Game in the Brain

So imagine what kind of practice do you want your brain to have an automatic response to. How complicated and sophisticated the workflow is the greater number of man-hours of practice will be needed and the higher frequency of practice. Automatic conditioning, like language, allows the brain to compress a dense amount of information as unconscious routine. If you can identify the workflow that you would like to respond to then you are on your way to design a way to hack it. Process can be a conditioned set of succeeding responses and actions.

Now remember that the brain prefers chunking  and this is where knowledge comes in. The knowledge is a set of criteria that inform decision making – decisions made in the practiced responses. No need to memorize or carry a mental load (unless the knowledge is so versatile that you end up using those criteria near constantly). Its begins to be all about tools – your phone, notebook, outfit, and feelings/attitude. Its stuff you mentally and physically wear that determines what you can respond to and the level of that response (from something basic like being able to take notes, to elaborate – being to perform CPR or First Aid, or a break down analysis). Your mental outfit is preparation. (You can design your outfit, the way you design your character’s outfit in TRPGs)

When it comes to memory and knowledge, I would recommend working on a pull system* and let the brain forget something it doesn’t use often. When knowledge is needed it is just having a good system to access that information – like a phone, the internet, your books. It may take 10 minutes or 30 minutes but if you use that 2 time a week as compared to everyday; everyday and every 4 to 5 hour chunk of your waking time is what you end up having more control over; everything beyond that in frequency is something that is harder to control and predict. Lean is about what is just needed based on the information and how far in the future you can predict.

Take Away

• Practice – what are you most frequently practicing everyday. what would 10,000 hours of that look like? how would it make your life easier?
• What knowledge / Criteria do you need accessible most of the time? How accessible is all other information (in time and complexity/no. of steps or factors)

Plant Director for 3 years

• The work log was instrumental as it was a habit (see above) which lead to the development of a way of understanding. 
• Mentors and their guidance were crucial and of course there were the books. Mentoring or Teaching is Giving your time to people and a system. Its best with documentation. 
• I know what I don’t know, and know what works – and can make informed decisions about their cost and benefit. This is at a Peronnel level – I have a better ability now on personnel development.  

This year marks the time I have an idea how the operations should be after 3 years as the plant director being the child of the owner and  a plant that came to be in the wild 90s post EDSA revolution and the exodus of much of manufacturing of the Philippines.

Someone who was 20 years in manufacturing operations should have been in my place – but that was too expensive (I was cheaper) , we didn’t know anyone, and noone knew how to make an informed decision about this.

I started getting the idea thanks to the mechanical engineer, Sir Boyet, who told me all the books I should study regarding the matter. Since he was a mech engineer I was aware he was more qualified to run the Plant than me.  Like other people who could see the position vacant and could take the mantle – no one wanted it because it was too complicated and political. the closest person who could have been in this position was my uncle John Nicolo, a chemical engineer and right now a manager in the US, my mothers youngest sibling, only brother and has the most striking resemblance to my late grandfather (her dad).

Thanks to sir Boyet I basically treated it like my professor in a thesis. I asked him questions that took too much time to study on my own (and no clear way to find out) and verified what I learned in my research. He was one of the many mentors. I have one that was dead by the time I came in (and knew him only when I was in high school) and only his body of work in the company to study and all the stories about his methods.
Then of course there was Mr Quiloy who was a person who made me excited about a business planning session and someone who was able to hold a disheartened, disillusioned, and cynical group spell bound by his knowledge and expertise. He made planning fun, planning which was a much hated activity , and he made me realize how much it felt like a game table when players and gm planned.

It was thanks to Jojo, the plant Manager, I was free to study all this while he mostly ran operation – they way they always did it. Jojo was also a teacher to me and taught me a lot about the plant and manufacturing particularly the stories of the old days and the Jac days. There were somethings he could not teach, and were many things my mentors all could not teach me and that was mostly the Politics. I wish we could be adults and just base our arguments on Data and Reports, but no one taught anyone that – and people didn’t see the Difference between an Ops Meeting and Biz Planning/Project Monitoring. Remember NO ONE TAUGHT US, no left behind a body of knowledge, no one Studied, no one knew. The closest things to that was Mr Quiloy and Mr Sapanta. 

My mom was mentor when it came to pleasing people and she was in the school of “Smile more and say less” which is contrary to my own personality “talk about my problems incessantly and whine whine and whine some more until the problem became more manageable”(that verbal trait takes after my dad). Still she did teach me how to shut up in the right time and let people talk. Of course my wife was who taught me to listen more, and GMing required me to be a Listener (basically it was like “you can’t be a good GM if youre not a good listener”, so despite behavior and personality I had to be one and remembered that I’m a GM and thus I had to be a listener). 

What changed today from all the other day was the level of clarity (measured by the state of my Dashboard and the amount of words in my Worklog), a lot of the facts were in front of me but it was hard to connect because of how deep it goes. Thankfully I am an incessant whiner and I whine online. I write to process and now I am able to process the facts and information in a way I can put them side by side.

So now I’m able to better predict my weeks, my load, and have an algorithm to process these things. I also write, i know i keep saying it, but writing allows others to see how I think and critique it. to see the flaws and lapses. Anyone can correct me, and I can weigh it easily against the other information.

I’m also able to predict with a usable amount of certainty how much work key people are going to take to a certain level and I’ve more able to predict the body of knowledge and systems the company needs. Being able to now develop other people is crucial – it required me being able to take care of myself, to have a surplus of time to WORK on people and work on the Plant’s System.

Then of course my understanding of memory and learning was thanks to Jay dugger, books hacking and asceticism-minimalism from Nick De Vera who shared with me their critical skills.

Interestingly most of my mentors were part time professors – and had that inquiry based response to information (they asked how people formulated their reasoning.).

So Teaching is the Highest Goal and skill because its the ability shape People (hearts and minds) into a System. Someone who cannot teach will have to pay for every hard and mind with material rewards (and material will always flux) – our mental fortitude – the ability to keep going in good and hard times is the hardest thing to shape.

Note we can pay well for such people – but as our maintenance head recruitment shows – these are not traits we can easily find.