ENIAC, the first computer capable of general problem solving, consisted of 70,000 resistors, 17,468 vacuum tubes, 10,000 capacitors, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. At 27 tons, it filled an entire room, consumed 150 kW of power and required six people to program its routines. Today, a chip of silicon the size of a grain of sand has the same computing power as ENIAC. ENIAC went into operation in 1946. In the past sixty years more and more jobs have been transformed until now almost every mode of employment involves complex information processing in some way shape or form.
In our careers, our brain has become our most valuable asset. Many of us spend our days working primarily with words and numbers, using creative problem-solving skills extensively and exerting focused mental effort. But conference calls, voicemail, e-mail and instant messages inevitably disrupt our attention, adversely affecting our ability to form memories and stimulate learning. The frenetic work environment makes it harder for us to hone the very skills we need to succeed.
Fortunately, science the culprit is once again science the savior. Neuroscientists have learned that the adult brain can grow new brain cells and change to work more effectively in response to the right kind of mental stimulation. Recent studies have even shown that we can substantially increase our thinking capacity with carefully designed brain training exercises. Once thought fixed and immutable, scientists have demonstrated that we can use such exercises to increase our fluid intelligence and general problem-solving ability.
Last year a team from the Universities of Michigan and Bern developed a novel training method to progressively improve a person’s visual and aural working-memory, positing that this would produce a transfer gain in fluid intelligence. After only nineteen days the study participants recorded gains in working-memory and fluid intelligence over more than 40% (over and above the scores of those in a control group). The potential impact on our job performance of this kind of cognitive gain is immediately apparent.
What better way to shine at work so that you can get in line for that promotion, or to prepare for a switch to a more mentally challenging and more lucrative field of work? It’s always better to think smarter than to work harder.
If you decide that you want to boost your marketability by boosting your mental agility, it’s very important that you purchase training software that will do the job. In their study, the university researchers developed a particularly effective working-memory training protocol called “dual n-back.” Dual n-back is the only training protocol rigorous enough to demonstrate these kinds of results. (In the interests of full disclosure, and to shorten your search, I should mention that I was so impressed by the research that I employ the dual n-back method in my company’s brain training program, Mind Sparke Brain Fitness Pro.)
With the economy tightening and jobs becoming more competitive, it’s a smart move to nurture and expand your most valuable asset. And with the new findings on working-memory training, we now have the perfect tool to do just that.