ENIAC, the first computer capable of general problem solving, consisted of 70,000 resistors, 17,468 vacuum tubes, 10,000 capacitors, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. At 27 tons, it filled an entire room, consumed 150 kW of power and required six people to program its routines. Today, a chip of silicon the size of a grain of sand has the same computing power as ENIAC. ENIAC went into operation in 1946. In the past sixty years more and more jobs have been transformed until now almost every mode of employment involves complex information processing in some way shape or form.
Today a very high proportion of us work extensively with data and information, needing to regularly employ creative problem-solving skills and exert focused mental energy. The most valuable commodity in the modern workplace is our brain rather than our hands. But the constant whirl of meetings and conference calls, e-mails and instant messages stresses and dilutes our focus and attention, disrupting the brain’s ability to form memories and stimulate learning. Our jobs may actually prevent us from developing and deepening the skills we need to succeed.
As ever, it seems that science will provide the escape route for its own maze. Researchers have shown that even adult brains can grow and change under the right conditions, demonstrating that we can improve our ability to solve problems by employing the right kind of brain training.
In a study to prove this, a team from the Universities of Michigan and Bern devised a novel training protocol to progressively strengthen visual and aural working-memory with a single exercise. After just 19 days of training, each person in a group of graduate students increased their fluid intelligence by at least 40% over and above the scores of those in a control group. The potential benefits to our job performance of this kind of jump in mental ability are substantial.
What better way to shine at work so that you can get in line for that promotion, or to prepare for a switch to a more mentally challenging and more lucrative field of work? It’s always better to think smarter than to work harder.
However, before investing time and money in brain training software, be sure to buy a program that will produce the gains you want. The novel training mechanism developed by the university researchers is the only one that has shown these kinds of improvements in fluid intelligence. (In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I was so convinced of the broad benefits of the dual n-back training method that my company uses it in its brain training software, Mind Sparke Brain Fitness Pro.)
In a downturn like this with unemployment on the rise and salaries stagnating, it makes sense to increase the value of your most valuable asset. This new training method can help us do just that.
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