“The poor deer just stood there looking at the light!
It was simply strolling enjoying the night!
When the car came rushing like a sneeze!
The poor deer terrified by brain freeze!”
While driving and trying to enter an intersection you see a big truck and need to wait for it and then get into the road.
Now if your mind is occupied with something, you suddenly press on the accelerator instead of the brakes and ram the car!
When that moment has passed, you will jump to reality and not understand or explain why you did that in the first place!
Well, it is not rare and it is explained…
Read on!
The novel Smarter Faster Better: The secrets of being productive in life and Business by Charles Duhigg is an amazing book on how to be productive and is often quoted in other self help books.
Apart from many things which the author has described with real life examples; the author tells about two plane crashes before coming to point.
In the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, the pilot and co-pilot kept trying to use brute force to pull on the yoke in an attempt to keep the plane’s nose from sinking. A state of frozen mind kept the flight crew from considering other options to get the Boeing 737 Max under control. There were couple of options which would have allowed the pilots to regain control of the aircraft, however, as a result of brain freeze, their attention remained focused on pulling the yoke!
A similar state of frozen mind occurred with Air France Flight 447 when it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.
When ice accumulated on the sensor that measures airspeed, the autopilot automatically disengaged. While the flight computer kept spitting out instructions to correct the problem, the pilot ignored them and remained fixated on the gauges that were giving faulty readings due to being iced over!
As a result, the pilot increased the angle of attack until the plane stalled. Even after the stall, the pilot could have recovered control by lowing the nose. Fixated on the faulty instruments however, he continued to try to push the plane upward increasing the severity of the stall, and ultimately causing the plane to crash!
Of course sitting in our rooms all safe and cosy, we can always give free advice (no one will take it anyway!); but in those stress levels with so many lives under you, the brain reaches such end points!
That state of mind which is the same whether you are flying a plane or driving a car or simply doing your routine stuff and freezing out is called Cognitive Tunneling!
Cognitive tunneling is the mental state in which your brain hangs on to the thing that is closest to you or in front of you, and does not see the rest of the environment. This is a mental error that sometimes happens when our brains transition suddenly from relaxed automation to panicked attention. In this state, our mind suddenly switches from proactive to reactive thinking.
Cognitive tunnels cause us to focus on whatever is directly in front of our eyes. In this state we become preoccupied with immediate, seemingly urgent tasks.
Once in a cognitive tunnel, we lose our ability to direct our focus. Instead, we focus on the easiest and most obvious stimulus. And when this happens we simply do an automatic work which makes no sense! Like the pilot pulling the yoke or the driver accelerating instead of putting the brake!
In fact many times we see or witness people in high stress levels doing things which is far away from common sense! These are all because of cognitive tunneling!
Now this can happen to anyone and the author lists some ways to get over the tunnel! He tells that we have to create mental models which will try to overcome tunneling!
The author states how you must envision or plan your day to avoid sudden surprises as much as possible, try to make a mental note of what is in front of you and describe it to yourself, try to heed to other people and their opinion and force yourself to anticipate what will happen next.
Remember that either flying a plane or driving a car; both the jobs need skill and comes with responsibility. Cognitive tunneling can happen anywhere and to anyone, so if you have a job with more responsibility then it must be monitored and you must have assistance. If you are more receptive to your environment and open to suggestions then the freeze will not happen or can be overcome! A suggestion is also that who live in glasshouses do not throw stones as told in his characteristic style by the birthday celebrity Raaj Kumar!
Now try to keep your mind heated and try not to freeze!
Shubh Ratri!
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