How Your Brain Can Save You: A Moment for Metacognition
It is a strange, eerie moment in history. The world is suddenly quiet, with large swaths of the population indoors, afraid and anxious, waiting to see what happens next.
It is reminiscent of a moment from a book by Dr. Siegfried Streufert: Arch of Fire. In the autobiography, Siegfried is reflecting on his times as a child in Germany during World War II.
“…it merely changed normalcy. Life does go on. It is human nature to accept things as they are: if we cannot accept life as it is, our chances of survival are diminished…it is a tragedy that horror can begin to seem like ‘normalcy’. Most people simply learn to live with it….we want to go on living. We protect ourselves as best as we can.”
It is unsurprising that Dr. Streufert dedicated his life to understanding how people make decisions during complex and chaotic times. Through his lifelong study of human metacognition and complexity theory, Dr. Streufert highlighted key elements that cause difficulty in decision making. These elements are VUCAD- Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity and Delayed Feedback.
We are living through a time that is suddenly characterized by an extreme degree of VUCAD…with very little to help us navigate these uncharted waters.
However, a closer look at our own metacognition, our thinking about our thinking, may in fact allow us to find a beam of guiding light in these troubling times.
First, we need to appreciate the deep impact each element of VUCAD has on our ability to make complex decisions in a complex time.
VOLATILITY
Volatility is the sudden, abrupt change that we can not predict or anticipate. We can see that a situation may be prone to volatility, but we can not inference the directions in which an event may lead. For example, policy choices at a national level in response to COVID 19 are leading to sudden volatility in individual lives.
How It Impacts Your Decisions: When faced with volatile situations, individuals often freeze or swing for the fences in one direction or the other. You can tell volatility is overwhelming when you find yourself jumping from one scenario to another in your mind, pivoting through multiple options rapidly.
UNCERTAINTY
Uncertainty is the repeating “what if” in our heads. It’s the sense of something spinning out of our reach. We have sense of the range of outcomes of a situation, but we don’t know which is more likely. For example, we may be wondering how we would handle it if ourselves or a loved one were to fall sick with coronavirus.
How It Impacts Your Decisions: When faced with uncertainty, individuals often choose an approach they consider measured and appropriate- calculating the probability of each outcome and finding a middle path that accounts for the most likely outcome or most probable outcome. However, many fall in the trap of not accounting for which outcome bears the greatest risk.
COMPLEXITY
Complexity is the layers and layers of information and data that create a holistic depiction of a complex concept. In today’s tumultuous world, complexity is easy to see everywhere, from the multitude of COVID-19 guides and statistical predictions that sprung up overnight on the internet to the minute details of new policies.
How It Impacts Your Decisions: When faced with complexity, individuals often seek simplicity. A simple, catchy statement is more powerful than the truth. Condensed information from a source they are familiar with- their neighbor or a close friend- carries more weight than detailed information from a trusted source.
AMBIGUITY
Ambiguity refers to those situations which are amorphous, vague and ill defined. These situations require us to be able to learn how to cope with the unknown; make meaning of elements of the unknown that are available to us and function with fortitude in a never ending maze.
How It Impacts Your Decisions: When faced with ambiguity, individuals typically tend to ignore the ambiguity completely and rely on gut responses to deal with the situation or frame the situation in terms that they can understand. However, both these responses are not optimal as accepting the ambiguity and trying to analyze it logically without seeking congruence to our beliefs is the only way to fight ambiguity.
DELAYED FEEDBACK
Delayed feedback is the easiest element of VUCAD to understand, but often the hardest to live with. It refers to the gap of time between when you make a decision and when you discover the outcome of the decision, or the gap of time in waiting for new information that may change a decision.
How It Impacts Your Decisions: When faced with delayed feedback, individuals often freeze and ruminate over options, afraid of making the wrong decision. They may wait for additional information before taking a necessary action, and then take the action too late.
When we sense VUCAD impacting our decision making, it’s time to use our metacognition to fight back. Here’s how we can do that on a daily basis.
- Recognize that, in fact, VUCAD is causing us to shift our decision making from ordinary every day life to a crisis response view.
- Reduce elements of volatility by establishing routines. While we can not influence the external world’s volatility, we can help keep our minds calm by creating routines. For example, create a simple pattern of events before bedtime- cleaning common high touch surfaces in your living space, taking a warm bath, meditating for a few minutes. Choose when you want to catch up on the news, and have a comforting habit to go to after to help your mind process.
- Reduce uncertainty and complexity through strategic knowledge acquistion. Identify several sources of information that are trusted and respected by the healthcare community such as CDC or WHO. Be thoughtful about consuming media external to these sources. Take time to memorize key pieces of information you may need an emergency- a family member’s phone number or medications.
- Reduce ambiguity. Accept that this is an ill defined situations the parameters of which have yet to be set. Every time you receive information that helps you put the pieces together, spend a few additional minutes thinking about the pieces. Playing board games which focus on complex strategy or journaling about your day are both useful practices. Most importantly: find ways to reduce fear as increased fear heightens ambiguity.
- Reduce the impact of delayed feedback. We can’t see the future, but we can identify moments in the future that are within our control regardless of externalities. For example, if you embark on an online course during this time, you can eagerly look forward to finishing the course and receiving a certificate. This is an action fully within your control that will give you a timeline to hold on to, no matter what else is going on in the world.
This is a complex and chaotic time, and likely to become even more so. The greatest powers we have to allow us to cope, survive and triumph reside within each of us- within our own metacognition.
For an interactive and reflective experience with VUCAD, please join us on Facebook Messenger by sending in the keyword “VUCAD”.
For more information on VUCAD and complexity theory, please visit www.meseekna.com
For a fun way to engage with metacognitive training during this time, please visit www.theadventuresofbbandseek.com
