2. Programación de aplicaciones para dispositivos móviles
2.2. Desarrollo del código
Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most
cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them.
— STEVE JOBS —
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THE PREFRONTAL CORTEX
Without the frontal lobe’s involvement, we spend a great deal of our time focusing on future events based on our memories. Most people, most of the time, do not direct
their frontal lobes to be in control.
―JOE DISPENZA―
apoleon Bonaparte was extremely in love with his second wife Marie-Louise, yet he never slept in the same room as her – even during their honeymoon. She couldn’t sleep without having lights on in the room because she was terribly afraid of the dark. Napoleon on the other hand refused to sleep in a room that wasn’t completely blacked out. He was unwilling to compromise the quality of his sleep.
When we get suboptimal sleep, such as in a room that isn’t completely dark, we impair the recovery and functioning of our prefrontal cortex. Though Napoleon probably didn’t specifically know about the PFC, he definitely understood its workings as well as how to exercise it from a very early point in life, and he always had a very strict daily routine that exercised it.
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The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is situated in the front of the head and it is attributed with the abilities of making snap decisions in the present moment and redirecting the focus of your attention, holding your focus on long-term goals and delaying gratification, exercising willpower, and the extent of your working memory.
The PFC has connections to the rest of the brain and works like a command center, you could also picture it as the RAM-memory on a computer. The first ‘scientific’ examination of the PFC took place some 160 years ago, starting in 1848 with a railroad worker named Phineas Gage who got his brain pierced by a rod that went straight through his PFC. Gage and other people who had their prefrontal cortices severely damaged or even removed, seemed to lack the ability to prioritize their goals above instant gratification presented to them in the moment.
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● ● ● The Brain Recommended Reading:
Joe Dispenza Evolve Your Brain – Science of Changing Your Mind Daniel G Amen Change Your Brain, Change Your Age ● ● ●BREAKING OUT OF HOMEOSTASIS
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70 years after the curious case of Phineas Gage, neuroscientists John Fulton and Carlyle Jacobsen tested out a new surgical procedure on aggressive chimpanzees that resulted in the chimpanzees becoming docile afterwards. This was the start of the procedure which was going to be known as the frontal lobotomy. Patients that were ‘treated’ with frontal lobotomy as a way of curing their erratic, or perhaps dangerously impulsive behavior, became docile,
demotivated, uninspired, and showed an incredible aversion to change. They started doing the same things over and over again and were unable to make changes regarding routine behavior; they wore the same clothes every day, ate the same food, listened to the same radio shows, and so on. In short, they became like severe OCD-cases who could not make changes in their ‘safe’ routine behavior
(homeostasis, big time). It was soon shown that they were unable to adapt and assimilate new information even when encountering negative feedback – for example, they continued eating the same food day in and day out, even if it was rotten. They also became completely sidetracked and were unable to hold conversations due to their inability of sustaining focus – they could not filter out unnecessary stimuli. Often when they were speaking they would forget what they were talking about because they got distracted by some small thing or noise in their immediate environment, such as a fly passing by or the noise of passing by car honking its horn. In other words, these people became very primitive and sheep-like as they had lost or impaired their ability of focusing and making decisions. They could not adapt to change.
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To do much clear thinking a person must arrange for regular periods of solitude when they can concentrate and indulge
the imagination without distraction. ―THOMAS EDISON―
Scientific studies involving measuring of brain activity and spiritual experiences have shown that skilled practitioners of meditation, such as Tibetan monks, have particularly active prefrontal cortices. The more we use our PFC the ‘stronger’ and more capable our PFC becomes through the process of Hebbian learning, which states that neurons that fire together wire together. It then becomes easier for us to make snap decisions and act out of the present moment rather than resorting to autopilot behavior of making decisions based on past experiences or acting out routine behavior memorized as habit.
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I want to add that it’s not necessarily a bad thing at all to be making informed decisions based on collected memories, but it does little in terms of activating or practicing the PFC, which is what we’re
interested in doing here in this chapter.
PFC & RAS
The PFC has played a crucial part in the evolutionary process and has sped up our ability to learn from mistakes and correct errors. This usually happens from negative feedback in the form of pain or fear – so that the next time we encounter the same, or a similar situation, the PFC in combination with another part of the brain called the reticular activating system (RAS) will block out all other incoming stimuli causing us to fully focus on the situation at hand. An example of this might be a person who trips while having a jog and then during the next jog, as the person gets close to the scene of the accident, he/she will suddenly remember what happened last time and likely avoid tripping again.
Together the PFC and the RAS provide us with the ability to tune into that which we choose and block out all other incoming stimuli. If you have read or heard about Steve Jobs’ ‘reality distortion field’, then you know the power of an incredibly well-honed PFC and RAS. With the help of the PFC and RAS we can form a thought or a mental picture and ‘make it more real’ than the daily reality which we
encounter. To do this and practice it daily is what it means to create a vision and live it.
Badasses like Henry Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Albert Einstein, Tupac Shakur, Bruce Lee, Steve Jobs, Julius Caesar, and Andrew Carnegie are excellent examples of people who focused on their vision long enough for it to become realer than their everyday reality. They did this through conscious repetition every day for years. In the excellent book The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons, the author Napoleon Hill explains this through the phenomenon of autosuggestion (self-hypnosis) and what he believes to be the mind and its thoughts acting like a magnet which then attract similar thoughts as well as opportunities the longer we focus on it. It builds up cumulatively over time. This formed the basis for what later became the law of attraction by new agers or whatever you’d like to call them. I’m very skeptical toward the nowadays popularized version of the law of attraction, but I do believe in exercising the PFC and the RAS. But what I believe doesn’t matter that much to you, in the end the only thing that’s significant is whether what I’m
providing you with is applicable in everyday life and generates a result over time.
● ● ●
Recommended Reading:
Napoleon Hill
The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons
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Unfortunately few people know about the existence of the PFC and fewer make a habit of consciously exercising it daily to an extent above what feels comfortable. It’s a little bit like people who go to the gym without ever lifting to the point of failure.
PFC, RAS, and Learning
One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. ... All you need to do is to be curious, receptive, eager for experience. And there’s one strange thing: when you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.
― ELEANOR ROOSEVELT ―
I remember when I was younger (age 7-18) and learning English. I quickly amassed a very large vocabulary relative to my peers. It all happened effortlessly as well. I didn’t understand exactly how, but already back then from an early age I understood the gist of it intuitively – I could observe the process.
The phenomenon remains the same to this day, though now I know slightly more about it; it happened through the RAS.
I would come across new words I didn’t know of, this made me want to know what they meant. Within days I would always spot or hear the words I was looking for. This process would usually unfold while I was watching TV or playing video games. I never purposely
practiced or did any repetitions (except in English class in school, but I nearly always knew those words already). I remember telling a few people about this when I was young, and how I thought it was
amazing. But no one cared much about my cool discovery so I just let it simmer in my mind until recently.
I now know the importance of the RAS in the learning process and I rely on it almost entirely for learning new things.
Another fine example of using the RAS is when someone tells you to close your eyes, then this someone tells you to ‘look for brown’ and you immediately find all the brown objects in the room.
There have been scientific studies suggesting that the brain processes about 400 billion bits of data per second, but our
‘conscious minds’ are only able to take in somewhere around 2000- 4000 of those bits, that’s not very much now is it? This of course gives us an idea of how inefficient intellectual thinking is when it comes to performing an activity. Keep this trivia in mind later when you read about habits and the competence ladder.
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Consider the RAS your personal search engine; it plucks out what 2000-4000 bits you will be conscious of. With the help of the PFC, you then keep your focus on these objects for a sustained amount of time, and as you keep your focus on something eventually you integrate it into your mental framework of understanding as it connects with the rest of your understanding. Here’s another way of looking at it:
This book represents a model of reality. During your course of reading the book your brain will examine past experiences by using what you are now reading as a framework to interpret these past experiences. You will likely find that you recognize a lot of the phenomena I speak of in this book, you just didn’t know how to explain it previously, or maybe you do know how to explain it and use different words for doing so. Assuming that a lot of stuff in this book comes as news to you, your RAS will start to notice these things manifest in your life through a variety of patterns. You find what you focus on, and as this theory that you read about will soon become real to you as it is stored as firsthand experience and positive
reference points that support the logical understanding of the theory. You now no longer need the theory because your experience stands on its own.
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As I have mentioned already many times (repetition is key); just reading something and logically grasping it isn’t enough. You must repeat the information many times until it sticks. It has to stick to the brain, literally. You have to build a little space for it in your brain by letting neurons form connections to each other and machete out neural pathways.
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When you read something that you think is cool or smart you might start to notice this thing in your life soon. That is the RAS at work; but that is still a very unrefined and inefficient way of making use of the RAS, because you are leaving much of it to chance – you are squandering its potential.
You need to repeat whatever seems important many times in writing, by saying it, or by thinking it – preferably, all three. Most importantly; you need to keep your focus (PFC) on the things that you want to learn (RAS).
The dilemma is that you cannot focus the RAS on too many things at once or it will become sloppy. Of course, the more you exercise these
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parts of your brain the easier it becomes and the more things you can focus on for a longer period of time.
This is the true meaning of ‘meditating’ or ‘reflecting’ on something. You keep meditating on the object of your choice until you’ve got it down properly, which can more or less time depending on whatever you are learning. It will take the time it takes. Don’t fall victim to the brain’s lazy temptation of wanting to move on to the next thing quickly; thinking that you are beyond this type of repetitive ‘dull’ work.
Development of the PFC
The PFC is the part of the brain that takes the longest to mature and it is considered to be what really sets us apart from most other animals.
By the time we’ve become teens, the brain is nearly fully matured with the exception of the PFC. This fact is often used to explain why teenagers sometime act impulsively without thinking ahead. Some researchers in the field of neuroscience believe that the PFC is fully matured by the time we become somewhere around 25 years old. After that point we don’t retain the same degree of neuroplasticity in the PFC and therefore can’t rewire it as fast as when it was still maturing. This means we might not have the same advantage in quickly adapting to our environment or for improving our faculties of exercising willpower, focusing, and making decisions at the same rate as we did when we were younger. We can still make the
conscious decisions to change our habits and behaviors but it becomes gradually harder after that point in our lives. The saying that old people are stuck in their ways hold true in this regard. They don’t have the same ‘evolutionary boost’ as younger people do.
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When he was around 70 years old, Jean Paul Sartre said that he didn’t like spending time with people his age, nor had he for many years. He felt he couldn’t even hang out with people who were ten or fifteen years younger because they were too dull and stuck in their ways; too fixed in their behavior and thoughts to take on anything new or be interesting. Their cups were filled already. They had certain opinions and beliefs that they felt were accurate and if the world and all the things in it would not conform to their opinions they felt that something was profoundly wrong.
People like Sartre, who are incredibly active and industrious; always doing something and learning new things, will keep their brains and
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PFCs in a state of evolving until the day they get sick or die. They never stop developing.
The difference between a 70 year old Sartre and a typical 70 year old is simply too vast. The chasm is too wide to bridge; they cannot relate to each other.
The Implications
The earlier we start, the more we stand to gain. The law of cumulative results is as much at work here as it always is.
The earlier in life we start consistently exercising the PFC, the more we stand to gain from it in the long run. Consider a person who knows all about this and wisely applies the information on a daily basis up until he is 40 years old. Then consider a person who has lived all his life in unconscious reaction to homeostasis without knowing of its existence – which likely holds true for most people. Let’s say both of these people have not yet found out what they truly want to do with their lives and cannot express with certainty which their highest values to live in integrity with are. All of a sudden both people ‘wake up to their purpose’ and achieve complete clarity as to how they want to spend the remainder of their lives; of course they both come up with different answers to the question of how to live their individual lives and how to find happiness, but what they have got in common is that this ‘new life’ requires for them both to change exactly everything in their lives down to what they do for a living, what they eat, where they live, and who they hang out with. Quite a big change in other words.
Which person do you think is going to have an easier time making this huge shift in behavior – and being more capable in terms of operating deliberately and consciously in the world?
Realistically speaking I seriously doubt that the second person (in homeostasis) is going to ever reach the point of ‘waking up to his life purpose’ and find out what really constitutes happiness and personal success because he/she has been too timid to find out through trial and error; and though comfortable in the short-term, will likely suffer in the long-term.
The implications of this is that the earlier you start consistently learning new things, keeping your brain activated, exercising your willpower, maintaining focus for prolonged periods of time, making quick decisions and purposely doing uncomfortable and scary stuff, the more you will stand to gain from it, because your PFC rewires at a higher rate when you are young. In the long-term this gives you more freedom to act on your decisions and you become better at following through on your plans.
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A highly developed PFC aids you regardless of what you decide to do when you become older. The earlier you start the process of
breaking out of homeostasis the freer and more capable you will become later as a human being no matter what goals you want to pursue.
Could there be a better investment?
Leaders and Followers
Napoleon had a theory that to really understand a man you would have to have known him during his twenties; implicating an
assumption that almost all men (and women) unconsciously cruise along life and get affected by external events which in turn shape