Oligodendrites. It sounds like I’m just being erudite, but you should really take better care of your oligodendritic formations.
In 2011, Nicholas Carr wrote the book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing To Our Brains and I first thought, “Come on. It’s ridiculous to overstate that the Internet is changing our brains!” Yet, that’s the very point of this fantastic book.
Functional MRI technology allows us to peer into the firings of neurons in our brains. Dandy. But what does this have to do with the Internet?
Carr details how two groups of people stuck their heads in the MRI tubes and what came out was quite enlightening. Those that were Internet masters had all sort of lights going off in a particular section of the brain. Those who were Internet newbies had no lights.
The newbs were taught how to use the Internet and then they stuck their heads in the machine again a week later. Ding! Ding! Ding! The fMRI showed that lights were going off in the same way as the Internet Jedi masters. The brains of the newbies had reprogrammed themselves to adapt to the Internet in one week!
Carr uses the rest of the book to expand on the way our world of constant interruptions through email, text messages, chats, Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Linked-in, phone calls and Skype has severely inhibited our ability to think. The Internet has changed our brains and not for the better.
Recently I read about your good friends, oligodendrites, and their formation in your brain. In the book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Cal Newport describes how your brain forms these “little tree” formations around neurons that are in deep concentration and that by lining them with fatty deposits, your brain is able to get back to that state of deep work more easily. In other words, the more you think deeply, the easier it is to think deeply.
So, which you will choose for your best work, oligodendrites or the Internet? Deep Work or The Shallows? (Hint: Go for the big word. No one will think less of you for it.)
