Smart People Choke Under Pressure

People perceived as the most likely to succeed might also be the most likely to crumble under pressure. A new study finds that individuals with high working-memory capacity, which normally allows them to excel, crack under pressure and do worse on simple exams than when allowed to work with no constraints. Those with less capacity score low, too, but they tend not to be affected by pressure.

Comments

Thinking Inside The Square

[fembots]

The friendly article mentioned that pressure causes smart people to think "Oh no, I can't screw up".

While it can be true since it's posted on the internet, personally I believe they (i.e. I am not one) choke when they're required to do things under a strict guideline, which restricts them from thinking outside the square, but it's thinking outside the square that makes them so smart in the first place.

So it's more like "Oh no, what are these rules and how do I follow them?" or "WhyTF should I do these?".

On the other hand, less smart people, like those who upgrade from Windows 1.0 to Windows Longhorn religously because MS told them so, are usually well trained to follow a certain set of rules, so regardless of the pressure/threats/deadline, they know only one thing - "Follow these procedures and policies and I'll be okay".

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[Spy der Mann]

Also, people trained to follow rules choke when they're asked to be inventive. A friend works as an executive in a major fast food business, and he told me how they classify employees according to their way of solving problems (psychometric test). The worst thing you can do to somebody who "follows the rules" is ask him to be inventive. He'll break up in no time.

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[techno-vampire]

...what does a calculus exam have to do with thinking outside the box?

Well, there are a number of techniques you can use to solve a problem in calculus, and some are better/quicker on certain classes of problem than others. Picking the right one for each problem on the test instead of just automatically using the most recent one you've learned gets more questions answered faster, leaving you more time for the hardest ones.

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[dnoyeb]

I have seen something related. I work with lots of engineers. Most want to be told what to do. They seem to want to put a high level of thinking on a very focused task. When the thinking becomes broad, they tend shy away.

People seem to need rules to break.

In my experience with engineering, the more you can work _without_ information the more valuable you are. But engineers always want to get all the information before they begin...

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[The_Laughing_God]

When I was in high school, I admired the "tough" teachers, who gave hard exams and had "old fashioned standards", three of my math teachers were like that. They were proud that they routinely gave homework problems that even engineer parents couldn't solve (with the limited methods the kids had been taught).

I left high school early, and got an A in Calculus at Harvard, where the course was rather loosely structured: lecture attendance was optional; you took exams when you felt like it; and there was a pool of fresh exams, so you could take a different exam on each topic (up to twice) if you later gained a deeper insight into a concept, emphasized the wrong concepts in your self-study or simply blew a test.

My high school calc teacher was rather offended by my departure (she'd openly said I'd never amount to anything) and when I mentioned my Harvard "A" to the department chairman on a return visit, she challenged me to take HER final [She'd apparently done this with other students who'd left early, and none had passed.) I passed, but I didn't do particularly well. (Much as the engineering parents might've done, I suppose)

However, I stayed in touch with several of my fellow Honors Math students who had aced her course and went to college in Cambridge. I think they'd all agree that I remained better and more creative in basic calculus than them -- even the ones who went to MIT (I'm not dissing MIT; I've long been associated with that school)

Though I have always been a big fan of alternative approaches to education, it was over ten years and two doctorates later before I realized that these "tough, old-school" teachers hadn't been teaching very well at all. Their "tough" problems really tested how well you retained the trickier examples from of their homework problems.

Though they were quite good at instilling the fundamentals of Algebra 2, Calculus, etc., they hadn't really given their students much skill at "free-form" math. Sadly, in the real world, all math problems are free form: creativity and insight are invaluable, but limiting yourself to specific chosen techniques is almost always a meaningless exercise.

It really saddens me, because I still have a profound respect for "old school" teachers. The problem is: just being "tough" and "old school" isn't enough, and I think many such dedicated teachers would change their methods somewhat and become even more outstanding teachers, if only someone could make them fully understand this one weakness in their teaching, but instead they believe that their daily experience reaffirms the validity of their methods.

I was fortunate to have one teacher, in two different high school courses, who had been a former engineer and valued creative solutions. He also became our Math League coach in those years, and suddenly we went from the bottom of our local league to the top of the state [I still grin when I remember walking through the cafeteria "staging area" for the meets, and hearing the former top schools asking "who are these guys] Our success wasn't just due to his teaching -we barely did any prep, compared to the Powerhouses in our league- but was equally due to his encouragement of creative thinkers, including freshmen (like myself and a coupple of others who I fully admit were more talented at math than I was). Before his tenure, only the Seniors with the best grades (and a few exceptional Juniors) were encouraged to join.

That last point is important: the juniors/seniors on the team when I was a freshman were good, and certainly knew more math than we underclassmen did, make no mistake, but we had, nonetheless, been near the bottom of our league, so I can only guess that they hadn't done well with problems for which they hadn't been specifically prepped, and our math league categories leaned heavily toward "free form" problems, as opposed to "solve this equation".

Suddenly I'm flooded with repressed high school memories. Man, what a waste of life tht would've been, If it hadn't been for the girls [who says geeks can't date like demons?]. Just for the record, though, this isn't high school bitterness. I'm a 40-something, and the past two decades have offered many fresher things to be bitter about!

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[Cryptnotic]

If it hadn't been for the girls [who says geeks can't date like demons?].

I think geeks generally do date like demons (bad manners, poor social skills), which may be part of the cause of their general unpopularity.

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[ArsenneLupin]

Sadly, in the real world, all math problems are free form: creativity and insight are invaluable, but limiting yourself to specific chosen techniques is almost always a meaningless exercise.

I beg to differ. There is one endeavor where "sticking to specific techniques" is needed for success: SQL injection against ASP-based websites.

With SQL injection, you do not get access to the full power of SQL, but only have access to a limited subset of commands. You must solve the problem (root the site) using that limited subset.

Maybe the site uses MS Access rather than Sequel sewer? Bye bye chaining commands using semicolons. And GROUP BY / HAVING 1=1 hacks become unavailable as well.

Maybe it's one of those rare insecure Php sites? Bye bye using the all-powerful single-quote character. You have to find a field element that is being used as an (unchecked) numeric value (or as a sort key...) because you can't get out of a string. But you can't get into a string either, so each string needs to be constructed laboriously using char(48,119,110,101,100,33) or something equivalent.

Or often, you don't get to see the actual error message, but get only two slightly different high-level messages, depending on the exact error: welcome to the wonderful world of reading tables bit by bit!

Or, worst of all: field size constraints (your leet SQL command needs to fit into a very limited space), or characters that are "forbidden" for no reason at all (I once came accross a site, that although running SQL server would apparently not allow me to input semicolons (%3B). It was an input filter thingy though, and replacing them with linefeeds (%0A, or even %0A--%0A) let me in.

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[hwoolery]

An 'A' at Harvard?!?! Why that's but a 'B' anywhere else... except for Stanford where it would be whatever comes after an 'A+'.

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[Mycroft_VIII]

That dart challenge (as stated) is easy if indoors. Shoot straight down. Fasten the gun exactly over the center at the given distance then pull the trigger.
Gets tougher if you have to do it outside (wind) or can't do vertical or both.

Mycroft

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[localman]

Your example seems to me to be entirely about free form creativity! You may be using a subset of SQL, but you're using a superset of that subset's intended usefulness. So I would say that rooting like that takes quite a bit of thinking outside the box.

Cheers.

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[Ibag]

Speaking as an MIT student, I think that there are two sides to the coin. On one hand, if you don't have a large enough bag of tricks, your creativity might not be enough to help you solve a problem in a reasonable time frame. On the other hand, if you don't have creativity, you won't be able to soslve the problems tht your tricks don't cover, and you might not see how to apply the tricks you have anyway.

Unfortunately, creativity is not something that can be easily taught, and the creative people will remain creative unless they have are told that different but correct solutions are wrong.

However, this still leaves two options for teaching creative people: you can focus on methods and hope that their creativity allows them to apply and expand them, or you can teach them background and hope that they either can make a contribution to theory or can manage when they get to problems they weren't taught.

I'm fortunate to be a mathematician, so I don't get too bogged down in methods, but I've taken enough engineering related courses to know that some people teach more "how" than "why". Does this kill people's creativity? To the extent that people will take the path of least resistance and do what they know when they can, yes, but I think that they still have paralells to draw when they hit brick walls. On the other hand, people who were more free might have a better understanding of what is going on, but if they can't do the integrals that they have to do, their creativity has failed them.

It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Yes, if you give someone a hammer they might try to treat everything as a nail, but if you only give someone the tools to make new tools, there are many things they will do slower, and still some things not at all. Which is better depends on what you are doing. If you are tasked with building a good engineer, though, you have a better chance of making him good enough if you give him enough tools to do what he needs to do.

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[Mycroft_VIII]

I'm actually at my best under pressure, provided I know enough of the parameters. Whithout enough experience however I have issues. With too much time I start thinking about to many what-if's and borrowing trouble and nit picking my own decisions.
I know exactly what you mean about how others think being hard to deal with. In area's where I know what I'm doing and the right thing needs to be done NOW I find I have little patience for 'idiots'. I put that in quotes because they're not really idiots(at least usually not), they just don't think like I do and the conflict drives me nuts. I see with crystal clarity the 'right' way to fix something and start to do so, and usually half way through someone tries to push me in a different direction. It's really hard, not to mention frustrating, to explain things that took years of experience to put together into an almost instinctive gestalt when time is short.

Mycroft

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[batemanm]

...that pressure causes smart people to think "Oh no, I can't screw up".

No it talks about high working-memory capacity and says nothing about smart people. The title of the submitted article is a little misleading. This appears to be the original article, while here is some of the other work, includes sports performance as well maths.

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[virtualXTC]

We need to think outside of a box of engineers: Who says that "individuals with high working-memory capacity" are smart? I know a lot of people that can memorize just about anything, it doesn't mean they can apply that knowledge (unlike a good engineer). People who can easily memorize aren't necessarily any smarter than those that can't. Most physicists I know would rather derive everything than memorize it - that's true intelligence!

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[tootlemonde]

Unfortunately, creativity is not something that can be easily taught...

In a recent article, Mandelbrot shows three common techniques that have kept him creative even today when he's nearly 80:

1. I always saw a close kinship between the needs of "pure" mathematics and a certain hero of Greek mythology, Antaeus. The son of Earth, he had to touch the ground every so often in order to reestablish contact with his Mother; otherwise his strength waned. To strangle him, Hercules simply held him off the ground. Back to mathematics. Separation from any down-to-earth input could safely be complete for long periods -- but not forever.
2. A recent, important turn in my life occurred when I realized that something that I have long been stating in footnotes should be put on the marquee. I have engaged myself, without realizing it, in undertaking a theory of roughness.
3. To give an example, let me return to the stock market and the weather. It turns out ... that the techniques I developed for studying turbulence -- like weather -- also apply to the stock market.

Mandelbrot's techniques can be roughly sumarized as (1) periodically return to basic principles or direct observation; (2) pay closer attention to obscure or peripheral phenomenon; and (3) apply techniques from apparently unrelated disciplines.

I suspect that part of the problem isn't that creativity is hard to teach but that it isn't taught at all. Creativity might be like any other technique. If you know it, you use it.

I wonder if the missing ingredient in creativity is arrogance, a quality much on display in Mandelbrot's article. Creative people think their rightful place is standing on the shoulders of giants. They've been told the view is better up there.

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[Taladar]

That is one of the things with our (german) education system that gets me everytime when tests come up. I can't memorize details because in the years before college when I learned half a dozen programming languages and lots of other stuff on my own I only learned the basic structures knowing the details were only one search in google away. Tests create a totally artificial environment for todays standards where you can use no written material at all and have to memorize all that detail bullshit you forget a few weeks later anyway since you don't use it.

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[JollyFinn]

You made misconception of working memory and memorizing things.
Working memory is tiny little cache that fits 7+-2 items, thats the memory people use to operate things. Its not a permanent storage its few registers to keep few things in your conciusness, for quick recovery.
However that working memory can fit ANYSIZED objects there. So with experience on certain subject you start considering bigger compounds as single object, and with that you can fit bigger things in your working memory.
Consider you have L1cache, RAM and DISK. L1cache is working memory that well you erase all the time, when you operate on things, and it lasts few seconds, RAM is short term memory that holds for half hour or something similar [Or less my disk isn't error free], and long term memory is disk where people do MEMORIZE things.

Smart people have good working memory and short time memory while knowledgeable people have written lots of stuff to their permanent storage.

Now I have good working memory and reasonable RAM but my disk has lots of bad sectors, and error correction coprocessor that might retrieve the data in a few hours too late...

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[gr8_phk]

Most engineers and engineering professors are "left-brained". I listened to a lecture once from a guy who studied this (he was after a position at our school). He said the few right-brainers (creative people) who went into engineering shifted to a more left-brained way of thinking by graduation. I am a right-brainer and was fortunate enough to have taken a test early on and can confirm this - I went back and took it again. He also said the right-brainers have a tendancy to work as an engineer for a few years, and then give it up entirely and do something completely different. I have often been temped to do exactly that. I'm not convinced the education shifts you from right to left, it may just improve your ability to think in a more structured way without reducing creativity. He didn't address that issue, but I don't think college reduced my creativity too much even though my test score shifted closer to center on the test.

Unfortunately engineering school tends to drive away the creative people.

Re:Thinking Inside The Square

[kill -9 $$]

I had a linear algebra teacher who did the same exact thing. I'd dread his exams before hand because you knew it was going to be stuff that you couldn't really study for. All you could do is understand the concepts best you could and go in and engage the gray matter.

At the same time it was the most fulfilling experience cause when you got done with that exam you felt like you effectively doubled your knowledge on the subject, saw new ways to apply the concepts, and/or just knew you had the stuff down cold.

Everybody hated him as a teacher, I never took another math class without him, unless it was a subject he just didn't teach.

That was the only professor I ever found who had a knack for writing exams like that, I wish more could even though they do stress you out a bit.

Ah...

[Kaihaku]

Interesting, I wonder if I can argue that point to my professors after a timed exam.

Is this a veiled attempt...

[daveschroeder]

...for people who think of themselves as "geeks" to be able to justify why they fuck up under pressure?

I hope not.

Re:Is this a veiled attempt...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's just that the higher you are, the farther you fall.

Gifted people are much more likely to suffer from underachivement problems than other people, usually due to perfectionism, social anxiety issues, etc.

Personally, I suffer from severe perfectionism. Many people wish they were perfectionists. They're always perceived as the people who excel and do whatever it takes to complete something to the best of the ability. That image is entirely false. Perfectionism is the leading cause of gifted underachivement in academics (and, I would assume, "real world" achievement).

Try to imagine it like this. You receive a homework assignment from a teacher (if you're an employed adult, replace it with a project from a manager or something -.-). You dread doing it, so you procrastinate. That's no big deal, of course. Most people procrastinate. But then you start working. Rather than concentrate on the big picture - getting a good grade, getting the job done, whatever - you focus on the little things. Is this sentence typed correctly? Is that the right form of this? What if people think this is stupid? You get confused; you have no idea what you are doing anymore. You finally dredge through it, and rather than feel accomplishment, you feel dread. Afterall, it will be graded and judged. What if it isn't good enough? People will think you're stupid? For a perfectionist, that's a terrible feeling. It's one emotional drain after another.

While this isn't directly related to the article, there are some connections. Personally, it has ruined my life. Nothing can make you feel good about yourself. I received a 1580 "equivalent" on my PSAT's last year. Did I feel happy about it? No. I felt so incompetent for missing that math problem, and so amazingly stupid for not getting that reading comprehension question rated as "medium" right.

I'm failing 5 out of 6 of my classes right now, basically assuring that any hopes of a succesful life is ruined. It's a great feeling.

Sorry, it's just that your post angered me a little bit. Didn't mean to rant. -.-

Re:Is this a veiled attempt...

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop reading and posting so much on slashdot. Spend more time reading your books.

The most important thing anybody can learn is how to learn. Find somebody to teach you how to learn.

Again, stay away from sites like slashdot.

Re:Is this a veiled attempt...

[RocketRainbow]

There are some rude anonymous replies to the parent comment and I'd like to set the record straight. Perfectionism comes with pressure to achieve - it's not automatically a trait that comes with intelligence, it appears when a person judges his or her self worth by what is achieved. The perfectionist feels like "not a real person" and feels a constant need to prove himself or herself.

For many young women, this means a possibly fatal eating disorder. The parent poster is failing classes and generally ensuring an unhappy life. Psychologists can help with this problem. There are psychologists that specialize in eating disorders who would find this sort of thing quite familiar. Also, many universities have counselling centres or psychologists in the area who are familiar with student issues.

Perfectionism is usually a problem for young people, but if you are a grown-up who is currently in a downward spiral because of perfectionism, you may be able to find someone by asking around in the abovementioned places, or by asking your doctor.

The other problem mentioned was performance anxiety. Anxious disorders can be treated with drugs (from a psychiatrist, not your personal physician) but you should also undergo some form of psychoanalysis or counselling to try and get off the drugs. If anxiety is left untreated it can turn into panic and get you hospitalized thinking that you are dying. Not my idea of a good Saturday afternoon.

Geeks unite, stand up for your health!

Re:Is this a veiled attempt...

[bar-agent]

Many people wish they were perfectionists.

I sure as hell don't. There are several mottos I live by. One of them is "Perfect is the enemy of Good." What this means is, don't go for perfection, you won't achieve it and you'll screw up something else--a deadline or something--by trying. Make it good. Don't try to make it perfect.

Re:Is this a veiled attempt...

[Headw1nd]

I hope you read this reply, because I've suffered from much the same problem, and I'd like to throw in my two cents.

First, prefectionism really is a problem. It leads to your life being agonizing, and is actually counterproductive in terms of achievement and productivity. You realize this, which is a good start. The most difficult thing about fixing it is a belief that you need to do it all by yourself. You are not perfect, nor are you going to be. You are not self-sufficient. As a perfectionist, you undoubtably believe that if you can't solve your problems by yourself, you are not worthy of a solution. This is not true.

If I had to give practical advice for your schoolwork, I'd say this, start early, and plan less. I'm sure as soon as you get an assignment you start thinking in grandiose terms- this is a setup. Start the assignment that night, don't give yourself time to make it bigger than it needs to be. My school career was littered with half-finished masterpieces.

Another suggestion, find something you'd like to be jugded on beside academics. Having an identity beyond being smart is important, and not just as a fallback plan. Untie your self worth from achievement. It does wonders for both.

Oh, and stop apologizing. Don't worry that someone might percieve you as ranting/whining/whatever. After all, you're not perfect.

Good luck.

Re:Is this a veiled attempt...

[danila]

Check out Overcoming Procrastination by Steve Pavlina. It's a nice article (the guy is a shareware developer-turned-motivational speaker) and it gives a very simple solution, which can be surprisingly effective. Set a timer and just work 30 minutes on the task. Work on any aspect of it, do whatever you can/like/want, but work on this task. After 30 minutes go eat a cookie. Repeat. Do it 10 times and you've just spent 5 hours on the task, which was probably enough to do a lot of progress.

I came to realise recently how horrible it is to be a perfectionist. I can at least feel happy that I don't hate myself for not being 100% perfect, but because of it I dropped out of a M.Sc. program - I just couldn't force myself to do crappy projects, to go to exams not knowing the subject perfectly, etc. So I didn't go to exams and didn't finish the projects. Meanwhile, the rest of the group (95% of whom were much less capable than I was) didn't have any problem going to the exam and trying to fake knowing the subject and making some crap that often passed for a project.

It can be really sad. I can be really productive as a perfectionist, but not all tasks/projects are equally suitable. There are many things I just can't force myself to work on.

I read something about it

[CrankyFool]

I remember seeing something like this on some ... page ... let's see if I can find it ... God damnit, why is it so hard to find these pages when I'm in a hurry ?! I hate my laptop, I hate my keyboard, and I HATE MY LIFE!!! ARGH!!

Re:I read something about it

[clem]

Get a grip, man. First post isn't the end-all and be-all of life.

Whohoo!

[JanneM]

I fall apart like a month-old spongecake if someone so much as asks me for the current time. That must mean I'm really bright, right? Right?

Distraction

[ryanjensen]

Like that show, Distraction, on Comedy Central. The contestants seem smart, but fail to answer simple questions when being hit in the head with bottles or having a same-sex lapdance performed for them.

Sitting at home I can answer all those questions, but I'm sure they all could too. I'm not about to try my luck with the taser-arm-wrestling bit though.

I'm going to sound like an arrogant ass

[drinkypoo]

But if I'm as smart as people think I am, then this explains a lot. My memory is usually pretty horrible except when I'm really interested in something (oddly enough I keep remembering all these hydraulics formulas that I'm learning lately) and when I have to take a test I usually choke, and hard. I'm getting better, I think, but in general I've tested very poorly even in subjects that I know.

Re:I'm going to sound like an arrogant ass

[dgatwood]

Ditto. I find that my ability to take tests is inversely proportional to my level of indifference. I always did well on math tests, badly on history tests. In history, I would struggle to remember things that I could have recited word-for-word the day before.

I can't remember historical dates worth anything, but I can remember pi to twenty-ish digits (down from fifty-ish in high school) and long random numbers used as passwords.

When it comes to things I want to do, I thrive on pressure, as it forces me to actually get it done before I start becoming apathetic about it (which is followed quickly by loathing and tends to result in difficulty getting it done).

When it comes to things I don't want to do, I have a hard time dealing with presure because I tend to wander off and do other things and never get back to it. When I'm doing something I don't want to do, the slightest thing will distract me hopelessly.

Re:I'm going to sound like an arrogant ass

[The Tyro]

That hardly sounded arrogant... and there's probably a couple of reasons why people consider you intelligent.

First, you have expertise in an area they find inscrutable and arcane... some Alpha-geeks in this forum can probably make a computer stand up and dance, and even the average slashdotter probably has far more knowledge than the average user.

Second, geeks often fit a cultural image of an intelligent person... a sort of misfit, weird professor paradigm. Sad to say, but sometimes just looking the part gets you further than your knowledge base.

Back on the subject of choking, consider that working/performing under pressure is a learned skill... it DOES NOT come naturally... quite the opposite, in fact. Your normal reaction is 180 degrees from what you need. I'm talking about the biological human reaction of adrenaline-dump, turn-off-higher-thought, shunt-blood-to-major-muscle-groups, and fight/run-your-ass-off. Reverting to lower-animal behavior isn't exactly conducive to complex problem solving. The US military has studied this in soldiers and special operations folks. They ran guys through very realistic scenarios, complete with EKG telemetry and some other physiologic monitoring. They found that "stress inoculation" in the form of realistic training, combined with experience allowed some individuals to operate much more effectively, instead of reverting to animal-level behaviors. Bottom line: the more you do it, the better you'll get.

Relax... you're normal. That veteran's seasoning and calm is only gained by experience.

conf t

[blackomegax]

reminds me of some CCNA classes i took. the labs were complex enough to give me something to dig into, to learn. when it came down to tests, cisco's at the time were horridly simple, and i just kinda procrastinated. the same applies to linux. using it, i learn alot. on labs and tests for it...not so much. article = dead on

Ummm... Duh

[irefay]

This comes as a surprise? People with a higher IQ tend to find that things come easier to them. Thus they do not deal with stress on a regular basis. When stress levels rise beyond what they are accustomed to (self induced stress caused from perfectionism) It's circuit overload. "Normal" people have to deal with stress regularly to accomplish a task. Thus they are more accustomed to it and can readily adapt.

In an academic setting

[Infonaut]

Let's not forget that the study tested performance under pressure in an academic setting. Real life is seldom like a standardized test, with clearly defined parameters. Testing responses in an academic environment is almost by definition easier, but these sorts of tests bother me because people make assumptions like, "smart people choke under pressure" based on the results of a test that uses a very precise definition of "smart" under very specific circumstances.

Re:Smart?

[Umbral Blot]

If you feel that you are only an "inventor" or have a short attentions span that is not neccesarily something to be proud of. Most famous inventors completed their inventions, that is why that are famous. I find that if I feel like I am becoming bored on a project I try to break it up into smaller challanges, each of which is individually intersting.

And now...

[Jeremi]

... a demonstration of a web server cracking under pressure. :^P

Smart people crumble under pressure

[demon_2k]

Smart people are expected not to make mistakes and not to fail. We are all (even some of the smartest people) nothing but human, therefore we do make mistakes and sometimes fail. But, since you are smart people are likely to expect more from you.

"Let's see you get out of this.."
"You are so smart, why can't you..."

What people need to understand is that sometimes even the best of us make the wrong judgement. This things happen.

Re:Smart people crumble under pressure

[bersl2]

One's perceived level of intelligence is proportional to one's distance from the black/whiteboard.

Re:Smart people crumble under pressure

[Milo77]

In grade school I would miss simple questions because I was always trying to take into consideration much more than the question ever intended. Usually once the answer is revealed, I would say "oh, is that all they wanted." This led to a lot of second guessing later in life. I do, however, tend to do alright in the "real world" since taking as many things into consideration usually makes for a better outcome (design or whatever).

Re:Smart people crumble under pressure

[Moofie]

I think being able to admit when you are wrong is where intelligence begins.

If you think you're never wrong, I don't think you're very smart.

Horribly useless

[costas]

So the article says that lower-pressure tests should be incorporated into the MCAT or GMAT... because of course that's what you want in your doctor or manager: someone who cracks under pressure and can't remember what he was taught.

Intelligence, like good science, is useless if it's not applied properly or at all. The same can be said for this article...

Re:Horribly useless

[PepeGSay]

The article actually says "the research calls into question the ability of high-pressure tests such as the SAT, GRE, LSAT, and MCAT to accurately gauge who will succeed in future academic endeavors". They are calling into question whether that person will succeed in future academic endeavors..... though I ,like you, would be more concerned about their ability to succeed in future real-life endeavors. If they can cut out the soft ones before the even get a chance to get the high-pressure in real-life, that sounds good to me.

Re:Horribly useless

[f8free]

These kinds of studies are what I like to call "horoscopes for the scientifically minded."

Take from it the qualities which best stroke your own ego.

ENTP personality type

[mboverload]

"ENTPs are known for their quest of the novel and complex. They have faith in their ability to improvise and to overcome any challenges that they face. They are highly independent, and value adaptability and innovation. They may be several steps ahead of others in encouraging and valuing change. They hate uninspired routine and resist hierarchical and bureaucratic structures that are not functional. They need freedom for action....

The worst job for them is working for someone who demands considerable rule following or tries too often to tell or order, rather than make suggestions to the ENTP. Throughout their careers, ENTPs want their work to be enjoyable, with interesting possibilities for applications. Additionally, having their work widely acclaimed and accepted as a unique contribution would be highly gratifying for ENTPs...

They prefer the start-up phase of a project rather than the followthrough or maintenance phase. Once the project is designed, they prefer to turn it over to someone else. They take initiative and inspire others toward greater accomplishments and challenges."

I'll be damned

[AgentUSA]

Donovan McNabb really is smart.

Hmmm...

[daveschroeder]

From TFA:

The study analyzed 93 undergraduate students from Michigan State University to determine their working-memory capacities. The students were divided into two groups, a high working-memory group (HWM) and a low working-memory group (LWM). Each person was given a 24-problem math test in a low-pressure environment. The HWM group did substantially better.

Then the two groups were given the same test, but were told that they were part of a "team effort" and an improved score would earn the team a cash reward. They were also told their performance was being evaluated by math professors.

Under this higher, real world pressure situation, the HWM group's score dropped to that of the LWM group, which was not affected by the increased pressure.

Since working memory is known to predict many higher-level brain functions, the research calls into question the ability of high-pressure tests such as the SAT, GRE, LSAT, and MCAT to accurately gauge who will succeed in future academic endeavors.

Hmm, that must mean that no one scores extremely high on standardized tests, then.

Oh, wait.

They do.

How can that be possible?! Could it be that some people are very bright, have good memories, AND can do well in high pressure situations?

Does that mean that no one who might not do the best on standardized tests wouldn't make a good doctor or lawyer or graduate student? Of course not. But standardized tests are an imperfect solution for weeding out candidates, period. It's just like college: does college "prove" that you're smart? No, but it shows you have the willpower and wherewithal to perform the task, and many other intangibles that go along with it. Does standardized testing prove anything? No, but a lot is implicit in an outstanding test score, and THEN, for most of the things discussed here, such as medical school, law school, and other graduate programs, you go to the next level: personalized interviewing and personalized attention. Standardized tests are, again, just an imperfect way of whittling down the candidate pool in the most sensible way possible.

You can't ignore people who perform extremely well on standardized tests.

Re:Hmmm...

[dubiousmike]

You know, you mean to be funny, but you have a point.

Doing well in stressful situations is due to training, preparation and self control, not because you are too stupid to get nervous about success.

The more you practice being in stressful situations, the easier it is to handle them.

hmm...

[Daneurysm]

I don't know how to feel about this...

I'm most certainly a 'geek', by all measures. I can't help but become totally immersed in whatever I find interesting...in depth and breadth.

However, I've always been noted for my ability to work best under pressure--without the pressure I either get nothing accomplished or I 'wander aimlessly forever'...I'm sure many of you can identify.

However, I'm an 'undercover.' Nobody I meet ever suspects that I have held engineer positions, owned my own business or spent multiple hours a day researching (anything of interest) in painful depth.

To sum it up, I think (without RTFA, admittedly) I think that it's far to dynamic of a subject to boil down to black-n-whites such as this.

But then again, perhaps I'm just not 'one of those'..."those" being the majority of geekdom.

colour me skeptical.

-Dan

Re:Probably a "smart" person writing the article

[Jeremi]

My IQ is right in the 143-145 ballpark and I typically score in the 99th percentile on any standardized test. I excel in all areas that pertain to mental ability...

... and yet you still haven't figured out that unprovoked, irrelevant bragging impresses no one. Curious.

And THIS is what I have to say to that...

[raddan]

um... er... GAH!

That's simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that they said 93 students from Michigan State University. The ones who did well on standardized tests were already selected out - they went to better schools! :-P

This would explain why, under pressure, both groups wound up at about the same level. They were, after all, drawn at random from a population that was selected by the fact that they went to the same school, and both groups were selected in part by their performance on a timed, standardized test.

No, it's a veiled attempt...

[Anonymous Coward]

To explain that smart people aren't really smart after all. It helps lend self-esteem to the not-so-smart.

Re:Smart?

[paulm]

I suspect that you are one of those people that I meet far too often who love to complain about the fact the world just doesn't know the "correct" way to see how smart they really are. I suspect that you are one of those people I meet far too often who constantly espouse the firm belief that they have these great genius level ideas, but that nobody recognizes it.

I would like to take this opportunity to call bullsh*t on you.

Thanks!

Ah, now I get it..

[PsiPsiStar]

This would explain why stupid people tend to get 'first posts.'

Re:Smart?

[CosmeticLobotamy]

Dude, I know. I'm an "inventor" genius, too. Also, I'm funny and attractive and girls like to have sex with me. I pretty much rock. It's just that I freeze up when it comes to being a genius or funny or attractive or having sex under pressure, so other people don't see those things, which is why I have to tell people how great I am instead of just letting them see it.

Re:Smart?

[guacamolefoo]

I find that if I feel like I am becoming bored on a project I try to break it up into smaller challanges, each of which is individually intersting.

I think that is excellent advice. In a manner of speaking, it is a way of "tricking" yourself -- viewed as a whole, many projects (after a burst of initial enthusiasm and excitement) become boring and work. Your method of dealing with it seems to me to be sensible. One of the frustrations in getting details on a project done is that some are fun to deal with and others seem to be intractable or involve doing things that aren't enjoyable or seem overwhelming, therefore, effort in those areas can peter out and those areas of the project wither on the vine.

People with good systems in place to deal with common problems -- such as doing things that may not be enjoyable or, alternatively, figuring ways to maintain interest in projects to make sure that everything gets done or figuring a way out of this run-on sentence -- those are the people who tend to be successful. From my observations, it is less innate intelligence than good personal work systems that differentiate high performers from underachievers.

In my line of work (I am an attorney) everyone has a college degree plus at least three years of graduate work, was smart enough to plan for and pass the bar, etc. Simply to get to be an attorney involves clearing a bunch of hurdles that weed people out who are ineffective on some fundamental level (insert lawyer jokes here if you want to be cynical). Starting with that base group of folks, I regularly observe some people who are chronic deadline-missers, who put out shoddy work, or who are otherwise not operating at as high a level as I think they should. Others seem to be able to get everything done and kick ass and take names while doing it. I wouldn't say that, as a general principle, the lower performers are "not as smart" or "not hard workers" -- the difference seems to me to be how effective their work systems are. And work systems are, essentially, ways to trick your brain into doing things that it really isn't meant to do.

A book I recently read mentioned an example where, when you wish to remember to take something in to the office in the morning, you put it in front of the door. This is essentially a trick to overcome your morning sluggishness. Things like this, in other contexts, make up your systems for getting things done (I think that was the name of the book, FWIW -- "Getting things done"), and the better systems you have in place, the more effective you are.

None of this speaks directly to the study described ever-so-briefly in the FA, but it does speak to the parent posts -- people that think of themselves as "inventors" to leave the details to others to finish up may simply have holes in their net of systems for methodically completing work. If their value as a sheer visionary is powerful enough, they may be valuable enough to an employer (or themselves) that the holes don't cause them career problems, but I'd bet that the same person with the same visionary ability with better work systems would be more successful, which is essentially a "me too" to the parent post.

Forgive the length -- I'm a lawyer.

GF.

Smart Stupids

[bburton]

....Thus they do not deal with stress on a regular basis.

I agree with you on this. I am in the US Air Force, and during basic training (a very mentally stressful time), I noticed that it was always the "book smart" guys who cracked under the pressure. I mean these guys got 4.0s in high school, scored perfect on the ASVAB test (not that it was that hard), yet they LITERALLY could not tie their shoes right. Needless to say the MTIs (Military Training Instructors, or "Drill Sargeants") DIDN'T like all that too much. Because of that, they flagged themselves, and thus drew more attention and therefore stress upon themselves. It was guys like that that the rest of us in the flight hated, which again compounded the stress levels for these poor guys.

I know a guy who used to call people in this category "smart stupid" (hehe). As in they could rattle off the quadratic equation effortlessly (smart), but couldn't dress themselves correctly in the morning (stupid).

But no worries, if the smart stupids make it through basic training, and stay in the military long enough, they get better.

Re:Smart?

[CosmeticLobotamy]

Oooooooh! BURN! Hahahaha, he got you, paulm! You're TOTALLY jealous of guys who can go onto semi-anonymous message boards and tell other people that they're smart, and you KNOW it, bitch!

Re:Smart?

[nate nice]

Some disagree with you but I see your point. If you're a rather creative person, you tend to find ideas dull quickly. You can think of something, begin work on it and lose interest because something enw has popped up. I have countless programs I have started on and put into the will finish later pile. Mainly because I have thought of something else that consumes me, often unrelated, or another thing I would rather work on now. I generally don't go back because looking back on them I don't find them as interesting as the new idea. Sometimes I'm just too busy to keep focus on it anyways. Often it's just plain laziness. It's easier to think of something and design it than to actually implement it. I consider that a blessing. It's like getting a new pair of pants. All of a sudden, the old pair you had doesn't seem so attractive anymore, even if they were your favorite a day ago so you're left with the same amount of pants netting 0!

But, as someone has correctly pointed out here, the only way it counts is if you have the focus to follow through. I'm sure a few other "dreamers" thought of the combustable engine, graphical webbrowser, home computer, open source OS, etc, but the guy who actually thought of it and *did it* is the real winner. Or even better stole it.

Face it, we are people who enjoy thinking and designing so much that it doesn't leave time for actually doing. My brain just tickles me sometimes and I feel sorry for most others who will never have the thoughts I do.

Just keep notes of your thought and go through them every so often to see if you have the motivation to follow through on something. Personally, I am really making an effort to have better focus and discipline when it comes to following through on things.

With that, I know when the right thing comes at the right time, it will be that moment of glory in which I dominate the world.

Re:Smart?

[Kurayamino-X]

It's called ADD.

We only think we're geniuses because others don't think like us and we get these absolutely awesome ideas sometimes, problem is while occasionally they are good ideas, and they could be practical, usually there is some kind of basic violation of the laws of physics that prevents it from working like it should and it takes me a week or two to figure it out, if I havn't forgot about it completely by then.

We're not geniuses, we just get bored easily and try to find cool ways to ammuse ourselves.

Re:Smart?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. Well said. Ok, well, not well said, but probably an accurate call.

For all that, though, the grandparent is semi-right. The really smart, really innovative types rarely have the motivation, attention, or desire to see their ideas fully implemented - reality tends to intrude and twist things away from their "vision." When they do pull something off, they excel. When they don't, they're just another face in the crowd.

(And for the record: I'm neither a genius nor innovative. I work with a few and, for the most part, they're annoying prima donnas. They just happen to have damn good ideas occasionally.)

Windows Upgrades

[doodlelogic]

I don't know about religious, but was definitely worth upgrading from Windows 1.0 to Windows 3.1.

Multitasking ROCKS!

Re:Windows Upgrades

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I believe that I read somewhere (though I could be wrong and this may be just opinion) that with both humans and computation multitasking can make you do as much as 50% less work than if you did things sequentially.

However, the human brain tends to be designed such as multitasking makes you think you're doing just as well with each task as you would be with just one, mainly because it doesn't factor in timelosses due to 'context switching' as it were.

For example, if you're working on a document and playing an online game at the same time (some people I know do this!). You'll remember the decent frags you scored, and you'll remember how much you wrote. You won't remember the time you spent getting reorientated in the game, or working out which sentence you were in in the middle of a document.

might as well admit it

[vergil]

Got my ENGL degree and some honors crap on acid. Nothing like acing an honors class while watching miniature "Apocalypse Now"-style helicopter assaults taking place on the discussion table.

-V

Apathy rules!

[russotto]

This study means that (assuming I'm a smart person, anyway) my apathetic, don't-give-a-shit "bad attitude" is actually an advantage. If I don't give a shit, I'm not pressured and therefore have more room in my working memory for task-related information, and I therefore do better.

So boss, don't take it personally when I appear to not care about the task at hand. It's not because I realize there's no reward in it for me if I do well, nor because in the back of my mind part of me would like to see the commissioned sales staff humiliated at the demo. It's because by not giving a shit, I'll do a better job. Really. It's absolutely true, or my name isn't David Leisure.

Thinking under pressure... military-style

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

This article made me laugh. I have an anecdote.

See, although I have an Ivy League degree, psych major and CS minor... I'm supposedly quite a smart guy... I pulled a stint in the US Air Force, once upon a time. Let me tell you a little bit about Air Force basic training.

When you're in USAF Basic Training (Lackland AFB, Texas), one of the duties you are expected to perform regularly (and impeccably) is Dorm Guard.

You'd do Dorm Guard for a half hour. Your turn could come at any time of day. If it was in the middle of the night, the previous Dorm Guard would wake you, you'd go relieve him, and then after you were done yawning for a half hour (hopefully unchallenged) you'd wake up the next one and go back to bed.

Your duties as Dorm Guard include making sure that anyone who wants in, has the proper identification/authorization, before you open the door. Now, there is a series of steps you have to follow, before you can let someone in. All of these are taken very seriously. These steps are posted *right next to the door*, and the TI even tells you to go ahead and (still with me?) ...put your finger... on each step, as you go through the security checks. I know, you're thinking, what is so damn hard about that.

If you failed to perform the steps properly, bad things would happen. You would get a U ("unsatisfactory") for the week, which was bad because 3 U's and you'd get "recycled", meaning you'd have to switch to a different "flight" and stay in Basic longer. Oh, and you'd get quite an ass-chewing. In front of everyone. Suffice it to say there was a lot of pressure not to mess up, but that wasn't the worst of it...

These TI's would pull all sorts of shit to try to trip you up. They'd show an ID with Mickey Mouse as the picture. With a dead-serious face, they'd show an ID with a false name like Ivana Koknballs (you couldn't laugh). They'd show an ID that expired in 1945. Etc. And if you were a little slow, fuggedaboutit. The worst thing, they'd start yelling. Sometimes even kicking the door. "Let me the hell in! LET ME IN! Airman, I'm going to send you to KP duty all weekend unless you open this door RIGHT THIS GODDAMN SECOND!" You were supposed to ignore it and do the steps. If you were successful, you were fine.

It was the yelling that got to me. Every time. Even though the steps were RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE, when a TI with the wide-brimmed hat is there, yelling red-faced and going full-force at the door, and you have to be firm and check all these things... I would constantly fuck it up. And then the REAL ass-chewing began. It got to a point where I would trade Dorm Guard for other duties- which was also a general Basic Training strategy to keep your nose clean- trade what you're good at for what you're not.

Anyway, I still got recycled for 2 weeks, eventually. But after that I was fine. Sure taught me that being a smartypants was NOT everything...

Re:Thinking under pressure... military-style

[dcw3]

I went through the same basic training as the parent back in '77. The only people I saw having serious trouble were those who took it very seriously. There was nothing really difficult (except the time I had 18hrs of KP...not punishment, but as a task). Even the PT was easy...we only had to run 1.5 miles in under 14:30 (which I can still easily do 28 yrs later). The hard part was keeping a straight face while the TI was chewing your ass, because 99% of the time it was just to get a reaction out of you, and for something truely trivial. I'm certain that all those TIs go and yuck it up every day with their friends/family about how they got some poor 18 yr old to wet his pants that day. All in all, the experience was a blast though, and it enabled me to get the Vietnam era GI bill (couldn't afford college after high school), nearly a year of computer tech training, and some great European travel.

Re:Thinking under pressure... military-style

[Just Some Guy]

In my Navy boot camp quarters, my company commander's boss was a raging jerk (at least, toward us), but his boss was a pretty laid-back guy. One day, while guarding the front door, The Jerk yelled and screamed at me to let him in. I passed, but immediately after I was relieved I was ordered to come to the "staff lounge". This is almost verbatim:

The Jerk: [drops a ruler on the ground] Recruit, would you please pick up my ruler?
His Boss: You don't have to do that, recruit.
Jerk: I said, pick up my ruler.
Boss: Don't do it, recruit.
Jerk: IF YOU DON'T PICK UP MY C$#!$C#@! RULER, I'LL $$#@$ KILL YOU!
Boss: I'm giving you a direct order: don't do it.
[repeat for about 2 minutes]
Jerk: [suddenly calm] Recruit, do you like me?
[rest of room: silence and quiet giggles]
Me: SIR! I BOTH FEAR AND RESPECT YOU SIR!
Jerk: GET THE $#@() OUT OF HERE!
[rest of room: hysterical laughter]

I have no idea where I came up with that, but I'd swear on a bible that it happened pretty much exactly that way. That night, I learned that I do OK under pressure.

You just hit the bullseye.

[Spy der Mann]

I'm telling this from experience. I remember that some the hardest times I had was having bad grades. My parents usually said: "If you were stupid, we would understand, but you're not. You're a very smart kid". So, because I was smart, whenever I failed, I became something WORSE than stupid. I became USELESS.

In other words, it was (according to their twisted logic) MY FAULT that I failed. I had to carry that burden for a long time.

So, if anybody here is going to be a parent, please. Do NOT pressure your children. You'll regret later. Oh yes, you will.

Re:You just hit the bullseye.

[Moofie]

The trick is to apply enough pressure, but not too much. It's the part of parenting I fear the most.

I would have appreciated (in the long run) higher standards for my academic performance in school. I was very smart, but not motivated.

Not to say I blame my parents...I think they did a great job with me, and I understand the conundrum they were in. I do hope I can strike a better balance. If I had gotten in the habit of getting better grades in elementary and high school, I'd have had a much easier time in college. (Because I wouldn't have needed to work two jobs, because I would have had a scholarship.)

Re:Now all I want to know is...

[Mr. Slippery]

What does it mean if you DO perform well on high-pressure tests such as the GRE?...Recently, I have actually felt pressured (first-year in grad school), and my tests have suffered as a result.

My hypothesis is that if you have a history of doing well on standardized tests, you don't see them as pressure. They're almost fun. I did well on the GREs - but I did well on the SATs, PSATs, all the way back to the Iowa standardized tests in elementary school. When you have the belief "I'm good at standardized tests", standardized tests aren't a lot of pressure.

(In fact I felt nostalgic a few months ago when taking the NCCAOM Asian Bodywork Therapy exam, which is given with old-school fill-in-the-bubble, #2 pencil forms, the way we used to take GREs and SATs back in the old days.)

But like you, I felt pressured in grad school. I didn't do as well as I would have liked. A decade later, and having recently gone back to school for a while to study therapeutic bodywork, I think the problem was that I had never developed good study habits - because I'd never had to.

Up until my junior year of college, pretty much everything I found interesting was fairly easy to learn. I actually was trying to do a double degree program - physics and computer science - in four years. (Not just a double major, mind you, but a double degree - requiring 150 credits. Ah, hubris.) I had the belief "I'm good in school," so there wasn't a lot of pressure or stress.

I managed to keep chugging along with the CS program, but the physics...when I hit the upper level classes, I just didn't get it. (Looking back I think the first problem was that I never got a firm enough grasp on differential equations.) And not getting the material was almost a completely new experience!

Sure, I'd hit the odd snag in trying to learn something new, but a few days of poking at it usually resolved it. This was different. Weeks of staring at it didn't make it go into my brain. I ended up dropping the physics side of my plan, finished my CS degree with good enough grades to get into grad school - where I hit the same problem of not knowing what to do when the way became difficult.

If I knew then what I know now, I might have tried such radical ideas as looking at the recommended supplemental reading, taking advantage of instructor's office hours, and studying with fellow students. But I'd gotten so far without even doing that, that it simply didn't occur to me. Maybe I even felt embarassed to try to get help. Pretty dumb for a "smart" person, eh?

So don't be like me! If things have been easy and suddenly get difficult, take advantage of all those support systems that "average" students use.

Expectations

[phorm]

Or it could be Calvin and Hobbes Syndrome. Anyone remember the comic where Calvin is happy he got a low grade, because it kept people's expectations down.

This is especially true in a technical position. People pile on more and more work because they don't understand what is hard, what isn't, and what your breaking point might be. "Smart People" often have more technical jobs, or take more technical courses in school, etc etc.

"Not as smart" people might take more labour-oriented jobs. And of course, the view of "smart" is skewed anyhow, my mechanic can't fix my computer in the same way I can't fix his car... we're both smart in different ways.

Re:Expectations

[irhtfp]

And of course, the view of "smart" is skewed anyhow, my mechanic can't fix my computer in the same way I can't fix his car... we're both smart in different ways.

Umm, I think you're confusing intelligence with training.

Re:Expectations

[Tim C]

People pile on more and more work because they don't understand what is hard, what isn't, and what your breaking point might be.

Actually, that's a fairly common management strategy to get the most possible out of someone. Keep on piling on the work and pressure until they screw up, then ease off a little. That way, they're working at (their) maximum capacity, and you're getting the best possible value out of them for the company. Sure, occasionally you'll push too far and someone will burn out or quit before you ease up, but they're replacable.

Ain't treating everyone as just another resource great?

Re:Expectations

[f()rK()_Bomb]

I had a similar situation in my last job, where the more work i did or the faster i did it, the more work i got. When i started dosing off and reading slashdot between tasks workload dropped! This caused me to freak out and quit.

I think the problem is the amount of people who simply do the bare minimum of work to get by is massive in comparison to people who just want to get the work done.

Re:Expectations

[Mycroft_VIII]

Actually that's a common failure of management who can't achieve the same results correctly.
The correct way is to give someone more work (and reward/feedback!) as you observe. If you're doing it right you spot thier limit BEFORE they reach it and keep them at the right level BELOW that limit.
The most efficient point is well below that limit, and is usually fun to be at if you don't outright hate your job.
And absolutely make shure they know when you are pleased with them, feedback is critical, especially when they're doing a good job. And if you don't actually mean it when you give them good feedback then you are screwing up. You honestly have to want them to do well for thier sakes as well as your own or at best your going to be yet another boss, and not a manager nor a leader.

Mycroft

Re:Expectations

[Doomdark]

I try not to do too many "ME TOO" replies, but here I have to say I agree 110%. And I'm glad someone points out the problems with fake praise -- to me the only thing worse than not giving/getting positive feedback when some is deserved, is getting such feedback when none is deserved ("I REALLY appreciate you coming to work on time, and spending full 8 hours at your desk... keep up the good work!" ).

The original poster was actually referring to a specialization of Pauling's rule of optimal Vitamin C doses ("double the dose until you get diarrhea; then lower it back down until you get rid of it, then you are set"). May work for those doses, but definitely not with people: people break (get de-motivated) fairly easily, so it's important to avoid the breaking point.

This just isn't true!!

[commodoresloat]

It's just, umm, not, it's ummmm I... I ... uhh....

Damn! I had an intelligent and well developed response to that all thought out but when I got to the comment box my mind just went blank.

Re:This just isn't true!!

[Guppy06]

"I had an intelligent and well developed response to that all thought out"

Bullshit, this is Slashdot.

It's not that simple

[Moraelin]

Why engineers want info up front can be broken up roughly into the following problems. Usually it's a combination.

1. Bad management.

It's more common than you think to be blamed for not reading the client's mind. (You should have just known that when they explicitly wrote "save when exitting every field", they actually meant "we don't want the info to disappear, but we don't really want disk access every time we hit TAB." Whatever gave them the idea that info just disappears in a form. It's your fault when they come back complaining about performance.)

Or when it's not outright "you're to blame, you horrible monster", it's being asked to do overtime to "fix" it. Because the boss is too weak to tell a big client that those changes cost extra time to implement.

I can tell you that it doesn't take more than 1-2 such projects, to give one the idea "no, you don't. Not again. Give me a good spec up front this time." Because anything short of a full spec simply comes back to screw you with a chainsaw lately.

2. Bad management again: changing the same thing back and forth, just because the client can't make up his/her mind.

It's been said that the most depressive thing you can do for example to a prisoner is to just make him do not something that's hard work, but something that's obviously _useless_. Such as asking the prisoners to move a big pile of sand from here to there, and then back to the same point. That "I'm doing useless stuff" thought saps someone's self-esteem and ultimately even health faster than if you tortured them or made them break rocks with a pickaxe.

And the same applies to software projects.

I've _actually_ been in one project where for a whole _year_ the client manager couldn't make up his mind whether he wants the reports landscape or portrait. Never mind that the program included a report designer, where he can lay them out in whatever goddamn way he needs. No siree, bob. He's not gonna accept the program until the reports are landscape... then portrait... then landscape again... then portrait again. Repeat ad nauseam. For a year.

Going through something like this will make it _very_ tempting to say "screw this, I want a signed spec up front".

3. Bad design.

Most programs are basically Write-Only. People give no thought to maintenance later, and even the smallest change means rewriting half the stuff.

Now I'm not a fan of extreme programming as such. (And please, if anyone feels like taking it as an opportunty to preach, have mercy and spare both my time and yours.) But I do think that they did get the basic ideas right. (It's just the turning it all to the max that I disaggree with.) Programs should be written to be easily changed.

4. Lack of test-cases.

That's probably the worst anti-pattern. So you most often have not only a spaghetti program that's hard to change, but it's not even possible to be sure you didn't break something else.

And then it bites you in the ass

[Moraelin]

Piling tons of extra work upon your programmers, and unrealistic deadlines, comes back to bite you in the ass in various forms. Of course, a true PHB won't see it, and can pat themselves on the back for "getting the most out of the people". When in fact they're getting the least.

1. Bad code.

The thing about programming is that there's at least 20 ways to achieve anything. About 18 of them involve cutting corners and making a bad product, just to keep that unrealistic schedule the boss gave you.

Making and implementing a good design takes time. Throwing together a piss-poor Write-Only hack takes a lot less time. Guess which one you get if you just mindlessly pile more work on people.

Sure, it looks like you're getting some extra work done at first... until it's time to debug or maintain it. Then you start finding gems like "oh dear, instead of making a proper connection manager class, they've just directly accessed and _changed_ internal variables in other modules and got their connection from there." Any change suddenly involves a lot more work, because instead of a clear orthogonal design, it's a spaghetti mess.

Oops. It bit you in the ass.

(And so far _twice_ I've not only encountered such messes, but had to deal with them because even the original coders didn't want to touch it any more.)

2. Lack of test cases, or even of manual testing.

_The_ more common excuse for lack of that is that there's no time for it. Pile enough work on someone to give them the idea "hmm... I could still make it if I dropped the test cases", and those will be the first to go.

And it only makes problem 1 suddenly cost 10 times more time. Because not only you never know which other module messes with the innards of your class, you can't even tell if you broke something when changing it.

True personal story: oops, changing the table model also caused all the reports to stop working. And it was only found after we delivered it to the client.

True personal story: oops, the program was packed by an overworked coleague with the test templates instead of the real templates. Some real business partners got bullshit emails as a result. (If you thought MS's inapropriate comments in code were fun, emailing stuff is more fun.)

3. Tired people are stupid people. (Not meant as an offense. I'm stupid when extremely tired too.)

Every notch you go above someone's limit, and every hour of overtime they have to do for more than 1-2 weeks in a row, soon starts reducing their productivity. They make more mistakes. They need more time to find them and to fix them. They see less of the picture, so each fix is more likely to break something else.

4. Lowered morale also lowers productivity dramatically.

Nerds are a funny breed. If you overworked a factory worker, they'd be more likely to tell you "no, sorry, this is as far as I'll go." Or just do as much as they can, and pack their bags cheerfully when the clock struck 5 PM.

Nerds tend to be more insecure. A lot are autistic too, so they can't even tell how bad or not bad the situation is. They'll go beyond their physical limits, rather than risk disappointing the boss.

Unfortunately, as they say, "there ain't no such thing as a free meal". The extra effort comes at the cost of tiredness and lowered morale. Either of which alone can count for up to an order of magnitude productivity, if brought to extreme levels.

Flawed experiment...

[EmagGeek]

From TFA:

Then the two groups were given the same test, but were told that they were part of a "team effort" and an improved score would earn the team a cash reward. They were also told their performance was being evaluated by math professors.

Under this higher, real world pressure situation, the HWM group's score dropped to that of the LWM group, which was not affected by the increased pressure.

== snip ==

The problem here is putting the HWM group into a team environment. My hypothesis is that this group was poisoned by at least one MBA-type student who propagated the atmosphere of "gotta make the cash," while at the same time spawning the existence of endless meetings, mission statements, and other pointless endeavors designed at taking away task focus. The work was probably then outsourced to India so it could actually be done while the students in the group participated in a Six-Sigma study of why they couldn't get any work done. Since the work was done in India by the lowest common denominator, the equality of score between the HWM group and the LWM group is explained.

Did I leave anything out?

Only two kinds of people?

[mabu]

First off, I think the methodology is flawed in thinking that people can be broken into two groups of "smart" or "not-so-smart" people. That's ridiculous. They might as well have called the groups for this experiment, "nervous" and "not-so-nervous" people because that's basically what they were. I am not sure where the "smart" aspect comes in. There are varying degrees of intelligence, and no doubt those that are truly smart could easily deal with a pressure situation, so what they ended up creating were two groups, neither of which were ultimately of truly "smart" people. I think there's a high degree of extrapolation in place when you claim that high memory volume equates to intelligence or resourcefulness in a means that most people consider "smart."

Ultimately, this goofy study seemed to confirm that "ignorance is bliss." Thank you Professor Obvious. I wonder how much taxpayer money went into that boondoggle?

Manager's Advice

[soloport]

Three rules to live by, if you're a manager:
1) Make decisions
2) Get out of the way
3) Be there

Managers who waffle at making decisions end up with an aimless and very frustrated crew.

Managers who try to dictate the "how" part of creativity go too far and the result is an equally frustrated crew.

Managers who operate in "aloof mode" are equally destructive. They think, "I'll just be so hands-off. They'll love me for that." But what they really need to be doing is removing roadblacks, quashing in-fighting, being a good arbitrator, just being available.

Hire experts, give them a destination and a compass, and let them navigate the waters. Good managers do exist. If you've ever worked for one, you know what I'm talking about. Work can be a real joy!

Internet phenomenon

[Hrothgar The Great]

Browse around the internet for a while (especially Livejournal). There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of self proclaimed geniuses with blogs all over the place - people who admit that they dropped out of high school or college, that they can't get a decent job (or any job), and that besides writing diary entries, they have nothing concrete to show anyone that displays their genius.

It's a personality type. These people also complain at great length that the only reason they've never accomplished anything is that society measures their value incorrectly. Seriously, they are a dime a dozen.

I went to college with some extremely intelligent, highly motivated friends who got excellent grades because they dedicated themselves to their schoolwork. I slacked off like crazy and got a low GPA and barely finished my degree. Do I make an excuse that I'm anything but a lazy slacker? No way. Do I call myself a misunderstood genius? Again - NO FUCKING WAY.

Your ability to apply yourself to something is *important* if you are going to try to impress people with how brilliant you are. If you're not concerned with that (I never was) then quit making dumb excuses like you're an inventor genius and just admit that you're fucking lazy.

HWM is different than just being "smart"

[iamwahoo2]

What is funny is that for some reason everyone replying to this thread seems to think that this article applies to them because they consider themselves smart (and most of us on here probably are smart). However, most of us are probably smart in areas like math and science. These are generally not areas heavily affected by HWM. In fact I am best in areas like math but I probably have a rather low working memory. HWM individuals are the type that can usually read quickly through text and commit everything to memory without having to reread anything. I am sure that I am not alone here in being the type that once in while ends up reading paragraphs two or three times. On the other hand, a lot of really smart HWM folks that I know really stink at math.

Performance and Stress

[Viking Coder]

Okay, I'm sorry, but I think this is too good to not talk about.

In my Masters program, I took a course on the Psychology of Human / Computer Interaction. We talked a lot about human performance, and the topic of pressure (stress) came up.

She drew a graph showing that human performance actually goes up as stress increases, up to a certain point, and then performance drops again.

Then she drew on top of that the same graph for an expert in the field, and talked about how their performance goes even higher, and they can handle even more stress, until finally their performance drops off again.

Right after showing us this, she reminded us to get started early on our term papers.

I raised my hand with a smirk on my face and asked, "But, from what you've just shown us, shouldn't we wait until just before the paper is due, so our performance will be higher?"

She laughed and mumbled something (possibly a curse). =)

working-memory capacities?

[espo812]

The article is misleading, I think.

A new study finds that individuals with high working-memory capacity, which normally allows them to excel, crack under pressure and do worse on simple exams than when allowed to work with no constraints.

Isn't the ability to work under pressure a factor in how likley someone is to suceeed? Sure having a "high working-memory" probably helps, but being able to manage pressure situations is sometimes even more useful. I think this is another case of matching personalities and skills and methods to the right task. I wouldn't want an astrophysicist negotiating my group's budget any more than I would want a benefits person writing software.