Beating the Global Odds: Successful Decision-making in a Confused and Troubled World

Chapter 1

Global Brain Freeze

Nonstop Overstimulation Brings Disorientation

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

—Sir Winston Churchill

General Stanley McChrystal famously said in Afghanistan, “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.” One might say we have met the enemy, and it’s overload, confusion, and disorientation.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Defense.

You know the feeling: At the end of a long flight, the wheels touch down, and you instinctively reach for your iPhone or BlackBerry—pressing the on button even before the reverse thrust kicks in. Within about 10 seconds (if you’re lucky), your device picks up a signal, and then the messages start streaming in, each one giving your already overstimulated brain a dopamine hit. Maybe if you’ve just arrived in Mumbai after a 14-hour flight, you’ve got literally hundreds of incoming e-mails, a dozen voicemails, and bad economic news to process and react to: Global markets may have plunged again while you were trying to doze during the second meal service. Perhaps you’re grateful that aircraft don’t yet universally have in-flight WiFi configured, or you wouldn’t have gotten any chance to rest at all. In the sedan on your way to the hotel, you try to hack your way through some of the messages, answering those that only require a quick response and preferably little thought.

UCLA psychiatrist Gary Small’s research ...