Overload

The physiological toll of multitasking and why we may not be making rational decisions even when we think we are.

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You've just moved to town and need a place to live. You've narrowed your choices to three apartments that seem suitable. The first is spacious, 800 square feet, but it's a good 15 miles from your new job. That's a long daily commute. The second is much closer, only about seven miles away, but at 450 square feet the space is a bit cramped. The third is 350 square feet and 10 miles from work. You're running out of time and need to get yourself settled. Which do you choose?

Well, if you're like most people, you will choose the second apartment. That may be a perfectly fine choice, and chances are you'll be happy there. But it's not a rational choice, and here's why: Eliminating the third apartment is a no-brainer; it's both smaller and more remote than the second apartment. So that should leave you with a tossup between two decent places, and you should be just as likely to choose one as the other. But you're not. Instead you are irrationally swayed by the similarity between the second and the third apartments. You pick the second not because it is better than the spacious apartment, No. 1, but because you're still comparing it to the loser apartment, even though you ruled that one out.

Cognitive psychologists call that third apartment a mental "decoy." It is so clearly inferior to the other two, neither spacious nor well-located, it really shouldn't even be in the mix, but dinging it does not make it go away entirely. It lingers in your mind, tugging you toward apartment No. 2.

This is not a good thing. We make choices like this every day. We decide where to go to college, what to eat for dinner, who to date. And a lot of our choices are irrational, influenced by irrelevant information. We are of course capable of making deliberate, logical choices as well; recent science suggests that the brain is like a hybrid engine, constantly switching back and forth between reasoned calculation and rapid intuition. But what determines how we will handle a particular problem in life? How do we know what part of our cognitive repertoire will be in play today?

A couple of Florida State University psychologists may have part of the answer to that. If the brain truly is like a hybrid engine, E. J. Masicampo and Roy Baumeister reasoned, then why not look at the fuel system? All of that cognitive crunching doesn't come cheap, and effortful deliberation is especially greedy for energy. This is not just a metaphor: they wanted to see if the brain's supply of fuel--blood glucose--might determine whether we make logical choices or irrational ones. They decided to explore this in the laboratory.

The experiment was fairly simple. They started by having all the subjects do an exercise meant to deplete their power--both their willpower and the glucose that fuels self-control and decision making. Specifically, they had them watch a silent video of a woman talking. A series of words also flashed on the screen, but they told the subjects to ignore the words; if they did find themselves distracted by the words, they were to refocus their attention on the woman. This is actually very hard to do; it requires a lot of mental effort to not read the words right in front of you.

The purpose here was to mentally "exhaust" the subjects, much like doing wind sprints would deplete their muscles and lungs. Once they had all of them in this depleted condition, they re-energized only some of them with sugar. They actually had all of the subjects drink some lemonade, but only some were getting real sugar; the others were drinking lemonade artificially sweetened with Splenda. The idea was that the Splenda drinkers would remain cognitively drained while the sugar drinkers would be restored to normal intellectual functioning.
Finally, the psychologists confronted the subjects with the apartment dilemma described before. In theory, the depleted subjects should at this point have been mentally "weaker" and therefore less capable of making effortful, deliberate decisions. And that is precisely what they found. As reported in the March issue of the journal Psychological Science, the subjects who were running on empty were much more likely to be swayed by the decoy apartment--and thus to make a poor judgment. Those who had recently been re-energized didn't waste any time or energy on the inferior decoy, and didn't allow it to sway them in their real choice: they chose the spacious apartment and the better-located apartment about equally.

This is obviously not about lemonade and apartment hunting. But it is about the intricate interplay of mind and body in so many of life's dilemmas. Imagine that you are trying to simultaneously quit smoking, hold your temper with your foolish boss, plan a wedding and finish a complex deadline project while helping your kid with his algebra. Many of us pride ourselves on our ability to multitask. But if willpower and mentally strenuous work both require the same fuel, and that fuel comes in limited supply, something along the way probably has to give. It's just a matter of what.

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Duck and Cover: It’s the New Survivalism

THE traditional face of survivalism is that of a shaggy loner in camouflage, holed up in a cabin in the wilderness and surrounded by cases of canned goods and ammunition.

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DUGOUT A father and daughter enter a Cold War bomb shelter.

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ALIVE AND ALONE Will Smith stars in “I Am Legend” as a survivor of a man-made virus, walking New York’s desolate streets.

It is not that of Barton M. Biggs, the former chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley. Yet in Mr. Biggs’s new book, “Wealth, War and Wisdom,” he says people should “assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure.”

“Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food,” Mr. Biggs writes. “It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson. Even in America and Europe there could be moments of riot and rebellion when law and order temporarily completely breaks down.”

Survivalism, it seems, is not just for survivalists anymore.

Faced with a confluence of diverse threats — a tanking economy, a housing crisis, looming environmental disasters, and a sharp spike in oil prices — people who do not consider themselves extremists are starting to discuss doomsday measures once associated with the social fringes.

They stockpile or grow food in case of a supply breakdown, or buy precious metals in case of economic collapse. Some try to take their houses off the electricity grid, or plan safe houses far away. The point is not to drop out of society, but to be prepared in case the future turns out like something out of “An Inconvenient Truth,” if not “Mad Max.”

“I’m not a gun-nut, camo-wearing skinhead. I don’t even hunt or fish,” said Bill Marcom, 53, a construction executive in Dallas.

Still, motivated by a belief that the credit crunch and a bursting housing bubble might spark widespread economic chaos — “the Greater Depression,” as he put it — Mr. Marcom began to take measures to prepare for the unknown over the last few years: buying old silver coins to use as currency; buying G.P.S. units, a satellite telephone and a hydroponic kit; and building a simple cabin in a remote West Texas desert.

“If all these planets line up and things do get really bad,” Mr. Marcom said, “those who have not prepared will be trapped in the city with thousands of other people needing food and propane and everything else.”

Interest in survivalism — in either its traditional hard-core version or a middle-class “lite” variation — functions as a leading economic indicator of social anxiety, preparedness experts said: It spikes at times of peril real (the post-Sept. 11 period) or imagined (the chaos that was supposed to follow the so-called Y2K computer bug in 2000).

At times, a degree of paranoia is officially sanctioned. In the 1950s, civil defense authorities encouraged people to build personal bomb shelters because of the nuclear threat. In 2003, the Department of Homeland Security encouraged Americans to stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape to seal windows in case of biological or chemical attacks.

Now, however, the government, while still conducting business under a yellow terrorism alert, is no longer taking a lead role in encouraging preparedness. For some, this leaves a vacuum of reassurance, and plenty to worry about.

Esteemed economists debate whether the credit crisis could result in a complete meltdown of the financial system. A former vice president of the United States informs us that global warming could result in mass flooding, disease and starvation, perhaps even a new Ice Age.

“You just can’t help wonder if there’s a train wreck coming,” said David Anderson, 50, a database administrator in Colorado Springs who said he was moved by economic uncertainties and high energy prices, among other factors, to stockpile months’ worth of canned goods in his basement for his wife, his two young children and himself.

Popular culture also provides reinforcement, in books like “The Road,” Cormac McCarthy’s novel about a father and son journeying through a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and films like “I Am Legend,” which stars Will Smith as a survivor of a man-made virus wandering the barren streets of New York.

Middle-class survivalists can also browse among a growing number of how-to books with titles like “Dare to Prepare!” a self-published work by Holly Drennan Deyo, or “When All Hell Breaks Loose” by Cody Lundin (Gibbs Smith, 2007), which instructs readers how to dispose of bodies and dine on rats and dogs in the event of disaster.

Preparedness activity is difficult to track statistically, since people who take measures are usually highly circumspect by nature, said Jim Rawles, the editor of www.survivalblog.com, a preparedness Web site. Nevertheless, interest in the survivalist movement “is experiencing its largest growth since the late 1970s,” Mr. Rawles said in an e-mail, adding that traffic at his blog has more than doubled in the past 11 months, with more than 67,000 unique visitors per week. And its base is growing.

“Our core readership is still solidly conservative,” he said. “But in recent months I’ve noticed an increasing number of stridently green and left-of-center readers.”

One left-of-center environmentalist who is taking action is Alex Steffen, the executive editor of www.Worldchanging.com, a Web site devoted to sustainability. With only slight irony, Mr. Steffen, 40, said he and his girlfriend could serve as “poster children for the well-adjusted, urban liberal survivalist,” given that they keep a six-week cache of food and supplies in his basement in Seattle (although they polished off their bottle of doomsday whiskey at a party).

He said the chaos following Hurricane Katrina served as a wake-up call for him and others that the government might not be able to protect them in an emergency or environmental crisis.

“The ‘where do we land when climate change gets crazy?’ question seems to be an increasingly common one,” said Mr. Steffen in an e-mail message, adding that such questions have “really gone mainstream.”

Many of the new, nontraditional preparedness converts are “Peakniks,” Mr. Rawles said, referring to adherents of the “Peak Oil” theory. This concept holds that the world will soon, or has already, reached a peak in oil production, and that coming supply shortages might threaten society. While the theory is still disputed by many industry analysts and executives, it has inched toward the mainstream in the last two years, as oil prices have nearly doubled, surpassing $100 a barrel. The topic, which was the subject of a United States Department of Energy report in 2005, has attracted attention in publications like The New York Times Magazine and The Wall Street Journal, and was a primary focus of “Megadisasters: Oil Apocalypse,” a recent History Channel special.

Another book, “The Long Emergency” (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005), by James Howard Kunstler, an author and journalist who writes about economic and environmental issues, argues that American suburbs and cities may soon lay desolate as people, starved of oil, are forced back to the land to adopt a hardscrabble, 19th-century-style agrarian life.

Such fears caused Joyce Jimerson of Bellingham, Wash., a coordinator for a recycling-composting program affiliated with Washington State University, to make her yard an “edible garden,” with fruit trees and vegetables, in case supplies are threatened by oil shortages, climate change or economic collapse. “It’s all the same ball of wax, as far as I’m concerned,” she said.

Scott Troyer, an energy consultant in Sunnyvale, Calif., said he was spurred by discussions of peak oil — “it’s not a theory,” he said — and other energy concerns to remake his suburban house in anticipation of a petroleum-starved future. Mr. Troyer, 57, installed a photovoltaic electricity system, a pellet stove and a “cool roof” to reflect the sun’s rays, among other measures.

Mr. Troyer remains cautiously optimistic that Americans can wean themselves from oil through smart engineering and careful planning. But, he said, “the doomsday scenarios will happen if people don’t prepare.”

Some middle-class preparedness converts, like Val Vontourne, a musician and paralegal in Olympia, Wash., recoil at the term “survivalist,” even as they stock their homes with food, gasoline and water.

“I think of survivalists as being an extreme case of preparedness,” said Ms. Vontourne, 44, “people who stockpile guns and weapons, anticipating extreme aggression. Whereas what I’m doing, I think of as something responsible people do.

“I now think of storing extra food, water, medicine and gasoline in the same way I think of buying health insurance and putting money in my 401k,” she said. “It just makes sense.”

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Mead Releases New Grad-School-Ruled Notebook

RICHMOND, VA—After decades of only offering ruled notebook paper suitable for college-level education and below, school-supply giant Mead introduced its new grad-school-ruled notebook Monday, which features lines twice as narrow as college-ruled paper.

"We here at Mead understand that as students get older and wiser, they need notebooks with increasingly narrow lines," Mead CEO John A. Luke told reporters. "In college, people are at a stage in their education where they require 9/32nds of an inch between each line, which is why we make college-ruled notebooks. But I think we can all agree that grad school is a completely different world than college—a world where 9/32nds of an inch is simply too much room."

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"How can we expect graduate students to learn to gather information and construct knowledge independently within their specialized field of study using college-ruled notebooks?" he added. "These students need a narrower-lined notebook, and at long last, they have it."

According to Mead's website, the ruling lines in the grad-school-ruled notebooks will be placed 3.55 millimeters apart, making them "infinitely more practical" for postgraduate work than the 7.1 millimeter college-ruled notebooks. In addition, the standard 1.5-inch top margin normally provided for dates and headers will be halved, and the left-hand margin will be eliminated entirely.

"Just think: If you are writing a dissertation on elements of thanatopsis and necromimesis as they relate to cacaesthesian themes of mid-20th-century Irish literature, do you really want your notebook lines to be more than seven millimeters apart?" Luke said. "Of course not."

"When you're in grad school, every millimeter counts," he added.

A recent Mead press release claimed that the streamlined 3.55-millimeter spaces between lines are perfect for contemplating Curry's Paradox, solving quantum chromodynamics formulas based on the Yang-Mills theory of color-charged fermions, or even just doing sophisticated grad-school doodles.

"Gone are the days of graduate students having to tediously pencil in new lines between each existing college-ruled line just to make the notebooks usable," the press release read in part. "And with the time you'll save by not having to flip a page every 33 lines, you could earn your Ph.D. a year early."

The new notebook also features a helpful page on its inside back cover that includes not only the traditional metric-conversion charts and world time zone map, but also handy guides such as the periodic table of elements, the Hertzsprung-Russell star-luminosity diagram, steel wire tension strengths, a list of the lattice phenomena of crystalline solids, and the entirety of Willa Cather's 1918 novel My Ántonia.

In addition, each page will be triple-perforated and seven-hole-punched, which Mead representative Kurt Fleming said is "essential for the 21st-century graduate student." The notebook will also have more spirals. Asked to explain why this particular change was made, Fleming responded, "This notebook was designed with graduate students in mind."

The notebooks are currently available in several special grad-school-edition colors, including alabaster, saffron, vermilion, and, for girl graduate students, periwinkle.

Student response to the new product has thus far been positive. "I remember in my first year of grad school, I would always think to myself, 'I wish that every line in my notebook could be as narrow as the one on the bottom of the page that gets cut off,'" said Milo Aylsworth, a master's candidate in English at Harvard. "I'm going to write the name of each class on the covers!"

Mead has also announced that, in 2009, the company plans to release a line of real-world-ruled notebooks, in which the spaces between the lines will be so microscopic that they will not be visible to the naked eye.

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