Metacognitive Revolution

(EN)

This is just a quick thought and I don’t want to make it more acceptable by taking it broadly. So I will be direct. Not out of any lack of rigor or respect but not to waste your time too much.

Today there is an urgent need to increase some fundamental capabilities for an increasing number of people. We can compare it to a revolutionary threshold similar to the mass literacy that occurred in Europe in the late 1800s and the first half of the 1900s.

What is it all about?

Today, in developed countries, the real revolution needed is metacognitive.

Metacognition is the ability to be aware not only of the contents of one’s own mind, but also of the belief patterns, mental processes and behaviors that we generally act automatically, unconsciously and completely identified with.

For what purpose to increase metacognition?

To have a greater ability to question our patterns, habits, narratives, beliefs, behavioral styles and evolve them with experience. We usually tend unconsciously to justify our patterns, seek confirmation, becoming rigid. Increasing metacognitive skills allow us to develop more creativity, reality examination, completeness and correctness of interpretations, resilience, the functionality of beliefs, wisdom and compassion. It reduces the conditioning of inherited or learned automatisms in order to be freer and more aware of choice. Obviously within the limits of human capacity, we are not omniscient, but the average margin for metacognitive improvement is very large and impactful.

With each passing year we struggle more and more to live up to the complexity of the world we have built around us. We are in an accelerating way increasingly technologically powerful and increasingly unable to flow with the complexity outside and inside us. The impact of low metacognition is significant on both individual and collective quality of life.

Let me ask you a question.

Approximately what percentage of the people you know do you think would need to give themselves the opportunity to spend time in paths that seriously and scientifically increase metacognition?

Why don’t many people do this and spend time and money chasing happiness in the same ways over and over again, even though those strategies have long since been shown to be insufficient, partial, if not downright dysfunctional and distorted?

Do you have any guesses?

Well, keep these assumptions in mind for a moment.

Do you feel completely out of this mechanism of unawareness and automatism?
How much time, effort, money, discernment have you devoted to increasing metacognition as it significantly grounds our potential freedom and happiness?

I warned you I would be direct 🙂

To varying degrees we are all in it, it is inevitable given the radical nature of change.
I am a mess in so many things, I am constantly working on myself, with my limitations, I have made so many mistakes, it is a lifelong, life-honoring quest in an attempt to live it more and more fully and in awareness.

I’ll tell you mine, then you evaluate.

DIY, self-help books, new-age experiences only go so far and often waste time. You have to be rigorous and there is no shortage of knowledge today. The “I want it all and now” doesn’t work here.
Even delving into how your mind and brain works in the third person by reading scientific texts serves up to a certain point. You need to cultivate firsthand knowledge of yourself with the support of some valuable experts.

It is a challenge, an adventure that involves us all, whether we like it or not, whether we are inclined or not. We should ask ourselves (better sooner than later) whether we just want to position ourselves well in the “race” of life, to be “winning”, according to the rules we have unconsciously given ourselves (we all have an implicit philosophy to unveil) or stop for a moment and ask ourselves: but what game am I playing?

I don’t know if you understand what I mean. It’s not about being better or worse than others. Taking up the analogy of the literacy revolution, it is not about competing with the literary skills of a great writer, but about asking ourselves: do we know how to read and write sufficiently to live our lives fully?
This is coming from someone who was a disaster in school 🙂 Other than innate talents, what counts here is the commitment, no matter where you start from.

At one time in psychoanalysis we used to talk about unconscious resistances defending the relative autonomy of the neurotic complexes that inhabit us. But I don’t think it’s just about that, as big and very powerful as this part is. I think it is literally a species problem. Our species has a great ability toward problem solving of external practical, technical challenges but a structural metacognitive difficulty in knowing and modifying ourselves. We are most often invisible to ourselves, delegating everything to the favor or disfavor of the external situation; moreover, the situation is interpreted in part by unconscious schemas. It is not easy but much can be done. It is good to cultivate metacognitive skills from childhood and for most of life, but you can start at any time.

For example, in my opinion, mindfulness works on what I have long called Homo Sapiens “species biases,” which significantly impact individual and collective awareness and wisdom.
These are practices that do not replace the work on the major metacognitive blocks that psychotherapy is well suited to address, but in some cases they can also be propaedeutic for that side of individual-specific psychic distress. Species biases deserve a dedicated post, I just mention that they are the result of evolution and we all have them.

If you experience metacognitive self-work as a stigma of weakness you are wrong, in fact it is quite the opposite, I invite you to explore further.

I hope I have given you a useful cue and nudge to ask yourself who you are and what you really… but really want.

(IT)

Questo è solo una veloce riflessione e non voglio imbonirti prendendola alla larga. Quindi sarò diretto. Non per mancanza di rigore o rispetto ma per non farti perdere troppo tempo.

Oggi c’è l’urgente bisogno di incrementare alcune fondamentali capacità per un numero crescente di persone. Possiamo paragonarla ad una soglia rivoluzionaria simile all’alfabetizzazione di massa avvenuta in Europa tra fine ‘800 e la prima metà del ‘900.

Di che si tratta?

Oggi, nei paesi sviluppati, la vera rivoluzione necessaria è metacognitiva.

La metacognizione è la capacità di essere consapevoli non solo dei contenuti della propria mente, ma anche degli schemi di credenze, dei processi mentali e comportamenti che generalmente agiamo in modo automatico, inconsapevole e completamente identificati con essi.

A quale fine incrementare la metacognizione?

Per avere una maggiore capacità di mettere in discussione i nostri schemi, abitudini, narrazioni, credenze, stili comportamentali e farli evolvere con l’esperienza. Di solito tendiamo inconsciamente a giustificare i nostri schemi, cercare conferme, diventando rigidi. L’incremento delle capacità metacognitive permettono di sviluppare maggiore creatività, esame di realtà, completezza e correttezza delle interpretazioni, resilienza, la funzionalità delle credenze, la saggezza e la compassione. Porta quindi a subire meno gli automatismi ereditati o appresi, al fine di essere più liberi e consapevoli di scegliere. Ovviamente nei limiti della capacità umane, non siamo onniscienti, ma il margine medio di miglioramento metacognitivo è molto ampio e impattante.

Ogni anno che passa fatichiamo sempre più nell’essere all’altezza della complessità di mondo che ci siamo costruiti intorno. Siamo in modo accelerato sempre più potenti tecnologicamente e sempre più incapaci di fluire con la complessità fuori e dentro di noi. L’impatto della bassa metacognizione è significativo tanto sulla qualità della vita individuale che collettiva.

Ti faccio una domanda.

Approssimativamente, quale percentuale delle persone che conosci credi avrebbero bisogno di darsi la possibilità di dedicare del tempo in percorsi che incrementino in modo serio e scientifico la metacognizione?

Perché molti non lo fanno e spendono tempo e denaro per inseguire la felicità sempre negli stessi modi, anche se ormai da tempo quelle strategie si mostrano insufficienti, parziali, se non proprio disfunzionali e distorte?

Hai qualche ipotesi?

Bene, tieni un attimo a mente queste ipotesi.

Tu ti senti completamente fuori da questo meccanismo di inconsapevolezza e automatismo?
Quanto tempo, impegno, denaro, discernimento hai dedicato all’incremento della metacognizione, visto che fonda in modo significativo la nostra libertà e felicita potenziale?

Ti avevo avvertito che sarei stato diretto 🙂

In misura diversa ci siamo dentro tutti, è inevitabile vista la radicalità del cambiamento.
Io per tante cose sono un disastro, sono in continuo lavoro su di me, con i miei limiti, ho fatto tanti errori, è una continua ricerca che dura una vita, che onora la vita, nel tentativo di viverla sempre più pienamente ed in consapevolezza.

Ti dico la mia, poi valuta tu.

Il fai da te, i libri di auto-aiuto, le esperienze new-age arrivano sino ad un certo punto e spesso fanno perdere tempo. Bisogna essere rigorosi e le conoscenze oggi non mancano. Il tutto e subito qui non funziona.
Serve sino ad un certo punto anche l’approfondire in terza persona come funziona la tua mente e cervello leggendo testi scientifici. Devi coltivare la conoscenza in prima persona di te stesso con il supporto di qualche valido esperto.

E’ una sfida, un’avventura che ci coinvolge tutti, che piaccia o meno, che si sia portati o meno. Dovremmo chiederci (meglio prima che poi) se vogliamo solo posizionarci bene nella “gara” della vita, essere “vincenti” secondo le regole che inconsciamente ci siamo dati (tutti abbiamo una filosofia implicita da svelare) o fermarci un attimo e chiederci: ma a che gioco sto giocando?

Non so se si capisce cosa intendo. Non si tratta di essere migliori o peggiori di altri. Riprendendo l’analogia della rivoluzione dell’alfabetismo, non si tratta di competere con le capacità letterarie di un grande scrittore, ma di chiedersi: sappiamo leggere e scrivere sufficientemente per vivere pienamente la nostra vita?
Ve lo dice uno che era un disastro a scuola 🙂 Altro che talenti innati, qui conta il mettersi in gioco, l’impegno, indipendentemente dal punto da cui si parte.

Un tempo in psicoanalisi si parlava di resistenze inconsce che difendono la relativa autonomia dei complessi nevrotici che ci abitano. Credo che sia letteralmente un problema di specie. La nostra specie ha una grande abilità verso il problem solving di sfide pratiche esterne, tecniche ma una difficoltà strutturale metacognitiva nel conoscere e modificare noi stessi. Siamo il più delle volte invisibili a noi stessi, delegando tutto al favore o sfavore della situazione esterna; per di più la situazione è interpretata in parte da schemi inconsci. Non è facile ma si può fare molto. E’ bene coltivare le capacità metacognitive sin dall’infanzia e per gran parte della vita, ma si può partire in qualsiasi momento.

Per esempio, mio parere, la mindfulness lavora su quelle che da tempo chiamo “biases di specie” Homo Sapiens, che impattano significativamente sulla consapevolezza e saggezza individuale e collettiva.
Sono prassi che non sostituiscono il lavoro sui grandi blocchi metacognitivi di cui è bene che si occupi la psicoterapia, ma in certi casi possono essere propedeutiche anche per quel versante di disagio psichico specifico individuale. Le biases di specie meritano un post dedicato, accenno solo al fatto che sono il frutto della evoluzione e le abbiamo tutti.

Se vivi il lavoro su di te metacognitivo come uno stigma di debolezza sbagli, in realtà è proprio il contrario, ti invito ad approfondire.

Spero di averti dato uno spunto e sprono utile a richiederti chi sei e cosa vuoi veramente… ma veramente…

Hunter-gatherers with smartphones

The marshmallow experiment is a classic psychological research.

It shows how the ability (after a certain age) to tolerate frustration for a better purpose is one of the main variables to understand who will be a more resilient, happy, aware, fulfilled adult.

In your opinion, what is the current average level in your community about: to tolerate frustration for a better purpose, to discipline ourselves, to know ourselves and improve?

I don’t have precise statis data, so I could be wrong (I hope) but the impression is that there are a few that shine like never before and a large mass that is even regressing under the pressure of an increasingly complex society. In an increasingly complex and technologically powerful world, we should aim to educate new generations more on soft skills (not only in technical skills). There are different approaches to learning soft skills. To educate derives etymologically from “educere”: to help bring out the best in oneself.

There is an enormous hunger for individuation, for mental self-knowledge, for what we really aspire to. The collective risk is that too many regress to unaware “hunter-gatherers with smartphones”.

In the young generations of developed countries born after 2000, metacognition, meta-awareness is no longer a luxury for the few, but an essential necessity, which if it is not cultivated in a broad way will lead us to a collective cultural and political regression.

Excuse me for the direct style of communication, but today all the people who have the economic and cultural possibilities but waste their lives chasing superficial self and life models do a lot more damage than we think. For themself and the community.

We need investments in education and ecology, not only for the environment but also for the media. Let’s start with us.

Biases of the Homo Sapiens species

I have been proposing a three-level model of mental distress for several years. The first is the psychopathological that psychotherapies deal with. From the most common neuroses, which we all have in different ways, to the most disabling psychiatric disorders. At the other extreme we have existential discomfort. It usually becomes more evident in the second half of life. It concerns our condition as living, needy: mortality, uncertainty, pain and the question of meaning. Halfway between these two levels of mental distress are what I have long called Biases of the Homo Sapiens species. They are not reducible to the cognitive biases studied extensively in behavioral economics. They are more pervasive, structural, linked to motivational systems. One of these is the difficulty of staying in the present moment, the pervasive self-talk that sometimes becomes brooding. The field of research and application of mindfulness is one of the most targeted approaches to this type of biases that influence the quality of our individual and collective life.

Is anyone there?

I’m back!

Is anyone there still following this frozen old blog? 🙂

I’m back because I would like to try to share some thoughts, ideas, points of view with you and see if some interesting patterns emerge “connecting the dots”.

I have always had a polymath nature, a hybrid mindset as a professional and researcher, in skills and interests. Maybe some of you will remember my old “Manifesto Ibridi“, now retired but today super alive as a topic.

There may be a great diversity of topics I will write about, but there will be some recurring interests. For example, the positive individuation and evolution of ourselves and also the analysis of the “anthropological leap” that we are facing as a species.

Stay tuned.

Let’s try again a little bit to flow with the complexity. 😉

Interview with Donald Norman: Design Skills in a Complex World

(Originally posted here, the blog of Manifesto Ibridi)

Donald Norman is an Electrical Engineering and Cognitive Psychologist. He’s co-founder and principal of the User Experience/Usability consulting firm, the Nielsen Norman group.

He’s an Hybrid Guru in the transdisciplinary fields of Usability, Interaction Design and User Experience Design with an amazing career.

We think that in the design of the last 20 years, as a profession, there are interesting emerging balances and combinations of competencies to front a more complex world. So we proposed to Norman for questions about the main skills of the future designers.

We asked him a few questions:

  1. What are the necessary skills for a designer to face the future challenges of a more complex world?
  2. Could the transdisciplinary attitude and skills of brilliant designers be a model useful to be adopted in other fields?
  3. Do you think that the future of user experience design will need a different level of competence on the several psychological and social layers of the users?
  4. Reading the Manifesto Ibridi, what is the most important concept that captured your attention since you are working in the same direction?

To which he answered:

“The skills of the traditional designer are not adequate to cope with the requirements of today’s world, especially not adequate for the new areas in which design is asked to play a role.

Traditional design education is still, well, tradition: craft based. The undergraduate education is all about craft skills and the professional graduate degree is simply more refinement of those skills.

Today the designer must know more about the world, about art and science, technology and engineering, social and behavioral sciences, political science and economics. Business. But very few designers receive the broad kind of education necessary to work on the problems that are so desperate in need of good design skills.

The problem is made worse by the fact that most academic disciplines are very narrow and abstract. Academics focus upon academic, deep knowledge. Designers work in the real world: they need to knowhow to apply the knowledge of the other disciplines, but the university is perhaps the worst place to learn the practical implication of the necessary other disciplines.

Although I think it is time for design education to change, I believe that the larger and more important problem is that it is necessary for all education to change. Instead of narrow, theoretical disciplines, we should have problem-based areas of focus, where theory and practice share the issues, where people with different backgrounds add their knowledge and experience. We need to reward practical applications, not just theoretical ones. we need to reward people with wide, generalist knowledge at the same level we know reward people with deep, narrow knowledge. Designers need the knowledge within the other disciplines: the other disciplines can use the unifying vision of great designers. But today, neither knows quite how to work with the other – the broad, generalist knowledge of the designer who wishes to build and accomplish things versus the deep, narrow knowledge of the academic scholar who wishes to understand things. Both are needed. We need a way to make them work well together, for each to respect the skills of the other.

Design has to move away from its base as a skill-based discipline. People who design services and communities need not have craft skills. But they are still designers. Different kinds of designers need very different skills.

Why do I support the Manifesto Ibridi: because it is making an argument quite compatible with the one I just wrote, to live and understand complexity, to deal with the rapid acceleration of knowledge and technology, to understand the interaction of humans and technology (cognition and artifacts) – except cognition must include emotion and action – the body as well as the mind.”

— Don Norman

(Image courtesy of John Knox)

Davide Casali – Social Experience Design – Interaction 13

Davide Casali: Social Experience Design – Shifting The Focus Where Really Matters from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.

Another great speach of Davide about our Motivational Design at the Interaction 13, with a little mention of the Manifesto Ibridi.

User Centered Design vs Genius Design

Starting from the post of Cennydd Bowles “Looking Beyond User-Centered Design” I wrote some questions to italian friends interaction designers.

I want to thank them for the interesting discussion. These are two post emerged from these emails “A Better Look at User-Centered Design“, “Oltre il singolo designer“.

The challenge is to avoid as much as possible (we are always limited) exogenous and endogenous errors. Simultaneous create the environment that best expresses the explicit and implicit qualities in the “system design process” (from the team, the relationship with the customer , the market, etc..).

It ‘s like the metaphor of the blanket too short: pull on the one hand it turns out the other and vice versa.
This is the condition that you find in any situation where you want to increase the limit of its capacity (as an individual, group, and system).

The solution is a dynamic adaptive balance in the searching for the greatest possible harmony.

The concept seems too broad and not enough pragmatic? The operationalization is necessary, but it’s always a partial choice, starting broader visions that guide us. It ‘s so within the limits of Knowledge (see for example Popper) or any human challenge.

 

So, what now?
The challenge is to get out of the dichotomy in a third solution that integrates and solve the two options (I’m not so fan of Hegel…).

The center is the man with the method (UCD) that supports him and the man with the talent that allows him to make good intuitions.

In this period I’m working on this topic developing an approach on the edge of chaos between the risk of an “Egoic approach” and the risk of “the refuge of the sheep in the flock”. I’m “trying”, as always 🙂

Social Usability Workshop – Lift13 Geneve

On February, 8th I’ve been at the Lift 13 Conference with Davide to present our workshop about Social Usability.

Social Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy social interactions are to make. We proposed the Social Usability Checklist as a tool of analysis and design for social network dynamics and apps.

It was a great experience with several interesting questions, solutions and feedback. I want to thank all the participants that made it possible.

Manifesto Ibridi

EN

We are at a real turning point and the main challenges require hybridization of skills, ability, intelligence and knowledge.

Because the challenges transcend the limits of traditional knowledge models.
Because the opportunities are often in the “middle-earth” between disciplines.
Because the questions and answers that are producing the most interesting ideas are often bridges between different visions.
Because research and innovative projects have logics and teams with hybrid expertise.

I know many hybrid talents, intellectuals and professionals, they able to recognize each other, however, they are lacking a common identity when the society has a great need for this “bridge skills.”

So, five years ago I wrote the first draft of the Manifesto Ibridi and today, thanks to three great persons that supported me in this project, is online!

 

IT

Siamo ad un punto di svolta epocale e le principali sfide necessitano di ibridazioni di competenze, capacità, intelligenze, conoscenze.

Perché le sfide trascendono i limiti dei modelli di conoscenza tradizionali.
Perché le opportunità sono spesso nella “terra di mezzo” tra discipline.
Perché le domande che stanno producendo le risposte e idee più interessanti sono spesso ponti tra visioni diverse.
Perché le ricerche e progetti più innovativi hanno logiche e team con competenze ibride.

Conosco tanti talenti, intellettuali e professionisti ibridi, capaci di riconoscersi tra loro, sono però privi di una identità comune quando la società ha un grande bisogno di “competenze ponte”.

Così 5 anni fa scrissi la prima bozza del Manifesto Ibridi e oggi, grazie a tre persone di grande valore che mi hanno supportato in questo progetto, è online!