A Secret Code

“See you at Open House tonight, Amy,” my friend Evelyn shouted from the school bus window. “Don’t forget to ask your mom if I can come over tomorrow!”

“OK!” I called back, I wished I could feel excited about my first Open House at my new school, but I was worried. What would other kids say when they found out my parents can’t hear?

And I wanted Evelyn to visit my house one day, then she'd see how different my house was. My parents use a video phone so they can use sign language to communicate with callers. We also have a light on the wall that flashes when the phone or doorbell rings, and our TV is always set to show the captions (字幕). Would Evelyn think my house is strange?

When darkness fell, Dad drove us to the brightly lit school, which looked different at night. It felt different, too, as we walked down the hallway to my classroom.

We stopped in front of the notice board in the hall.

“Look at Amy’s picture!” Mom said, too loud. She does that when she's excited, because she can’t hear herself. Some older kids turned to stare at us in surprise and I wanted to hide.

Ms. Jennings walked over to us. I introduced my teacher to my family and explained that my parents are deaf.

“It’s nice to meet you.” Mom said, signing.

Some of my classmates were watching us and whispering. Then I noticed Evelyn and her mom standing by the door.

“Hi, Amy,” Evelyn said suddenly.

I turned around, “Hi.”

“I didn’t know your parents are deaf,” she said.

“Yeah.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“And you can talk to them with your hands? That's so cool!”

“You think so?” I asked, feeling relieved (如释重负).

Evelyn nodded. “It’s like a secret code. Would you teach me some words sometime?”

I smiled. “Of course.”

Then I got my parents’ attention. “Mom, Dad,” I said, signing, “I’d like you to meet my friend Evelyn and her mom.”

Some time ago, I came to realize that I wasn’t improving much at the things I cared most about even though I put in a lot of effort. Through talking to others and doing some research, I found this stagnation (停滞) is actually quite common and that the most effective people and teams in any field do something we can all emulate (模仿). They go through life back and forth between two zones (区域): the learning zone and the performance zone.

In the learning zone, our focus (焦点) is on getting better. We try new things and practice things we’re not quite perfect at yet. Making mistakes is expected, even welcomed, because that’s how we learn and grow. This is different from the performance zone. When we’re performing, we want to do our best. We focus on the skills we’ve already mastered and try to reduce mistakes.

The reason many of us don’t improve much despite our hard work is that we tend to spend almost all of our time in the performance zone. This gets in the way of our growth over the long term, also our performance. So what does the learning zone look like? Let’s take Demosthenes as an example. He was a political leader and the greatest lawyer in ancient Greece. To become great, he didn’t spend all his time just being a lawyer, which would be his performance zone. But instead, he did activities designed for improvement. He studied law with guidance from mentors, but he also realized that being a lawyer involved persuading (说服) other people, so he also studied great speeches and acting. And since courts at the time were very noisy, he also practiced by the ocean, projecting his voice above the roar of the waves. It is this type of practice in the learning zone that leads to real improvement, not just time on task performing.

Now, this is not to say that the performance zone has no value. It very much does. Being in the performance zone allows us to get things done as best as we can. It can also be motivating, and it provides us with information to know what to focus on next when we go back to the learning zone.

So the way to high performance is to alternate between the learning zone and the performance zone, purposefully building our skills in the learning zone, then applying (应用) those skills in the performance zone. This way, we keep getting better and better. Remember, it’s important to know when to focus on learning and when to focus on performing. While we need both, the more time we spend in the learning zone, the more we’ll improve.

If you are on a bus or train, you’ve probably noticed that most people spend the ride looking at their cell phones. No doubt, they think doing nothing but sit there would be boring, so they prefer distracting themselves. This squares (一致) with past research showing people will do almost anything to avoid boredom.

But results from new research suggest we should rethink that choice. We are probably underestimating (低估) how enjoyable and interesting it is to do nothing but pay attention to wherever our thoughts take us.

In a series of experiments, researchers brought Japanese university students into a lab and told them that they would soon go into a room without their belongings to wait and do nothing but sit for 20 minutes. While waiting, they could think about anything, but were not allowed to sleep, walk, or exercise; look at a smartphone; or check a watch. Before entering the room, they were asked to predict how much they’d enjoy waiting and thinking, how interesting or boring it would be, and how much it would engage them so that they would lose themselves in it and forget the time. Then, they went in the room to wait. Afterward, they reported how waiting actually felt—how engaging, pleasurable, interesting, or boring it was. In some variations of the experiment, they waited in a dark room without any stimulation (刺激). Either way, researchers found that the participants (参与者) were not good at predicting how much they’d enjoy doing nothing but think. Even in a dark room with no stimulation, they ended up being more engaged and interested than they’d expected.

“People don’t recognize the real value of waiting/thinking,” says researcher Kou Murayama of the Motivation Science Lab at the University of Tübingen in Germany and coauthor of the study. “Once they engage in it, though, they appreciate it.” Spontaneous (自发的) thinking often involves mind-wandering, daydreaming, thinking about the future, or recollecting memories, all of which can have upsides. For example, daydreaming and mind-wandering have been found to improve our mood, creativity, goal-setting, and job performance.

Though it’s hard to know if these results with students would apply (适用) to the rest of us, Murayama did at least compare German students to Japanese students and found both groups underestimated the pleasure of waiting to a similar degree. This suggests that it’s not necessarily a culturally-driven phenomenon (现象), though more research would need to be done to check that.

Overall, says Murayama, the results suggest we rethink whipping out our cell phones every time we are waiting or bored. Instead, we might benefit from having a moment to think freely about whatever catches our fancy—and enjoy ourselves just as much.

How Audiobooks Help Readers and Inspire a Love of Books

Not long ago, one of my third graders Jack was struggling (挣扎) to find books he liked. His teacher reported that he kept choosing books that were too simple or too difficult for him to manage on his own.

I visited with Jack one morning to find out what he was looking for. He started telling me that he just didn’t like to read, but after a bit of conversation, he shared that he actually loved books about dragons.

I thought of the Dragon Masters series. I took the first book off the shelf. When I opened the book, there were pictures to help him understand the story more easily. He was excited. We sat down to read a bit together, but it quickly became clear that it was hard for him to read. He was upset, but I told him I had an idea.

We downloaded Sora which is a reading app with audiobooks and searched for an audiobook of the first Dragon Masters book. We printed it and picked up a bookmark to hold under each line as the narrator (讲述者) read so he could follow along. Two days later, he was back in the library happily. The last time I checked, he was nearing the end of the series.

I have advised teachers to use audiobooks with struggling readers. However some people hold that audiobooks are not a substitute (替代品) for silent reading. I disagree. When a student struggles to decode (解码), the interest in reading disappears very quickly. Audiobooks can help students by allowing their joy of reading to increase as they continue to improve their reading skills in class.

“If we give kids an audiobook, won’t that make them depend on them forever?” The answer is, I deeply doubt it. When we used training wheels, they didn’t prevent us from learning how to ride a bike. They provided support as we got confidence, and we learned to let them go and ride off into the sunset at the end of the street. If a student is enjoying audiobooks as part of their learning, the student will be a real reader when working with teachers to increase confidence in written text.