Dr. Keith Devlin is a very big guy in the world of math education, not to mention the world of math research. I'm introducing you to him here because I love how he thinks about learning in the world of mathematics, and how his ideas about learning relate to learning in all sorts of topics way outside of mathematics. Among many other duties, Keith is a Co-founder and executive director of Stanford's human sciences and technologies advanced research institute. A co-founder and president of an educational technology company, Brain Quake, that creates mathematical learning video games. He's also a World Economic Forum fellow, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. Last but definitely not least, he is ''The Math Guy'' on national public radio.
Welcome Doctor Devlin. Thanks for being with us here today Dr. Devlin, let's just dive right in. What's the biggest tip you can share with our viewers about how to most effectively approach a math problem that they might be stuck on?
Well, the first thing of course is don't panic. Not-so-famous Douglas Adams motto from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and it holds just as much for mathematics as it did for for the Hitchhiker's Guide. You have to begin by understanding what the problem is about, what are you trying to do? What do you want to achieve? And what information do you have? You've really got to avoid the thing that actually teachers try to impress on you of trying to see if you can match it to some template, and to act quickly.
One of the worst things that I think happens in the school system is people come away thinking that solving math problems is something that has to be done at speed. It absolutely is not. So, you have to sit back, take a deep breath, begin by understanding the problem. If the problem involves numbers, put in a few simple numbers threes and fours, and just play with it to get a sense of it. If it is geometric problem, do some little diagrams, I often end up writing simple little graph diagrams with dots and lines connecting them, just something to give me a sense of what that problem's about. At that point, you can ask yourself, ''do I know any techniques that look as though they would work with this problem?'' If they do and you mean look, the problem is solved. Actually that's usually very unsatisfying because you've just applied somebody else's thinking. Mathematics gets interesting when you have to force yourself to find out when a new method or some new approach.
So, let's assume that none of the techniques you know work. The next thing is, ''can I adapt an existing technique?'' Maybe you can maybe you can't. If you can usually leaves you with a nice feeling because you've done something yourself. The really challenging ones and the ones where it gets actually exciting and fun, is where it becomes clear, at least you think that nothing you know is going to help you with that. At that point, what you do is, you bash away at it several times with just naive approaches. Almost certainly they won't work, you just try this, you try that. You you come up with ideas based on what the problem is asking you to do, because solving a problem is a journey. You begin with the information you've got.
Either the information you're given with the problem, or information you already know. You may have to add some extra information, you may do a Google search find some extra information about it. At that point, the journey takes place in that you have to get to the goal and solve the problem. If none of the methods you try for the first half hour, maybe I'm depending on the problem. It could be half hour, couple of hours, sometimes it's a day or a few weeks.
But if nothing happens, then the best thing to do is walk away from the problem. Go and do something else. In my case, for most of my career, I was a long-distance runner. If I verily came up against it, I would put on my running gear, whatever the weather, and I'd go out for three or four of hour run, and when I came back, I felt good, I felt relaxed, and quite often on the course of that ride, on that mono, when I got back, the problem seemed different, and I had some new ideas. As I got older, my knees gave away from 25 years of heavy duty running. These days I've added bicycle. But I go on my bike, and I go for three or four hour bike ride, and I come back. First of all, I can approach the problem with a fresh eye. Secondly, in some cases, what seemed to be an impossible problem has melted away. I look at it and think, ''oh, gee, that was obvious, why didn't I see it before?'' Well, I don't quite think that, because I know that the feeling you have when you solve a problem is always, ''Ooh, dah, why didn't I think of that before?'' If that doesn't work, you start the cycle again. You bash away to it again, make no progress, and then you got to have another bike ride, or another swim, or whatever it is you'd like to do, a nice long walk. But it's important to keep oscillating between bashing away at it, and then backing off and doing something else to let the brain do it's own thing. I think that was one of the hardest things for me to realize was how important it is to back away. Sometimes, especially when it's something difficult, it is important to be able to focus on it, as it is to be able to back away from it and then come back later with a fresh perspective and a fresh mind. Oh yeah.
For difficult problems, I have never ever solved a difficult problem sitting at a desk or even sitting in my chair thinking about the problem. I've never done that, and I'm not sure it's possible to do that, because if a problem solution requires something new, applying all of your conscious thinking by definition can't solve it, because you're looking for something new. The weird thing about the brain is when you've done that preparation of bashing away without success, and you go and do something else. I've mentioned physical activity because I'm a physical active guy, although the biggest result in my PhD, was actually when I was getting out of the bath. I'd taken a long bath, you don't have to exert lots of energy. You have to do something different. Having a bath is a famous one amongst mathematicians for solving problems. But somehow, weird stuff happens inside the brain. When you're doing something else, and what three hours ago seemed like an impossible problem, just melts away and everything just falls into place. The brain sorts it out when it's left alone to do it. That's exactly the kinds of ideas that we're talking about in in our course. But it is important to do that initial work. It's no good just going out for a bike ride, you've got to have gone through that process of really coming up against it and seeing everything that doesn't work, because that seems to set up the mind in order to do this mysterious stuff it does when you're engaged in something else, when your conscious mind is engaged in something else. Absolutely, that's so important. One thing that you've described is that in higher mathematics, there should be a lot less doing and a lot more thinking.
Can you tell our viewers what you mean by that, and how does that relate to areas of learning that are outside mathematics?
Yeah. This is really where you've got to unlearn lots of the things that you're taught at school. Actually, teachers do that for very good reasons because of the way we especially in the United States and parts of Europe, the way we subject people to endless test-taking with timed tests. The way to get through the school system is to learn to act fast on the pressure of time, and that's the last thing you can do when it comes to mathematics. You've really got to let it take its course. People have different speeds. I've worked with some very fast mathematicians. The young math professor from Stanford who won a Fields Medal recently, she has gone on record as saying, her teachers at school thought she wasn't good at mathematics, because she was so slow. Well, she may be slow but she now has the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in mathematics and congratulations to her for doing that. You really have to let it take its time. It's a slow process. You've got to remember that mathematics is relatively recent, two or three thousand years.
So, you're bringing what's essentially a stone age brain to a domain, there's a couple of thousand years old. In fact most mathematics is only a few decades, or so. How can you take this brain that evolved to survive in the wild and then more recently to survive in social environments, how can you take that brain and apply it to solve this abstract problem in mathematics?
Well, the answer is, we don't really know how we do that. What we do know, is that if you familiarize yourself with the problem to such an extent that that problem is like a member of your family, then the act of solving that math problem is actually not unlike solving a difficult problem you have at home. We're very good at solving social problems and problems about our environment, because evolutions set us up for that. So, somehow we have to figure out how to let that brain solve that abstract problem in mathematics. The act of getting inside the problem and thinking about it for a long period of time, so that it's so familiar. Then the natural circuits in the brain that serve us well all of the time actually come into play for a math problem. There's no proof of that, but that's certainly my own experience of what goes on. Yes, all I can say is three cheers for slow thinking and I love the idea of thinking about math and a difficult problem as being something that's a member of your family. Yes, in many ways, mathematic's problems are not fundamentally different from other problems except in one respect, they are about totally abstract things.
So someone solving a math problem has an initial problem that someone doesn't have if they're solving a problem in real life, or a coaching problem in sort of football. Most of the time, and I used to spend a lot of time rock-climbing. Rock-climbing is partly physical, but it's also a lot of problem solving, because you're having to look for these moves, you're having to move your body in the right way. So there's an awful lot of problem solving that we do all of the time and that's what the brain evolved to do. In the case of mathematics however, the world in which you are solving those problems isn't one we're familiar with. You initially have to create that world inside of you.
This I think, is why it's essential to knock away at the problem for 10-15 minutes, a day, two days before you let the brain do it's own thing. My guess and my perception of what's going on is that that process is making my mind familiar with that domain, with that problem, to such an extent that that problem is just like a problem I'd have with my family or my workplace or whatever. I've got all of this apparatus for solving real-world problems and social problems. Once that math problem is inside my mind, it's another problem just like that. So, solving the math problem usually isn't the hard part. The hard part is getting that problem familiar inside your mind. The only way to do that is just keep living in the problem, get inside the problem, really live inside that problem for 10 minutes, half an hour, maybe even a few days. In the case of Andrew Wiles, solving Fermat's last theorem, a few years ago, it took him seven years to really get inside that problem to the point where he could see the solution. Well, part of what you do when you're spending a lot of time with a problem is you're in some sense reifying and growing the neural structures that are related to what you're trying to think about.
One of the things that Dr. Sinalski and I emphasize quite strongly in our course is how exercise helps actually build neural structures. It allows you to learn better, it allows you to remember better. So how does exercise play a role in your own ability to do mathematics? That's a good one, but it certainly is the case for me. In fact when I was a PhD student, my closest colleague was a mathematician from the United States, came over to England when I was a student back in Bristol. He was a rock climber, in fact I learned to rock climb with him. We used to go on these three or four hour rock climbs and we would almost certainly by the time we got to the top of the climb, we'd done some mathematics. Because you do a climb and you get to a ledge and you're tied up and then you chat for a while, as you're sort of belayed onto the rock face. We'd talk about mathematics and then we'd forget the mathematics, we don' do the physical stuff of climbing. When you're climbing, as when you're bicycling very fast, your mind is totally focused on that physical activity. So your entire world is physical, so you're focused on the climbing or you're focused on riding your bike. Stuff is going on in the background in your mind, it's working on those things that you've talked about. We'd finish a pitch, we'd put ourselves back on belay, we'd talk about the problem and we've made progress on the problem. So as a graduate student, I discovered this method of thinking, doing, thinking, doing, was incredibly powerful. I can make conjectures and sort of self reflect as to why the physical activity is important. I mean aspects clearly are you're focusing on that activity, it's very refreshing. We tend to think these days that the mind is separate from the body. I don't buy that it certainly isn't the case for me. I find that if my body's tired, my mind is tired and vice versa they stimulate each other.
So the mind did evolve to help the body survive, and I think it's a mistake to try and think of those as separate. If you nurture the body, the mind follows this goes back to the ideas of having physical education in schools and so forth. This is hardly original, but I think we need to take it seriously. I've never ever, well I have solved problems in the bath, that's a somewhat more relaxing case. But even in the bath, it's an artificial environment in which you're relaxed. You're in water, you're doing things, you're freeing up the mind, the mind is absolutely not thinking about that problem, it's doing other things. In my case definitely the bath example not withstanding, physical activity plays a big role. Exactly why? I don't know, but I do know it works. Well there is actually good research evidence. They're uncovering the bio physiological mechanisms by which it does take an effect. But I have to ask, with everything that you do, do you ever catch yourself, it's hard to believe, but do you ever procrastinate? If you do, what do you do to get yourself out of it? Yeah, well first of all I do do many things, I've got my own educational technology company, I do lots of biking. I run an institute at Stanford, I do my teaching, I'm actually on Twitter a lot. I do a whole bunch of things. You might think I'm a multi-tasker, I absolutely do not multitask. Not least because I know from the research that's been done here at Stanford, a lot of it by my late colleague Cliff Nass. That shows that a, human beings cannot multitask, and b, the more you think you're good at multitasking the worse you are at doing it.
So, I absolutely don't try to use this serial processor to multitask. What I do is I serial task, I will work exclusively flat out for periods of time. Now they may only be 10 minutes, they may be half an hour or they may be. I mean recently I had to develop a whole set of 75 puzzles, a new set of puzzles for my educational video game that we launched last fall. We wanted to bring out a different version. I worked nonstop on that for four days. I didn't do anything else other than eat, sleep and bicycle ride and in my entire focus everything else went to one side was to get that thing done. Four days later I had the 75 puzzles worked and tested and everything and then I moved to something else. So what I do is I work very intensely, and very focused for periods of time. I mean it's amazing that friends and family are still by me, because this is very focused and it excludes everything else. I must have been really difficult to live with at those times. But everything gets excluded, I focus on it, and then comes an end either because I finished the job or I just get tired and want to switch and I'm really getting frustrated with it, then I'll switch and do something else. What I've learned to do very efficiently is switch from one to the other, it doesn't take me more than a few minutes, at most, to switch from one to the other. Procrastination comes from recognizing that I need to make that switch. I'll keep going and keep going I think I want to do this other thing, I want to do this other thing. I do find myself doing lots of other little things I'll go and start off read my Twitter feed and things for a while before making the switch. So the one moment where I will procrastinate is starting something new, for obvious reasons. You've been in the groove, you've been making progress and it's slowed down and you've got to get in another groove. I know that that takes willpower and effort and like everybody else I do have a procrastination streak. But the only time it affects me is making that switch.
Once I've done it, I'm away in that domain until I've either solved that issue or done it or completed it or got tired of it and need a break. That I found works extremely well. Yeah. That's actually something that we talk about in this course is just that idea of you don't need to use willpower all the time, you just need to put it one little place wherever you need, where you're getting that cue, that's where you need to be applying willpower. That seems to be exactly what you do. It is true that I'm fortunate to have been able to carve out a career for myself, where most of the time I'm doing stuff I really want to do.
So even though I might not want to write that blog post, I know at the back of my mind that the moment I get into it and I've written the first sentences, writing that blog post will be the most important, and most wonderful and rewarding thing in the world until it's finished. But then I have to sort of stop that and do something else, and that's when there's these hiatus moments when I procrastinate. It's the switching gears to something else that I find, I won't say I find it difficult because I've been doing it all my life. But you do need willpower to do that. At least I find I need willpower to do that. If I'm not careful it will just fritter away with social media or whatever. I feel the same way in how I handle things. One thing I like to do is I think of my life as like this enormous funnel where there's all these things that are demanding to be done but then only one thing can go through that funnel at a time. So, you just got to give it up and realize one thing is all you can be focusing on. If you have that approach it makes it a little easier to realize that you just can't do everything, you just do as much as you reasonably can. Yeah. I mean one thing I do do is when I actually just upgraded my computer system to a to a new Macintosh. The first thing I did was went into the system controls and switched off every single alert. I don't want visual alerts, I don't want noise alerts.
So I don't want to know if an email has come, I don't want to know if something is going on. I literally switch off all the alerts because I do not want things pushed to me, I want to go and find out things when I need them. Because the last thing I want if I'm in the middle of working on an article say is to have some little beep going off to tell me some emails has arrived. I don't want to know that, because that's a distraction I want to be in the world of writing that article. Because if you take the human brain and you put it into a problem, into a domain and you set it free, it loves what it's doing, it doesn't want to give up and that sure doesn't want to be distracted. So, I don't distract it I just let it do what it does.
Well, I thank you so much Dr. Devlin for sharing your wisdom with us here today. It's just been a great pleasure talking with you and I know our viewers will really learn a lot from what you had to say. Okay the pleasure is been all mine, absolutely. Thanks so much.
凯斯·德夫林博士在数学教育界是一位举足轻重的人物，更不用说他在数学研究领域的地位了。在这里介绍他给大家是因为我喜欢他对数学学习的看法，以及他的学习观念如何与数学之外的各种主题相关联。除了许多其他职责外，凯斯是斯坦福大学人类科学和技术高级研究所的联合创始人和执行董事。他还是一家教育技术公司Brain Quake的联合创始人兼总裁，该公司开发数学学习视频游戏。他是世界经济论坛的成员、美国科学促进会会员和美国数学学会会员。最后但同样重要的是，他是国家公共广播电台的“数学先生”。
欢迎德夫林博士。感谢您今天加入我们，让我们直接进入正题吧。您能给我们的观众分享一些关于如何有效解决他们可能遇到的难题的最大建议吗？
首先当然是不要惊慌。这是不太出名的道格拉斯·亚当斯在《银河系漫游指南》中的座右铭，对数学来说也同样适用。你必须先理解问题是什么，你在尝试做什么？你想要实现什么？你有什么信息？你真的要避免教师试图给你留下的印象，那就是尝试将其与某个模板匹配，并迅速行动。
我认为在学校系统中发生的最糟糕的事情之一就是人们离开时认为解决数学问题必须迅速完成。绝对不是这样。所以，你必须坐下来，深呼吸，从理解问题开始。如果问题涉及数字，就放入一些简单的数字，比如三和四，然后玩弄它们以获得感觉。如果是几何问题，做一些小图，我经常最终画出一些带有点和线连接的简单小图表，只是为了让我对问题有所感觉。此时，你可以问自己：“我知道哪些技巧看起来可以解决这个问题？”如果你知道并且看起来可行，问题就解决了。实际上这通常非常不满意，因为你只是应用了别人的思考。当你不得不强迫自己找到一种新方法或某种新途径时，数学变得有趣。
那么，假设你所知道的所有技巧都不起作用。下一件事是：“我能适应现有技术吗？”也许你能，也许你不能。如果你能，通常会给你带来一种愉悦感，因为你自己做了些事情。真正具有挑战性的，以及实际上令人兴奋和有趣的地方，在于至少你认为你所知道的一切都无法帮助你解决问题。此时，你所要做的就是用一些天真的方法多次尝试。几乎可以肯定它们不会奏效，你只是尝试这个，尝试那个。你要根据问题要求你做的事情来提出想法，因为解决问题是一个旅程。你从所拥有的信息开始。
要么是问题中给出的信息，要么是你已经了解的信息。你可能还需要添加一些额外的信息，你可能要做谷歌搜索找到一些额外的信息。此时，旅程发生在你必须达到目标并解决问题的过程中。如果你尝试的前半小时没有任何方法起效，也许我要根据问题而定。可能是半小时，几个小时，有时是一天或几周。
但如果什么都没发生，那么最好的做法是离开问题。去做别的事情。在我职业生涯的大部分时间里，我是一名长跑运动员。如果我真正遇到困难，我会穿上我的跑步装备，无论天气如何，我都会出去跑三四个小时，当我回来时，我感觉很好，感觉很放松，而且经常在那次骑行的过程中，当我回来时，问题似乎不同了，我有了一些新的想法。随着年龄的增长，我的膝盖因25年的高强度跑步而不堪重负。如今我增加了骑自行车。但我骑自行车出去，骑上三四个小时的车程，然后我回来。首先，我可以带着新的视角来看待问题。其次，在某些情况下，看似不可能的问题已经消失了。我看着它想：“哦，天哪，那太明显了，我之前怎么没看到？”嗯，我并不真的这么想，因为我知道当你解决问题时的感觉总是：“哦，天哪，我之前怎么没想到？”如果这不起作用，你开始再次循环。再次努力尝试，如果没有进展，那么你就得再去骑一次自行车，或者再去游一次泳，或者做你喜欢做的任何事情，一个愉快的长散步。但是，在努力尝试和退后一步之间不断交替是很重要的，让大脑做自己的事情。我认为对我来说最难意识到的是退后一步是多么重要。有时，特别是当它是困难的事情时，能够专注于它就像能够从中抽身然后再带着新的视角和新的思维回来一样重要。哦耶。
对于难题，我从来没有坐在桌子前或者椅子上思考就解决过任何难题。我从未这样做过，而且我不确定这是否可能，因为如果问题的解决方案需要一些新的东西，那么按照定义，应用你所有的有意识的思考是无法解决它的，因为你在寻找一些新的东西。大脑的奇怪之处在于，当你做了那些没有成功的准备工作，然后去做别的事情时。我提到体育活动是因为我是一个喜欢运动的人，尽管我博士阶段最大的成果实际上是在我洗完澡后得到的。我洗了一个长时间的澡，你不必花费很多精力。你必须做一些不同的事情。洗澡是数学家们解决问题的一个著名方法。但是不知怎的，大脑内部发生了奇怪的事情。当你在做别的事情时，三小时前看似不可能的问题，就这样消失了，一切都到位了。当你让大脑独自工作时，它会自己解决问题。这正是我们课程中讨论的那些想法。但是进行初始工作是很重要的。只是出去骑自行车是不够的，你必须经历那个过程，真正地遇到它，看到所有不起作用的东西，因为这似乎是为了在你从事其他事情时，当你的有意识的思维忙于其他事情时，大脑做这些神秘事情而设置的。绝对如此，这非常重要。你所描述的一件事是，在高等数学中，应该少做多思考。
你能告诉我们的观众你是什么意思，以及这与数学以外的学习领域有什么关系吗？
是的。这确实是你必须忘记在学校学到的很多东西的地方。实际上，老师们这么做是有充分理由的，因为我们特别是在美国和欧洲部分地区，我们让人们无休止地参加定时考试。通过学校系统的方法是学会在时间压力下迅速行动，而这在数学上是你要做的事情。你真的得让它自然发展。人们有不同的速度。我与一些非常快的数学家合作过。最近获得菲尔兹奖的斯坦福大学的年轻数学教授，她公开表示，她的学校老师认为她不擅长数学，因为她很慢。嗯，她可能慢，但她现在拥有数学界的诺贝尔奖，祝贺她做到了这一点。你真的必须让它花时间。这是一个缓慢的过程。你必须记住，数学相对较新，只有两三千年的历史。
所以，你基本上是带着石器时代的大脑进入一个有几万年历史的领域。实际上，大多数数学只有几十年左右的历史。你怎么能把这个进化成在野外生存，然后更近期在社交环境中生存的大脑，用来解决数学中的抽象问题呢？
嗯，答案是，我们真的不知道我们是如何做到的。我们所知道的是，如果你让自己熟悉这个问题，以至于这个问题就像你的家庭成员一样，那么解决这个数学问题的行为实际上与解决你在家里遇到的一个难题没有什么不同。我们在解决社会问题和环境问题上非常擅长，因为进化为我们设定了这样的条件。所以，我们必须以某种方式让大脑解决数学中的抽象问题。深入问题并长时间思考它的行为，使其变得如此熟悉。然后大脑中一直为我们服务的自然电路实际上在解决数学问题时也会发挥作用。虽然没有证据证明这一点，但这确实是我自己的经验。是的，我只能说，为慢速思考欢呼三声，我喜欢把数学和难题当作家庭一员的想法。是的，在很多方面，数学问题与其他问题没有什么根本不同，除了一个方面，它们是关于完全抽象的事物。
所以，解决数学问题的人有一个初始问题，这是他们在现实生活中或在足球训练中解决问题时所没有的。我过去花了很多时间攀岩。攀岩部分是体力活动，但也涉及很多问题解决，因为你必须在寻找这些动作，你必须以正确的方式移动你的身体。所以我们一直在做的很多事情都涉及问题解决，这就是大脑进化的目的。然而，在数学的情况下，你解决问题的世界不是一个我们熟悉的世界。你最初必须在你内心创造那个世界。
我认为这就是为什么每天花10到15分钟去敲打问题至关重要，直到你让大脑自行处理之前的一两天。我的猜测和我对正在发生的事情的理解是，这个过程使我的思维熟悉了那个领域，熟悉了那个问题，到了那个问题就像我在家里、工作场所或其他任何地方遇到的问题一样。我有所有这些解决现实世界问题和社会问题的装置。一旦数学问题进入我的思维，它就是另一个问题。所以，解决数学问题通常不是困难的部分。困难的部分是让问题在你心中变得熟悉。唯一的方法就是继续生活在问题中，深入问题，真正地在问题中生活10分钟、半小时，甚至几天。以安德鲁·怀尔斯解决费马大定理为例，几年前，他花了七年时间才真正深入那个问题，以至于他能看到解决方案。嗯，你在花很多时间解决问题时所做的部分工作，在某种意义上是你在实体化和增长与你试图思考的内容相关的神经结构。
辛格尔斯基博士和我在课程中非常强调的一件事是锻炼如何实际上建立神经结构。它让你学得更好，记性更好。那么锻炼在你自己的数学能力中扮演什么角色呢？这是一个很好的问题，但对我来说肯定是这样。事实上，当我还是博士生时，我最好的同事是一位来自美国的数学家，当我还是布里斯托尔的学生时，他来到了英国。他是一名攀岩者，事实上我是和他一起学会攀岩的。我们过去常常进行三四个小时的攀岩，我们几乎可以肯定，当我们到达攀登的顶端时，我们已经做了一些数学工作。因为你做了一个攀登，你到达一个岩架，你被绑住，然后你聊了一会儿，当你被系在岩面上时。我们会谈论数学，然后我们忘记了数学，我们不做攀爬的体力活动。当你在攀爬时，就像你骑自行车非常快时，你的思维完全集中在那项体力活动上。所以你的整个世界都是物质的，所以你专注于攀爬或骑自行车。在你脑海中的背景中，有东西在运作，它在处理你谈论过的那些事情。我们会完成一段攀爬，我们会重新把自己系好，我们会讨论问题，我们在问题上取得了进展。所以作为一个研究生，我发现这种思考、行动、思考、行动的方法非常有力。我可以做出假设，并且自我反思为什么体力活动很重要。我的意思是很明显的方面是，你专注于那项活动，这是非常令人耳目一新的。我们倾向于认为这些天来思维与身体是分开的。我不认为这当然不是我的情况。我发现如果我的身体累了，我的思维也累了，反之亦然，它们相互刺激。
所以思维确实进化了，以帮助身体生存，我认为试图将它们视为分离的是一个错误。如果你培养身体，思维就会跟随，这回到了在学校进行体育教育等想法。这并不是什么新鲜事，但我认为我们需要认真对待。我从来没有，好吧，我确实在洗澡时解决了问题，这是一个更放松的情况。但即使在洗澡时，也是一个你放松的人造环境。你在水中，你在做事，你在释放思维，思维绝对不是在想那个问题，它在做其他事情。在我的情况下，绝对不要忽视洗澡的例子，体力活动起了很大作用。确切的原因是什么？我不知道，但我确实知道它有效。嗯，实际上有很好的研究证据。他们正在揭示生物生理机制，通过这些机制它确实起到了作用。但我必须问，你做的每件事，你有没有发现自己，很难相信，但你会不会拖延？如果你这样做了，你怎么让自己摆脱它？是的，首先我做很多事情，我有自己的教育技术公司，我做很多自行车运动。我在斯坦福管理一个研究所，我教书，我实际上经常上推特。我做很多事情。你可能会认为我是一个多任务处理者，我绝对不是一个多任务处理者。至少因为我知道斯坦福这里所做的研究表明，一是人类不能多任务处理，二是你越认为自己擅长多任务处理，你做得越糟糕。
所以，我绝对不会尝试使用这个串行处理器来进行多任务处理。我所做的是串行任务，我会专注地全力以赴工作一段时间。现在它们可能只有10分钟，可能是半小时，或者可能是。我的意思是最近我不得不开发一整套75个谜题，为我去年秋天推出的教育视频游戏开发一套新的谜题。我们想要推出一个不同的版本。我连续四天不停地工作。除了吃饭、睡觉和骑自行车外，我没有做任何其他事情，我的全部注意力都放在一边，就是完成那件事。四天后，我完成了75个谜题的工作和测试等等，然后我转移到其他事情上。所以我所做的是，我在一段时间内非常集中和专注地工作。我的意思是，朋友和家人仍然在我身边，这是非常了不起的，因为这是非常有焦点的，它排除了一切其他事情。在那些时候，我一定很难相处。但一切都被排除在外，我专注于它，然后结束，要么是因为我完成了工作，要么是因为我只是累了，想要切换，我真的很沮丧，然后我就会切换并做一些其他事情。我已经学会了非常高效地从一个切换到另一个，最多只需要几分钟就可以从一个切换到另一个。拖延来自于认识到我需要做出那个切换。我会继续前进，继续前进，我想做这其他的事情，我想做这其他的事情。我确实发现自己在做很多其他小事情，我会去开始阅读我的推特信息和其他事情一段时间，然后再做出切换。所以我会拖延的那一刻是开始新事物的时候，原因显而易见。你已经进入了状态，你已经取得了进展，它放慢了速度，你得进入另一个状态。我知道这需要意志力和努力，就像其他人一样，我确实有拖延的习惯。但它唯一影响我的时候是做出那个切换。
一旦我开始做某件事，我就会全神贯注在那个领域里，直到我解决了问题、完成了任务或者感到厌倦需要休息为止。我发现这种做法效果非常好。是的。这实际上是我们在课程中讨论的内容，就是不需要一直使用意志力，你只需要在需要的时候，在你接收到提示的地方，运用一点意志力。这似乎正是你所做的。确实，我很幸运能够为自己开创一份事业，在大多数时间里，我都在做一些我真正想做的事情。
所以，尽管我可能不想写那篇博客文章，但我知道，一旦我开始写了前几句话，完成那篇博客文章就会成为世界上最重要的、最美妙和最有回报的事情，直到它结束。但是我必须停下来做些别的事情，那时候就是我拖延的间歇时刻。我发现，转换到其他事情上，我不会说我觉得困难，因为我这辈子都在这么做。但你确实需要意志力去做这个。至少我发现我需要意志力去做到这一点。如果我不小心的话，时间就会在社交媒体或其他事情上消磨掉。我处理事情的方式也有同感。我喜欢做的一件事是，我把生活想象成一个巨大的漏斗，有很多事情要求完成，但一次只能有一件事通过那个漏斗。所以，你只能放弃并意识到一次只能专注于一件事。如果你采取这种方法，就会更容易意识到你不能做所有事情，你只能尽可能多地做。是的。我的意思是，我做的一件事是，当我实际上刚刚升级了我的计算机系统到一个新的Macintosh时。我做的第一件事就是进入系统控制并关闭每一个...我不想要视觉效果，我不想要噪音...
所以我不想知道是否有邮件来了，我不想知道是否发生了什么事。我真的关闭了所有的...因为我不想被推送东西，我想在我需要的时候去找出事情。因为如果我正在写一篇文章，我最不想的就是有一些小哔声告诉我有邮件到了。我不想知道那个，因为那是一个干扰，我想沉浸在写那篇文章的世界里。因为如果你把人类的大脑放进一个问题、一个领域，并且释放它，它喜欢它正在做的事情，它不想放弃，当然也不想被打扰。所以，我不打扰它，我只是让它做它擅长的事情。
非常感谢您，德夫林博士，今天与我们分享您的智慧。与您交谈真是一大乐事，我知道我们的观众会从您所说的中学到很多东西。好的，乐趣完全在我这一边，绝对的。非常感谢。
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