"Where did I put my cup? Oh yeah." "What's the name of that variety of mountain laurel? Oh yeah."
I talk to myself all day. A lot of it is when I'm retrieving something from memory in one of those "at the tip of my tongue" moments. So often, all I need to do is announce out loud to myself what I'm trying to remember, and it appears.
Other times, that's me standing behind my seat at a conference table during a meeting. That's me standing at the back of the auditorium during a presentation. That's me during a Red Sox game, circumnavigating Fenway Park on the upper decks.
"Who was the TV writer who made, walk and talk, a signature style? Oh yeah." That's me pacing while talking to myself.
That's not me in a comfortable chair, losing myself in a favorite book for an hour or two in the evening. That's not me taking satisfaction proofreading the comprehensive audit of our workers' compensation insurance policy while the sunlight moves across my office windows in the late afternoon.
All three are me engaging a complex interaction among the cognitive preferences that can produce a neuropreference when we engage them; Mover, Reader, and Talker. My Mover preference is active, my Reader is selective, my Talker is ridiculously active.
Herein is an important difference between the Kairos Assessment of cognitive activity and all those assessments that will tell you whether or not you're a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn or a queen. You can measure your cognitive activation yourself in the real world. You can check our work for accuracy.
Here's a quickstart for Mover, Reader, and Talker.
Mover
Set out on one of your routine physical exercises. Set a stopwatch. Note when you feel the flow kick in. Now note when you lose interest in the activity. Losing interest is different than physical fatigue, although they can be coincident. What you're measuring is the duration of the neurostimulus that kicks in when we engage a specific cognitive process -- in this case, activating the large muscles that move our skeletons.
Reader
Pick up something to read. Parallel to the physical exercise, read something you pick up by choice rather than by necessity. Again, set a stopwatch; note when you recognize the flow, note when you start turning pages without meaningful retention.
Talker
When you're asked to explain something that falls within your area of expertise, usually prompted by a question, note when you start and note when you reach a natural finish. Since so much speaking is social and often interrupted, it often takes a few samples to find the natural arc to your speaking. With this preference, if you're not sure, your friends know.
You want to know all this because people who fight their natural tendencies get diagnosed with learning disabilities. People who learn to leverage their natural tendencies are called talented. The difference between a talent and a disability is know-how. That's why "Know thyself" was inscribed at the home temple of the Oracle of Delphi.
These posts, and what drives all my work, is supporting the know-how to know ourselves.
Warm regards,
Francis Sopper
REFERENCED IN THIS LETTER:
mountain laurel: https://www.conservect.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/kalmia-species-and-nathan-hale.pdf
Oh yeah: https://youtu.be/Wmv07XfeC1E
puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn or a queen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9hfRrpYtxo
Oracle of Delphi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythia