Author: Haley Byun

YAWN

Empathy is feeling with someone else.  As I read the introduction of the chapter in A Whole New Mind, I continuously found myself yawning, not because I was bored or tired, but because the author frequently mentioned the act of yawning.  ”Contagious yawning is likely a primitive empathic mechanism,” says Steven Platek, a cognitive neuroscientist.  Platek’s “research found that contagious yawners score high on various tests that measure levels of empathy” (Pink, 2005).  I found this interesting.  I consider myself a contagious yawner but not a very empathetic individual, so for my Empathy activity, I decided to complete Simon Baron-Cohen’s Empathy Quotient test.  I received a score of 40, considered “average” (females scoring about 47 and males scoring about 42).  My score was slightly below that of both men and women.  I wasn’t surprised by my score.  I can easily place myself in other people’s shoes and listen to their problems, but I never know what to do to help.  Also, many people may consider me to be inconsiderate or detached, due to my predisposition to speak before thinking and lack of certain social skills.  I think my score reflects my inability to “help” or “console” others and my independent personality.  I rarely go to others to discuss emotions, therefore, I do not know the actions to take when someone approaches me, except to just listen.

Another activity suggested in the Empathy Portfolio is the “Spot the Fake Smile” question test on BBC. I took the test a year ago and received a 100% on detecting fake smiles.  Further supporting my reasons for my EQ score.

I couldn’t apply many of the empathy concepts to careers not involved in healthcare and law, compared to the other concepts discussed in the book.  However, I found it important that empathy is a factor in many of the other concepts, such as story and symphony, that can be applied across various fields.  Empathy is required to connect to your audience or your consumers.  Understanding what they are feeling can assist in the development of new products and the treatment of patients.

Want to know how empathetic you are?  You can take the Empathy Quotient Test at the link below. Try and see what you get!

http://glennrowe.net/BaronCohen/EmpathyQuotient/EmpathyQuotient.aspx


Until It’s TOO Late…

Meaning.  Daniel Pink argues that people attempt to find meaning in their lives.  ”We are born for meaning, not pleasure, unless it is pleasure that is steeped in meaning,” says Jacob Needleman.  In other words, the “purpose” of life is to find ones own purpose in life.  I believe that this is too general.  ”Meaning” varies among individuals.  It is subjective.  Every motive or goal in life can be considered the “meaning” of life to a specific individual.  Anything can be turned into the pursuit of meaning.  Many people do not actively pursue “meaning.”  They just do what makes them happy.  Therefore, I prefer the quote by the Dalai Lama: “I believe the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we are all seeking something better in life. So I think the very motion of our life is towards happiness.”  We find meaning in what makes us happy.  We find meaning in the things that are important to us.  I feel as if we do not have to actively search for an overall meaning, because happiness is the purpose of our lives.  Maybe I’m living life “incorrectly,” but I have rarely considered an overarching purpose to my actions other than to be happy in the present or the future.

Reading through the activities suggested by Daniel Pink, I developed new ideas.  We were born to find meaning in the small moments and actions that construct our past and present.  Many people do not attempt to find a meaning to their entire life until the end.  The end is when everyone looks back on their life and asks, “What have I accomplished? What have I contributed? WHY?” People may work toward a life goal (a meaning for the future) and believe that this is my “why.”  People can ask themselves these same questions before they have reached the end.  However, things change.  You may have a “why” to guide your future actions and decisions, but you cannot fully understand the entire meaning of your life with a future ahead of you.  You cannot define your life until you have finished living it.  Even if you have already asked yourself these defining questions, you will ask yourself the same questions in the end, because experiences can change an individual.  Experience can change meaning.

The “Say Thanks” and “20-10 Test” activities fueled my thinking.

Say Thanks

“Feelings of gratitude enhance well-being and deepen one’s sense of meaning.”  I have written short gratitude letters in the past to my parents.  However, I have not written one to the people I consider my “other parents.”  I am unable to read it aloud to the recipients for the assignment, but I hope to do so in the near future.  I will not share the gratitude letter on the blog, but I will share my experience with these people.

I have known my best friend for over ten years.  We met in first grade and have maintained our friendship through the many changes faced by teenagers in middle and high school.  I have definitely slept over at her house more than 100 times.  We have many memories to share, and in each memory, her parents are always hiding in the background.  Her parents have treated me as their “other daughter.”  I have always been grateful for everything they have done for me.  Every visit felt like home.  They made me feel comfortable.  They made me laugh.  And most importantly, they made me feel like family.  I want to thank them properly sometime in the future for everything they have done for me.  A gratitude letter is just the beginning.

This activity led me to ponder the meaning in each of my memories with specific people and in each of their actions.  It reminded me of the different people I am thankful to have in my life and to show my gratitude before it is too late.

20-10 Test

If I had $20 million in the bank, I definitely would not continue to do what I am doing now.  I think the 20 test is dumb.  There are many things you cannot do without money.  If I had $20 million in the bank, I would want to travel around the world with my mom.  The reason I am attending college is to find a nice job and earn a satisfying income, so I can do the things I would do if I had $20 million in the bank.  Having a job is a necessity.  Without money, you cannot satisfy your basic survival needs.  We can refer to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs mentioned in Conley’s video.  To reach self-actualization, one must satisfy physiological and safety needs first (adequate food, housing, etc.).  I appreciate the 10 test more.  I believe it is more reasonable, because you do not access to an overflowing bank account.  Therefore, it makes you decide what is truly important.  If I only had 10 years to live, I would still want to travel with my mom, but this wouldn’t be possible.  This makes me decide.  Do I complete my education to get a job and earn an income, so I can travel, or do I quit school and find other things I want to do that don’t require money?  The difference between an unlimited amount of money and a limited amount of time causes a slight difference in response.

This activity makes you consider the current “meaning” you have of your life.  It encourages you to ponder what you truly want to do with your life.  However, until there is no future left to live, you cannot set a “meaning” to your entire life.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (Source: Wikipedia)


Story: Dream Come True?

A story delivers a significant emotional impact on the audience. An emotional connection with the audience can facilitate the sale of a new product and increase customer satisfaction. Mark Turner writes, “Narrative imagining–story–is the fundamental instrument of thought… Most of our experience, our knowledge and our thinking is organized as stories.” Everyone, including doctors and traditional “left-brain” thinkers, can benefit from story-telling practice.

Daniel Pink provides various activities in the story portfolio to encourage readers to practice their own story-telling skills. The first suggested activity is to write a mini-saga (an extremely short story), consisting of only fifty words.

Thrilled, she accepted the casting offer. Dreams had become reality. She traveled to an isolated cabin in the Himalayas with cast and crew, greeted by an elderly woman. A warning from friends: “RUN!” Screams escaped the cabin as she slid down the slopes, wishing it was still just a dream.


Save Time: Speed Read

How much do we read in our daily lives?  Books, e-mails, articles, textbooks, test questions, etc.  Every week, I am required to read one chapter of my textbook for Psychology 1101.  Each chapter consists of approximately forty to fifty pages and takes me two hours to read and comprehend.  An average reader reads at 125 – 250 wpm (words per minute) with 60% comprehension.  How useful would  it be to read at 500 – 1000 wpm.  You can check your own reading speed through various online speed reading tests.  I used two websites:

  1. http://www.free-speed-reading.com/ - 355 wpm
  2. http://www.readingsoft.com/ - 265 wpm with 100% comprehension

Of course, the speed varies by passage.  The significantly lower reading speed of the second test is due to the instructions: “Don’t speed but read normally to find your present reading level.”  The instructions led me to read at a slower pace.

Slightly above the average reader, I still want to increase my reading speed to the 500 – 1000 wpm range.  Although this requires much dedication and practice, why not start it off as a homework assignment?  WikiHow provides the following tips:

  1. Have your eyes checked
  2. Get rid of distractions
  3. Train yourself not to reread
  4. Use your hand/finger to guide your reading
  5. Stop reading to yourself (quit subvocalization)
  6. Practice reading blocks of words
  7. Practice

I had my eyes checked in August, so I continued down the list and completed practice activities.  Activities included learning to read blocks of words and quieting the inner voice when reading.  One type of activity (stop reading to yourself) is shown in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPOIZ6DGXWE.  I practiced the skill with different texts online and discovered that stopping subvocalization was fairly simple.  However, grouping blocks of words together proved to be more difficult.  The goal of grouping words is to process the group of words without having to focus on each individual word.

Text grouping (Source: WikiHow)

This is done by the adoption of different eye movement patterns.  There are three different eye movement patterns:

The three different eye movement patterns. (Source: http://braindance.com/bdiread2.htm)

The first pattern looks at each word one at a time. The second pattern still looks at every word, but in groups.  The third pattern processes only the key words by scanning vertically and horizontally at the same time.  By learning to group words, an individual can increase their reading speed.

If you want to learn more about speed reading, the following blog post provides a thorough alternative explanation of how to get started.

http://pianoer.wordpress.com/2006/02/05/speed-reading-techniques/

With a lot of practice, I am sure I can improve my reading speed, and you can too.


The Old and the New

Wikipedia defines industrial engineering as “a branch of engineering dealing with the optimization of complex processes or systems.”  Can you name any influential industrial engineers without Google?  I couldn’t.  However, with the assistance of Google and Wikipedia, I was able to identify three influential individuals in the field of industrial engineering: Frederick Winslow Taylor, Timothy D. Cook, and Michael Terry Duke.  Any of these names sound familiar?

Frederick Winslow Taylor (Source: Frederick Taylor University)

If you had the grand opportunity to take extensive notes on every chapter of Out of Many: A History of the American People in your AP U.S. History class, then you may have heard of Frederick Winslow Taylor.  Taylor was an influential engineer during the Progressive Era and a leader of the Efficiency Movement.  He is often referred to as the father of scientific management (Taylorism).  The Efficiency Movement was a movement aimed at identifying and eliminating wastes in industry to optimize systems and fuel the growth of industrial nations.  Taylor directly contributed to the movement through the development of scientific management, a theory analyzing and synthesizing workflows to improve work productivity.  Scientific management consists of four main principles (NetMBA):

  1. “Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.”
  2. “Scientifically select, train, and develop each worker rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.”
  3. “Cooperate with the workers to ensure that the scientifically developed methods are being followed.”
  4. “Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so the managers apply the scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.”

Many manufacturing factories successfully implemented the principles of scientific management, doubling and tripling productivity.  Henry Ford is one of many people who adopted the principles of Taylorism.  Over time, others have expanded upon the scientific management theory, and aspects of the theory can still be observed in modern corporations, military, and sports.

Timothy D. Cook (Source: Softpedia)

Timothy D. Cook.  Does this name ring any bells?  It should.  We look around in a room full of people, and we see that half of them are on their iPods, iPhones, or MacBooks.  On August 24, 2011, Cook was named the CEO of Apple Inc. after the resignation of Steve Jobs (may he rest in peace).  With a B.S. degree in industrial engineering from Auburn University and his MBA from Duke University, Cook joined Apple in 1998 as the Senior VP for Worldwide Operations.  Throughout his experience at Apple Inc., Cook has been credited with the complete restructuring of Apple’s manufacturing operations after insisting that Apple close its factories and warehouses around the world.  Cook outsourced manufacturing to Asian suppliers.  In result, the company was able to reduce inventory levels and improve its supply chain, improving margins on all Apple products.  Cook’s production and operational skills have been critical to Apple’s success.

Michael Terry Duke (Source: World's Luxury Guide)

The U.S. News & World Report ranks the Georgia Institute of Technology industrial engineering program as the best in the nation.  Michael Terry Duke earned a B.S. degree in industrial engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1971.  Where do you go for groceries and basic living needs?  I go to Wal-Mart, “always low prices.”  Mike Duke is the current President and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.  In 1995, Duke was hired to oversee Wal-Mart’s logistics division.  Logistics involves transporting the products from the producers to the stores in an efficient and costly manner.  Duke developed a major system redesign: the “one door per store” merchandise distribution system.  The system requires Wal-Mart trucks to carry full loads for every store delivery, reducing miles, greenhouse gas emissions, and docking space.  In addition to logistics, Duke has developed the Sustainability Product Index to measure the sustainability of all of Wal-Mart’s suppliers’ products in energy, material efficiency, and natural resources.  Mike Duke is successfully able to incorporate the importance of the people and environment into the company, encouraging nearby farms to grow crops and reducing carbon emissions.  As an industrial engineer, Duke has accomplished more than save Wal-Mart large sums of money, he has contributed to the community and included the opinions of the consumers to make a difference.


Doctor, Doctor, Industrial Engineering?

Doctor.  It’s considered the “predestined” career path of an average Asian.  As a child, I constructed a list of jobs to consider: firefighter, teacher, astronaut, doctor, lawyer, etc.  “Doctor” remained on my list until the last year of junior high, when a call to the counselor’s office completely altered my expectations of the future.

Middle school counselors across Gwinnett County were informing highly motivated students of a new school, the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology.  The fall of 2007 commenced as approximately two hundred young students from all over the county arrived at the single, small building located on the Duluth High School campus.  The school curriculum required students to take “Introduction to Engineering.”  Until taking this course, I hadn’t known engineering even existed.  During the first week of school, the teacher introduced the class to the various disciplines of engineering: aerospace, biomedical, chemical, mechanical, ocean, etc.  That week, my childhood dream of becoming a medical doctor transformed to that of becoming an engineer.

Gwinnett School of Math, Science, and Technology (Source: GSMST)

By the end of junior year, I had completed three engineering courses.  However, I still wasn’t sure of a definite future college major or career path.  I discovered my interest in industrial engineering during a discussion with my friend.  My friend, assuming industrial engineering was equivalent to industrial design, was telling me her goals to study industrial engineering at Georgia Tech.  Not knowing the role of industrial engineers, I searched it up on Google.  Wikipedia informed me: “Industrial engineering is a branch of engineering dealing with the optimization of complex processes or systems.”  As I read more about industrial engineering, I became more confident of my future goals.

By the second semester of senior year, the college acceptances had begun.  After being selected as a Presidential Scholar at the University of Southern California, I had the opportunity to visit the campus and learn more about the school and its programs.  The students were separated by “schools”: business, engineering, film, etc.  The engineering group was large.  However, when the group was further separated by discipline, I was the only industrial engineer major.  This gave me an opportunity to have an extended conversation with an industrial engineering student and professor.  I was able to ask every question I had, and the student and professor provided a lot of information on the things I didn’t know about industrial engineering.  After my experience at USC, I confirmed my interest in industrial engineering.

University of Southern California (Source: USC)

Now, I am at Georgia Tech, studying to become an industrial engineer.  By joining the field of industrial engineering, I hope to make a difference.  Many people consider industrial engineering as “imaginary engineers.”  I have had friends tell me that I will never be able to help people like other engineers can.  They cannot be more wrong.  I have yet to decide what track of industrial engineering I will follow, but I know that there is more to industrial engineering than helping large corporations save money.  There are industrial engineers who work in hospitals to provide better customer service and increase the efficiency of organ transplant matches.  Industrial engineering is more than reducing costs.  It’s also the consideration of the customers’ needs and preferences to satisfy the general target population.

(Source: Georgia Tech)