I have a brain that likes to pull things apart.
It's been a problem that my brain has this habit but sometimes goes about it with no method. It just likes ripping. My hands do the same thing with serviettes.
My brain does snufflings and tearings and gets its teeth in to pull the stuffing out of something and throw it in the air in tiny little cascading flufflets and at the end there is just messy fluffy stuff everywhere and it's just confusing and doesn't make sense so I just go away.
But I've been introduced to a method.
It's a method which isn't messy. It's a method used in schools to teach students how to learn.
The results thus far have produced more "a-ha!"s than "huh?"s.
It's called ALARM, which at first makes one think it could just as easily be called ANXIETY or PANIC... until you realise it stands for 'A Learning And Responding Matrix'.
It helps you know how to go about discovering knowledge and then how to 'respond'... or act on it. It gets used to write answers to essay questions e.g. "Analyse the nature of Israel's involvement in the conflict at the Gaza strip."
But to combat the spindly teeth in my brain that have a penchant for aimlessly chewing at problems in my life, I am using the matrix to answer questions like "What are the characteristics of Emma Barry and should they be cultivated or discarded?"
Once you have your question, you take apart each subject of the question (e.g. "good at listening", "afraid to speak her mind") and for each subject you:
1. Name and Define - "what is it?"
2. Describe - "what is it like?"
3. Explain - "to what purpose is it like that?"
4. Analyse - "how does it work?"
5. Interpret - "what effect does it have?"
6. Critically Analyse - "what are the positives and negatives?"
7. Evaluate - "use the above evidence to answer the question."
By evaluate, you have an answer that you can be sure has been held up to the light, sat upside-down, thrown down a well, gone through a goose and come out shining with the polish of ones own reason. It's not easy, especially with subjects like "is creative" and step 3. "to what purpose is it like that?"
But the question is important and deserves full investigation.
So I'm sitting down with my brain in a muzzle and it's feeling pretty civilised, knowledgeable and rational.
It's been a problem that my brain has this habit but sometimes goes about it with no method. It just likes ripping. My hands do the same thing with serviettes.
My brain does snufflings and tearings and gets its teeth in to pull the stuffing out of something and throw it in the air in tiny little cascading flufflets and at the end there is just messy fluffy stuff everywhere and it's just confusing and doesn't make sense so I just go away.
But I've been introduced to a method.
It's a method which isn't messy. It's a method used in schools to teach students how to learn.
The results thus far have produced more "a-ha!"s than "huh?"s.
It's called ALARM, which at first makes one think it could just as easily be called ANXIETY or PANIC... until you realise it stands for 'A Learning And Responding Matrix'.
It helps you know how to go about discovering knowledge and then how to 'respond'... or act on it. It gets used to write answers to essay questions e.g. "Analyse the nature of Israel's involvement in the conflict at the Gaza strip."
But to combat the spindly teeth in my brain that have a penchant for aimlessly chewing at problems in my life, I am using the matrix to answer questions like "What are the characteristics of Emma Barry and should they be cultivated or discarded?"
Once you have your question, you take apart each subject of the question (e.g. "good at listening", "afraid to speak her mind") and for each subject you:
1. Name and Define - "what is it?"
2. Describe - "what is it like?"
3. Explain - "to what purpose is it like that?"
4. Analyse - "how does it work?"
5. Interpret - "what effect does it have?"
6. Critically Analyse - "what are the positives and negatives?"
7. Evaluate - "use the above evidence to answer the question."
By evaluate, you have an answer that you can be sure has been held up to the light, sat upside-down, thrown down a well, gone through a goose and come out shining with the polish of ones own reason. It's not easy, especially with subjects like "is creative" and step 3. "to what purpose is it like that?"
But the question is important and deserves full investigation.
So I'm sitting down with my brain in a muzzle and it's feeling pretty civilised, knowledgeable and rational.
Prior habit and new method.
