Event, duration, dose

Human attention is fundamental to living.  What we notice, deliberately or automatically, is most of our experience.  In fact, our bodies are built to bring to our notice things we should probably pay attention to.  Big bills, aches and pains, lovable people, arresting sights - all come to our attention without effort.  Taking a moment to be grateful for the good things, nearly always far more numerous than we have time to count, is not so automatic but still important and feasible. As with our breathing, attention can be directed purposely but also without conscious intention by our wiring.

When planning our day, our routine, we may have certain commitments and intentions.  Many of those will involve events, tasks to be done, things that can be checked off once accomplished.  For such events, we don't have much of a measure.  We either went to the bank or we didn't.  But some events do have a duration or dose connected to them.  How much money should we deposit?  How long should we walk?  Still, later, we can either check off that we withdrew $67.19 or we did not.  We either walked for 30 minutes or we didn't.

The difference between checking off that we walked and recording how far or how long is the difference between event recording and measurement recording.  Events are probabilistic and discontinuous, either happened or not.  Measures are continuous, smoothly flowing and answer "How much?"

One of my sources of inspiration and insight has been Dr. W.E. Deming.  This colorful man took ideas associated with the theory and logic of manufacturing, many invented by Walter Shewhart and related to work by Joseph Juran and carried them forward in imaginative and exciting ways. He was creative but possessed solid common sense.  I learned from him to be quite suspicious of numbers, especially in rules and directives.  A very large portion of the time, any number in a rule or directive is not necessarily the best one.  Often, little or no research has been done on the number and it may be out of date, too high, too low or just plain wrong.

My sturdy friend has warned me that in some cases, even a short time or a small amount can upset metabolism or plans disproportionately.  I am fascinated by the effect of a much smaller dose or shorter duration of many things in my life.  I use the rule of thumb to lift a weight 8 to 15 times.  But, I know that lifting 1 to 3 times will have an effect, too.  It may take longer to achieve a strength goal but I will improve.  

I believe many people make false assumptions about serving size.  They tend to say that if three bites of excellent steak are good, 9 bites would be better.  I believe that we frequently underestimate the value to ourselves of the event's occurrence and overestimate the pleasure associated with a given "dosage" of steak, meditation, exercise, reading something difficult.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety