The conscious mind is capable of processing
somewhere between 16 and 40 bits of information (ones and zeroes) per second, whereas the
unconscious can handle no fewer than 11 million bits per second.©Karl-Erik Sveiby 1 March 1998. Updated Nov 5 2002. All rights reserved.
Shut your eyes. Then try to touch the tip of your nose with your index finger. At the same time, concentrate hard on what you are doing and on where your arm is at all times. Do the exercise slowly. Allow minimum 20 seconds for it.
Your responses are collected and stored anonymously for research purpose.
If you are like the majority of the 7240 Nose Finders that
responded in the period February 1 1998 - October 30 2002, you probably did find your
nose. 94% of them found it!
You managed to touch the tip of your nose even though you could not see it. This is
because you have tacit knowledge of where the tip of your nose is and how you must move
your arm to touch it. In the exercise, moreover, you were consciously focusing on your
tacit knowledge. Normally we do not concentrate so deliberately on the physical motions we
make. If we did, we would never get anything done, because our conscious minds are
hopelessly inefficient information processors compared to our unconscious minds.
The conscious mind is capable of processing
somewhere between 16 and 40 bits of information (ones and zeroes) per second, whereas the
unconscious can handle no fewer than 11 million bits per second.
We are aware of no more than a millionth of all the information that our brains process!
While you were deliberately and laboriously focusing on the movement of your arm, your brain was rapidly and efficiently dealing with an enormous amount of other information to keep track of all your bodily functions. Conscious thought is thus energy-intensive and inefficient. On the other hand consciousness is very flexible. It can be switched in a fraction of a second to concentrate our attention on our heads or our toes, on listening carefully or on reflective thinking.
It was more difficult to write a detailed description of how you did, than doing the exercise itself, wasn´t it? In fact, 48% of the 7240 Nose Finders thought so, 43% said it would be easy, 7% did not know. When I do this exercise in public and ask people to explain to their neighbour how they found their noses, only around 5-10% claim that it was easy. If you really had to explain in writing how you did in detail, you would have to spend days not seconds, and you still would not be able to do it properly. This is because we are very good at doing things tacitly, so good that we can express only a fraction of it in words. When I in public ask the receiversof the information if they would be able to find their nose based on the explanation given to them (if they didn't know it), some 80% say they would not.
Information is a very poor vehicle for transferring knowledge. A better way to transfer knowledge is to show how you do or (the best) involve the learner in an exercise, (just as we did here).
If you are right-handed, you probably used the right one. 76% of the Nose Finders used their best hand.
Why did you not use your other hand? You never gave it a thought, it was purely automatic. Am I right?
Over the years we build up innumerable patterns in our brains that serve as unconscious rules of procedure to cope with every conceivable situation. These rules allow us to tap into the speed of our unconscious brain, thus saving us a great deal of energy, enabling us to act quickly and effectively without having to think about what we are doing the whole time. These rules of procedure are also an essential part of acquiring and improving skills. A good indication of being competent in a task is when we don't have to think about what we do when we do it.
But the rules of procedure are also a limitation. Since they are always there, they affect new knowledge like a filter or a pair of spectacles. In this way all new knowledge is always coloured by our previous knowledge - and this is why I can claim that there exists no "objective" knowledge. Even the purest of scientists are coloured by their experience and emotions, when they ask their research questions and write their papers. I did not invent this notion. I got it from among others, Michael Polanyi.
Finally, if you used your best hand in the exercise, you missed the experience of trying it with your other hand. No great loss in this case perhaps, but consider how you act in more complex situations at home or at work. How much happens automatically? How much of your ability to create new knowledge do you unconsciously switch off? So congratulations if you used the other hand and the reason wasn't trivial (such as holding the mouse or the pen in your best hand). Your ability to break your unconscious limitations is an indication of creativity!
Karl-Erik Sveiby