How to Become Smarter (61 page)

In the following questionnaire, please mark each statement with an appropriate number as follows: strongly disagree (2); kind of disagree (3.5); not sure (5); sort of agree (6.5); and strongly agree (8). Please try to select responses as honestly and accurately as possible.

1. a) My life is easy (if you have to work for a living); b) Life is pretty simple, there is nothing to worry about (if you don’t have to work).
   
2. I find it difficult to deal with some people (at work or at school or at home); I can’t resolve my problems with these people and hate them.
   
3. It is easy for me learn any subject matter by reading a textbook, even if I don’t find the subject particularly interesting.
   
4. I can work quickly, efficiently, and without making a single mistake for hours or days.
   
5. I find it difficult to live alone or to spend an extended time by myself because I feel sad or lonely.
   
6. In order for me to feel happy, my face should express joy.
   
7. It is nearly impossible for me to learn if I have to read a textbook on a subject that I do not find interesting.
   
8. I never raise my voice and never get into altercations or quarrels.
   
9. I rarely feel compassion toward unfamiliar people or toward animals.
   
10. I am as talkative or more talkative than an average person, especially at social gatherings (parties, meetings).
    
11. Life is complicated and difficult; I cannot solve many of life’s problems and this causes me substantial distress.
    
12. It is easy for me to interact with people and my relations with other people are always pleasant or neutral.
    
13. I can live alone comfortably.
    
14. I often crack jokes that make large groups of people laugh.
    
15. I frequently make annoying mistakes or errors in my work/studies and get reprimanded by others or have to redo a task from scratch.
    
16. I believe that I should be talkative and gregarious in order to be happy or to show other people that my life is interesting.
    
17. I often have difficulty controlling my emotions, which leads to undesirable consequences.
    
18. I can lift or lower my internal mood when necessary by changing my lifestyle.
    
19. I often help people who feel uncomfortable or who feel down.
    
20. It’s easy to make me laugh.
    

……………………………

The raw score for each question is the number with which you marked a question. The raw score for questions 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 15, 16, 17, and 20 should be converted according to this formula:

final score = ten minus raw score

For all other questions, the final score is the same as the raw score. To obtain the value of the mental clarity score, add up the final scores of all twenty questions. Interpretation of the values is as follows:

126-160 corresponds to excellent mental clarity
111-125: good mental clarity
90-110: fair mental clarity
40-89: low mental clarity

Complex reading and writing tasks usually constitute the bulk of workload for knowledge workers. The RWP questionnaire can assess how well a knowledge worker can perform reading and writing tasks in a
given
job. It is a
relative
measure as opposed to numerical scores from testing of sustained attention. This is because different occupations involve different amounts and different complexity of reading and writing tasks. The same person may obtain a high RWP score in a job with relatively small workload and a low RWP score in a job that involves substantial amounts of reading and writing tasks of high complexity. The same person may also score differently on the RWP questionnaire in the same job with a different supervisor.

The primary purpose of this questionnaire is to identify interventions that may improve or worsen job productivity of knowledge workers. It is true that testing of sustained attention can also serve this purpose and the ratings of sustained attention should correlate with reading/writing productivity [
533
]; however, it is not known if this relationship is a simple linear one. Additionally, performance of job-related reading/writing tasks depends on work capacity [
534
], self-control [
490
,
535
,
536
], and ability to perform certain specific tasks (e.g., to express one’s thoughts in writing or to process textual information). Therefore, tests of sustained attention and tests of reading/writing productivity most likely do not assess exactly the same variables.

The drawback of the RWP questionnaire is that it is subjective, but the advantage is its applicability to varying occupations and the ability to estimate
short-term
productivity (within the timeframe of one month). In the case of academic science, it is difficult to come up with an objective measure of long-term performance [
501
]. But in the short term (i.e. one month), an objective measure of scientific productivity is probably not possible at all. On the other hand, the RWP questionnaire can serve as a subjective short-term metric for self-assessment purposes. Readers are free to use this questionnaire for research or academic purposes without obtaining my permission. The RWP questionnaire starts below the dotted line.

……………………………

Both reading and writing tasks that are considered in this questionnaire must be directly related to a knowledge worker’s job. You should ignore recreational reading and writing when answering the questions below (writing of e-mail and text-messaging should not be considered either, even if they are job-related). Reading tasks generally involve assimilation of information either through reading of text or visual assimilation/analysis of data in some other way. Writing tasks, as defined in this questionnaire, involve active creation of information/documents by typing or by writing with a pen/pencil. Some job-related tasks may involve both reading and writing. For the sake of simplicity, those tasks where writing constitutes 25% or more of the total time spent are in the category of writing tasks, and the others are considered reading tasks (this is an arbitrary cutoff). Some examples of reading tasks are the following: reading of scientific papers or research grant proposals, searching a database, searching literature, editing scientific papers or testing of software. The following are some examples of writing tasks: writing of scientific papers or research grant proposals, writing of a book, writing of software, performance of certain types of calculations, and preparation of slides for a presentation. Attending a presentation/lecture or watching a movie (even when directly related to the job) is neither a reading nor a writing task. Ignore this type of task when answering questions below. This is because assimilation of auditory information is not the same as “reading,” whereas taking notes (for example, during a lecture) is not “active creation of information.”

In the following questionnaire, please mark each statement with an appropriate number as follows: strongly disagree (0); kind of disagree (1); not sure (2); sort of agree (3); and strongly agree (4).

1. I enjoy reading tasks.
   
2. Usually, I keep putting off work-related writing until the last moment.
   
3. I couldn’t finish all planned reading in the past four weeks.
   
4. It is easy for me to get started on necessary reading.
   
5. I enjoy writing tasks/projects.
   
6. In the past four weeks, I had writer’s block for several days or longer.
   
7. I tend to put off work-related reading until the last moment.
   
8. I completed all necessary writing on time in the past four weeks.
   
9. I dread or hate writing tasks.
   
10. In the past four weeks, I easily assimilated all necessary reading material.
    
11. I find most reading tasks boring and try to avoid them.
    
12. Getting started on a writing task/project is easy for me.
    

……………………………

The raw score for each question is the number with which you marked a question. The raw score for questions 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, and 11 should be converted according to this formula:

final score = four minus raw score

For all other questions, the final score is the same as a raw score. The questionnaire includes two scales: Reading Productivity Scale and Writing Productivity Scale. To obtain the value of the Reading Productivity Scale, add up the final scores of questions 1, 3, 4, 7, 10, and 11. To obtain the value of the Writing Productivity Scale, add up the final scores of questions 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 12. Interpretation of the scale values is as follows:

18-24 corresponds to excellent productivity
14-17: good productivity
10-13: fair productivity
0-9: poor productivity

Most books don’t sell. Most employers think that people who write books are a bit nutty. At some point, I decided to delete this section and change the author name to a pen name. In general, writing a book is about the stupidest thing a person can do because the probability of success is infinitesimal: this is a high-stakes lottery.

Humans, who consume a mostly cooked diet, have the longest life expectancy among modern primates [
537
], most of whom subsist on an exclusively raw diet if they live in the wild. The closest genetic relatives of humans among primates, chimpanzees [
138
], are omnivores; that is, they eat both plant and animal food, including meat [
39
-
41
].

Novel disinfection and food-testing technologies
(L
AY
L
ANGUAGE
S
UMMARY
): Uncooked animal products, such as meat and fish, will be safer for human consumption if a hypothetical food supplier: {a} thoroughly tests them for the presence of DNA of various pathogens; or {b} prepares a water extract of finely ground animal products and then passes the extract through a series of filters that will remove all bacteria. In addition, this endnote presents a table summarizing officially recommended treatments for the relevant infectious diseases.

An ideal method of disinfection/pasteurization should satisfy these two criteria simultaneously: 1) minimal or no chemical modification of food; 2) substantial log reduction of the amount of microbes to a level that makes uncooked meat and fish safe to eat. There are disinfection/pasteurization methods that do not involve high temperatures, such as curing, drying, irradiation, pasteurization, and smoking [
203
,
538
]. None of these approaches is satisfactory for a raw high-protein diet (that contains fish and meat), either due to substantial chemical changes introduced into food [
539
] (which may cause adverse metabolic effects as described in
Chapter One
) or due to insufficient disinfection of meat and fish [
203
,
538
]. Therefore, the scientific community needs to develop and test new methods, as described below.

The development of new disinfection/pasteurization techniques that satisfy the two criteria above may require a collaborative effort of researchers from such disciplines as microbiology, materials science and molecular biology. Below are some ideas that may lead to satisfactory methods: