Identifying Progress

I’ve also seen lots of people who got so wound up in the tracking and judging of their “progress” that they got frustrated when they “weren’t making any.” Not all progress is graphable. And it’s not, in my experience, necessary to cognitively interact with a process to have it be beneficial. Meditation, for example, goes the other direction and has many of the same effects.

For my money, a client who starts the walking program and finds pleasure in it and does it for fun is at least as likely to continue it long term–much less likely to become obsessive about it–and, as we both agree, probably equally likely to benefit from it, even if he can’t explain how or why.

I once received an email from someone worried about my anti-scientific bent as relates to neurofeedback and my tendency to avoid getting all involved in tracking. For those who don’t already know this, I have an MBA in Finance and Economics from Northwestern University, so I’m not in any way unfamiliar with the concepts of tracking numerically. But I also spent a dozen years doing turn-arounds in hospitals for a large hospital management company–my real preparation for doing neurofeedback. In those situations, I learned that the number-watching that many of my bosses and colleagues did ended up missing the really important things happening around them. Enron had great numbers right up to the day when it imploded, because people there focused on the numbers. And there are hundreds of companies that make superb products, compete effectively, take care of their clients and workers and don’t ever achieve those “great numbers” because that’s not what they focus on. That I guess is my point: focus on what you want to change.

Changing Performance, not Data

It should be possible to conceive–even to a scientist who wants hard objective data (though quantum physics, which I think qualifies as a rather advanced science, seems to suggest that ALL of what we perceive as reality is actually quite subjective)–that the exercise itself is the outcome. My wife has plantar fasciitis in her foot. She does stretching exercises every day, and it is improving. What do we measure to be scientifically certain that she is getting better, or that there is some relationship between the stretching and the improvement in function? I don’t know. The MD doesn’t know. My wife doesn’t care.

In the same way, when I trained for improved ability to stay focused on sequential tasks years ago, I didn’t seek to change my personality. I didn’t want to switch from an artist to an accountant. I was simply improving my range, so that I was able to shift into and sustain for longer periods of time a state of higher activation that allowed me to do those tasks. I intuitively understood that there might well be a difference in some brain measures between my steady state and my ability to activate when desired. The one was easily measured in an assessment; the other perhaps not.

The part of my EEG I was training (theta/beta ratio) didn’t change very much. It’s still “high” for an adult. But what I can do with my brain changed, and how long I can do it changed. It’s possible that if I wanted to do an fMRI or a full QEEG to measure what my brain did at task, I’d see the changes. Frankly (maybe because I have a healthy dose of slow-wave and alpha activity) it was never worth the time, trouble or expense to me.

I didn’t train to change my brain. I trained to change my performance. Training the brain was the medium, just like my wife’s stretching exercises, just like doing aerobics to change stamina. Or taking medications that have never been clinically proven to have an effect on a particular problem (off-label uses) to change that problem.