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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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: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!

Windows Upgrades

[doodlelogic]

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

Multitasking ROCKS!

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.

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.

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...

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

[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

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.

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!

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.

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!

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). =)

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.