BenchNews

I heard on public radio the other day about a book called Blink, the author was on the show, and was explaining what his book was about. It basically broke down to how your subconscious was more capable of making correct decisions over that of rational/deliberate thought.

He explained that a profesional, someone who has spent a great portion of their life in a particular field, could make a flash decision that carried more weight than a year of carefull research. He gave an example of a museum that after a full year of carefull examination had decided to pay millions of dollars for a Greek antiquity, only to have several experts in thier field, in a blink of an eye, reveal that it was a fake.
I have for some time been wanting to try and explain why it is that a five minute interuption while working at the bench, can add a minimum of 20 minutes onto the total time needed to finish a particular job. I would imagine that this holds true with any other goal orientented job, but when trying to explain to most people it only elicits bewildered looks.
I have also heard a lot about research done on athletes that tries to determine what goes on in the brain when an athlete is performing his best, when he or she is in the zone. The results of the research, from what I understand is that nothing is going on in the brain at all. That your consious thought all but completely shuts down , and allows your subconsious reflexes to take over. Thereby letting your body and mind do what it has trained to, without you in there mucking it all up.
So, does that explain why small interuptions can considerably lengthen the time it takes to finish a job? Because that interuption breaks you out of the “zone”, requiring you to think about whats going on around you. Well, I don’t know for certain, but it sounds damn good to me. Its certainly a good argument for getting more work done if that nagging boss would just leave you the hell alone