How To Survive In A Changing World

The notion of accelerating the way your brain works may seem implausible but it is entirely realistic.  As a matter of fact, constant changes in society and in the economy is making it more imperative to learn the tricks of the brain.  That is, how to accelerate your learning and improve your memory. Like everyone else, you will soon need to learn in better and more powerful ways.  If you do not, the growth of knowledge and advances in technology will make much of what you presently know obsolete.  If you do, you not only will comfortably adapt to the future, but you will also participate in recreating it.  

Since the late 1970s we have been living through a watershed in human history, that is, the computer revolution.  There is no going back to the way things were.  Both our society and the economy are notably different from the way they used to be.  The computer revolution has been changing the way we work and the way we form and conduct personal relationships.  Indeed, it has been changing the way we live.

But what part of our lives is changing the most?  It has arguably had the deepest and most sustained effects of the way in which we use and understand our own minds.  If we look at the profession of psychology, you’ll see that he influence of computers and computer science is unmistakable.  Consider as an example, MIT psychologist Steven Pinker’s 1997 book titled How the Mind Works, which draws largely on research based on computer models. 

Can understanding how your mind works helps you to use it more effectively?  As you will see, the answer is a resounding “yes.”.  The computer age is different from the era that came before, but not just in the kinds of machinery or even the kinds of ideas that we use.  As futurologist Alvin Toffler has repeatedly pointed out, we live in a world where change is faster, deeper and more ubiquitous than ever before. 

The development of computer technology has contributed substantially to an increasingly rapid pace of change.  Coincidentally, it is also the source of ideas that will help us adapt to and thrive in the world of perpetual change that it has helped produce.  Where do we see change happening?  Look at the world of education.  Think back a few decades.  As recently as the 1960s and ‘70s, most middle-class parents believed that children who did well in school would grow up assured of a decent-paying and personally rewarding job.. Today that kind of confidence seems more like complacency. 

What went wrong?  Most people just do not trust the system that much anymore.  In the 1960s most parents felt they could count on education as being a safe and certain road to their children’s economic success.  In 2005, parents no longer view their children’s formal schooling to be any guarantee of future success.  Fast forward to 2009 and amid the gloom and doom of recession, the buzzword is adaptability and the ability to learn quickly.

Today preparing for the future means preparing for constant change.  After all, what good is a head crammed full of facts if those facts will become obsolete in a few short years?  At a time of change, less is more.  Won’t the people who can keep up with the speed of progress be the ones who will get ahead?    Teaching children to adapt will prove far more useful than teaching them any concrete set of facts.  Put simply, we should all learn new ways of learning and  techniques to improve our memory and accelerate our learning.  Teaching our children  these brain skills and memory training will help them cope with a life filled with changes.