I wrote this story to help someone help friends, colleagues and whoever could suffer from mental disease against your expectation as is often the case. This is the story about my colleague who I did not think suffered from mental disease, but who unfortunately did suffer for a few years. He is now recovering as much as he is able to start his new life with his new job.
He was one of my senior colleagues by 5 years older than me when I joined the company, and I started to work in a same development team. His way of talking was a little bit childish, and he graduated from a same university, and he is also a person who did not play the old soldier, so I did not feel that he was senior honestly and could get along with him. In addition to his personality, I respected his attitude and his seriousness toward his work. He seemed to be always right about what he did and what he said. He did not like ambiguity so he sometimes fought with someone over its ambiguity. I totally respected him regarding work.
Two years later, we worked together in one project whose schedule was very tight, and his role was to design circuits while discussing circuits' specification with a customer. As is always the case, but the customer frequently added, removed, and changed the specifications until the deadline. This happened for almost half a year, so he came early and left late after twelve. He was like walking dead, but he has a strong sense of responsibility so he finished his work finally. A few weeks later, we went for dinner and he told me that he was burned out due to the previous project and he could not sleep at night. However, I did not take it seriously because I felt that he did not seem to say so seriously. If I look back, he also did not take it seriously. A few months later, he told me that we saw a doctor because he could not sleep and took medication. Even he said so, I did not take it seriously because he talked about it openly to other peoples as well. This was a time when we should have taken an action to take care of him somehow by everybody who worked together with him, but we did not do that because there was nobody who had ever suffered from mental disease around us and we did not know how people suffer from it and did not know that anybody could be a victim depending on an environment these days.
A few months later, I was transferred to U.S office and we got separated, but sometimes exchanged emails to tell how we were doing. One year later, he came to the U.S office to attend a conference and we talked much and he confessed that we were still taking a few kinds of medicine for mental disease. However, he looked ok for me, although he was not actually. A few months later, I was told by a previous boss that he took a long sick leave and did not come to the office. I felt very sorry to hear that, but could not call him at that time because I was also suffering from mental disease a little bit. I did not have room to take care of others honestly.
When I came back to the Japan office one year later, he also recovered from the disease and was able to come to the office. He invited me for lunch and we talked about what was going on him so far. He said that he was almost like a wreck due to medicine when we was during sick leave. At first, he took one tablet of medicine per one time but there was a side effect of that, so he told his doctor it then his doctor increase one more different table to alleviate the side effect. And this repeated a few times and he took four kinds of tablet one time. It is obviously wrong to do this, but he did not doubt this because he suffered mentally. One day, he seemed to realize that something was wrong to increase medicine more, so he asked his doctor to reduce medicine. Since that time, he can gradually have reduced the number of tablets per one time. He is now taking only one table.
I got an email from him last month, and he was still in a long sick leave. He asked me to call him soon. I called him and asked him what was going on. He said that he got a new job and he was going to quit the current company and join a new company. That company is small, but he was appreciating that the company hired him even though he confessed that he still suffered from mental disease but gets better day by day. He seems to recover as much as he also be able to work again.
When I heard this, I was very happy as much as I could cry even over a phone. And I still feel responsible about his sick because I was not able to notice that. If I could had noticed that, there is a chance that he would not have had to suffer from it.
I wish the all the best for his new endeavor.
Here is my short summary of "Make it stick" which I finished last week. Authors firstly point out that what is generally believed is not a right way of learning and tell us how to learn efficiently based on experimental and statistical facts which many researchers have investigated so far. The way of learning presented in the book can be applied to any people from school children to elderly persons because learning is never ending process of our brain.
According to authors, mass practice makes sense in short term memory but not in long term memory. For example, many people might experience this in school test, and the established memory by mass practice is gone soon no matter how hard your work before tests. The book says that proper learning basically consists of retrieving, reflection, elaboration, and spaced learning in order to put what we learn into long term memory. Retrieving practice needs recalling idea, concepts or events from your memory regularly. Reflection and elaboration practice are processes that let you relate what you retrieve and what you have learned so far, and attach the new memory to the old memory. These additionally allow you to think what you should do next time better than it is now. For example, if you think that you fail to do presentation well, you need to reflect on what is wrong and consider improvement based on what you did and reflect it on next presentation. This is a point whether you are a good learner or not. Elaboration practice needs struggling process. For example, when you try to solve difficult math questions, you would struggle to solve them by retrieving what you know and relate what you retrieve to questions. The more you struggle, the more ways of solving remain longer in your memory finally, whether you can solve them by yourself or you look answers finally. The process of struggling is very important and it strengthens connections of neurons by synapse in your brain. Explaining what you learn in your words is also elaboration process. Spaced training is basically a repeated learning over many times. Repeating a few days would be better. Repeating a few hours does not make sense and is almost same with mass practice.
That's just small summary, but authors present a lot of experimental and statistical facts in the book to strengthen their claims. There are a lot of intriguing experimental facts, but here is one which is very interesting for me.
Intellectual ability is not fixed when you are born, but it depends on you to a large degree in your hand. There is a experiment that some students are praised for being able to solve problems (performance goal), but some students are praised for working hard for trying to solve problems (learning goal). What happened was that people with the performance goal unconsciously limit their goals by choosing solvable problems from next time because they are unconsciously afraid of failing to solve problems. On the other hand, people with the learning goal challenge even difficult problems because they are trained to be praised for working harder. With proper learning processes mentioned above, the latter group is likely to grow more than the former people.
Authours mention deliberate practice of 10,000 hours rule a little bit, but the right way of learning presented here is obviously related to it.
From my experience about my job, the right way of learning perfectly makes sense and it does in terms of 10,000 hours rule which is equivalent to 10 hours a day for three years. My MS degree is of theoretical physics, so the current job, circuit design, was pretty new for me when I joined the current company. Physics, of course, is fundamental to all science and it helps me a lot to understand new things soon. When I look back the past, the way of learning about the job fits the way of learning mentioned in the book. Every morning, I used to present and explain what I learned from a circuit design book to senior designers and get my misunderstanding corrected and get feedback. In the daytime, I apply what I learn to real circuit design and explain it to seniors and get feedback. I used to repeat this for a few years. In addition to these, I personally do study and reflect on what I did and consider how to improve it. This process obviously follows the processes mentioned in the book. Three years later, I could say that I could become an expert of this job because I did not need any help to proceed the my job and I could even teach something to others. This was also close to 10,000 hours.
The point in the book is that there is the right way of learning and what is generally believed is not efficient. Additionally, it is pointed out that we can learn forever as long as we want to do that.
