contradict or repeat one another.

·       Keep the number of independent subjects limited. This does not come from Lovell, this comes from Doug Lemov’s The Coaches Guide to Coaching (Lemov 2020).

o   Anecdotally, the working memory can handle up to seven separate pieces of information at a time. Lemov recommends, especially with beginners, no more than three instructions. It is better to have free space in the working memory so that the student/player can apply more working memory resources to those three  instructions.

Note that while these points are seemingly basic, it is difficult to execute because they are often contradictory to what the teacher/coach are accustomed to in practice. I have come to practice understated presentation or explanation to avoid overloading the student/player’s working memory. But just to be sure, I also check for understanding more often and change presentation modes rapidly at the first sign of confusion.

Summary

·       Redundant information is the main reason for an unnecessarily overloaded working memory.

·       Redundancy comes in many forms

o   Presenting the same information using the same means at the same time, e.g. using the written word and oral instructions at the same time because both involve the language processing part of the brain.

o   Presenting too many pieces of information together.

·       Keep it simple. Have bullet-proof definitions for the student/player to hang on to. Something that is simple and to the point.

o   Keep the experience and skill level of the student/player in mind when formulating the definitions. It is easier to initially underestimate their experience and skill level and ratchet up your expectations as they show more aptitude and higher experience and skill levels.

·       To avoid splitting the student/player’s attention,

o   Combine information in the presentation Only If the information is so closely related that it would cause more confusion if they were presented separately.

o   Define the information at the same time as when you present the topic, not returning to the list after the list is presented for the first time .

·       Use the language processing and visual processing channels together.

o   Visual processing meaning picture and videos.

o   Reading slides uses language processing part of the brain, same as listening.

·       Present up to three main points at a time and no more. Avoid improvisations and digressions.

The Rest of the Story

Cognitive Load Theory- Part 3: Reducing Extrinsic Load by Structuring Practice

Cognitive Load Theory-Part 4: Optimizing Intrinsic Load

Works Cited

Guadagnoli, Mark and Timothy D. Lee. "Challenge Point: a Framework for Conceptualizing the Effects of Various Practice Conditions in Motor Learning." Journal of Motor Behavior, June 2004: 212-224.

Lemov, Doug. The Coaches Guide to Teaching. Clearwater, FL: John Catt Educational Ltd., 2020.

Lovell, Oliver. Sweller's Cognitive Load Theory in Action. Melton: John Catt Educational Ltd, 2020.