1: “All of the machines hooked up to the child showed that her vitals were within normal ranges,” Charles Duhigg writes in Smarter Faster Better.
The nurse looking after the baby in the NICU, or neonatal intensive care unit, didn’t seem worried.
But to Darlene, something seemed off.
She alerted the attending doctor, who then ordered several tests.
“When the labs came back, they showed that the baby was in the early stages of sepsis,” Charles writes, “a potentially fatal whole-body inflammation caused by a severe infection.
“The condition was moving so fast,” he notes, “that had they waited any longer, the newborn would have likely died.
“Instead, she recovered fully,” he shares.
So what allowed Darlene to see what the other nurse missed?
Researchers who have studied this phenomenon say people like Darlene have “a propensity to create pictures in their minds of what they expect to see,” Charles writes.
“These people tell themselves stories about what’s going on as it occurs. They narrate their own experiences within their heads.”
Psychologists refer to this skill as “creating mental models.”
And, “understanding how people build mental models has become one of the most important topics in cognitive psychology,” Charles writes.
“All people rely on mental models to some degree,” he notes. “We all tell ourselves stories about how the world works, whether we realize we’re doing it or not. . .
“But some of us build more robust models than others. They envision the conversations they’re going to have with more specificity, and imagine what they are going to do later that day in greater detail. . .
“As a result, they’re better at choosing where to focus and what to ignore.”
Which brings us back to Darlene and the sick baby.
“The secret of people like Darlene,” Charles observes, “is that they are in the habit of telling themselves stories all the time. They engage in constant forecasting. They daydream about the future and then, when life clashes with their imagination, their attention gets snagged.”
Darlene regularly pictured in her mind what healthy babies should look like.
“Then, when she glanced over and the bloody Band-Aid, distended belly, and mottled skin didn’t match the image in her mind, the spotlight in her head swung toward the child’s bassinet.”
Cognitive tunneling occurs when something suddenly catches your attention. This kind of reactive thinking can make you focus so much on one thing that you miss everything else.
But if you are constantly creating mental pictures of what you expect to see, your mind stays actively engaged.
Your attention never completely turns off. Instead, your brain keeps looking around, checking if what’s happening matches what you expect.
When something doesn’t match, you notice.
2: A group of MIT researchers studied how the most productive people build mental models.
“To do that,” Charles writes, “they convinced a midsized recruiting firm to give them access to their profit-and-loss data, employees’ appointment calendars, and the 125,000 email messages the firm’s executives had sent over the previous ten months.”
What they found was that the highest performers, the superstars, “shared a particular behavior, almost an intellectual and conversational tic:
“They loved to generate theories—lots and lots of theories, about all kinds of topics, such as why certain accounts were succeeding or failing, or why some clients were happy or disgruntled, or how different management styles influenced various employees.”
These top performers were always telling themselves stories about what they saw and heard.
“They were, in other words, much more prone to generate mental models,” he notes.
They weren’t just processing what had happened. They were constantly trying to explain why it had happened and anticipate what might happen next.
“They were more likely to throw out ideas during meetings, or ask colleagues to help them imagine how future conversations might unfold, or envision how a pitch should go.”
“A lot of these people will come up with explanation after explanation about what they just saw,” says Marshall Van Alstyne, one of the MIT researchers.
“They’ll reconstruct a conversation right in front of you, analyzing it piece by piece. And then they’ll ask you to challenge them on their take. They’re constantly trying to figure out how information fits together.”
These high performers earned an extra $10,000 a year, on average, in bonuses.
Other studies have found similar results. “People who know how to manage their attention and who habitually build robust mental models tend to earn more money and get better grades,” Charles explains.
3: The good news?
The research shows that anyone can learn to build mental models.
It begins by getting into the habit of telling yourself stories about what’s happening around you.
“These storytelling moments can be as small as trying to envision a coming meeting while driving to work,” he suggests, “forcing yourself to imagine how the meeting will start, what points you will raise if the boss asks for comments, what objections your coworkers are likely to bring up.”
The idea is to imagine, in as much detail as possible, what you expect to happen throughout your day.
“Then you’ll be prone to notice the tiny ways in which real life deviates from the narrative inside your head,” he predicts.
“If you want to become better at listening to your children, tell yourself stories about what they said to you at dinnertime last night,” Charles suggests. “Narrate your life, as you are living it, and you’ll encode those experiences deeper in your brain.”
The more actively you build these mental models, the easier it becomes to recognize what deserves your attention.
The ability to turn experiences into stories can reveal something about how a person thinks. That’s one reason some companies look for this skill when hiring.
“We look for people who describe their experiences as some kind of a narrative,” Andy Billings, a vice president at the video game giant Electronic Arts, told Charles.
“It’s a tip-off that someone has an instinct for connecting the dots and understanding how the world works at a deeper level. That’s who everyone tries to get.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: How often do you actively picture what you expect to happen before an important meeting, conversation, or event?
Action: Before your next important conversation, create a mental model. Picture how it might unfold, what the other person might say, and how you might respond. Then pay attention to what happens differently.
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