Archives for February 2018

What Airline Disasters Teach About Cognitive Impairment and Decision-Making Under Stress

February 27, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Airline disasters often make great case studies on how a series of insignificant errors can build up into catastrophes.

As the following two case studies will illuminate, unanticipated pressures can force your mind to quickly shift to a panic-like state. As it searches frenetically for a way out of a problem, your mind can disrupt your ability to take account of all accessible evidence and attend rationally to the situation in its entirety.

Stress Can Blind You and Limit Your Ability to See the Bigger Picture: A Case Study on Eastern Airlines Flight 401

Eastern Airlines Flight 401 crashed on December 29, 1972, killing 101 people.

As Flight 401 began its approach into the Miami International Airport, first officer Albert Stockstill lowered the landing gear. But the landing gear indicator, a green light to verify that the nose gear was correctly locked in the “down” position, did not switch on. (This was later verified to be caused by a burned-out light bulb. Regardless of the indicator, the landing gear could have been manually lowered and verified.)

The flight deck got thrown into a disarray. The flight’s captain, Bob Loft, sent flight engineer Don Repo to the avionics bay underneath the flight deck to verify through a small porthole if the landing gear was actually down. Loft simultaneously directed Stockstill to put the aircraft on autopilot. Then, when Loft unintentionally leaned against the aircraft’s yoke to speak to Repo, the autopilot mistakably switched to a wrong setting that did not hold the aircraft’s altitude.

The aircraft began to descend so gradually that it could not be perceived by the crew. With the flight engineer down in the avionics bay, the captain and the first officer were so preoccupied with the malfunction of the landing gear indicator that they failed to pay attention to the altitude-warning signal from the engineer’s instrument panel.

Additionally, given that the aircraft was flying over the dark terrain of the Everglades in nighttime, no ground lights or other visual cues signaled that the aircraft was gradually descending. When Stockstill eventually became aware of the aircraft’s altitude, it was too late to recover the aircraft from crashing.

In summary, the cause of the Flight 401’s crash was not the nose landing gear, but the crew’s negligence and inattention to a bigger problem triggered by a false alarm.

Stress Can Blind You into Focusing Just on What You Think is Happening: A Case Study on United Airlines Flight 173

United Airlines Flight 173 crashed on December 28, 1978, in comparable circumstances.

When Flight 173’s pilots lowered the landing gear upon approach to the Portland International Airport, the aircraft experienced an abnormal vibration and yaw motion. In addition, the pilots observed that an indicator light did not show that the landing gear was lowered successfully. In reality, the landing gear was down and locked in position.

With the intention of troubleshooting the landing gear problem, the pilots entered a holding pattern. For the next hour, they tried to diagnose the landing gear glitch and prepare for a probable emergency landing. During this time, however, none of the pilots monitored the fuel levels.

When the landing gear problem was first suspected, the aircraft had abundant reserve fuel—even for a diversion or other contingencies. But, all through the hour-long holding procedure, the landing gear was down and the flaps were set to 15 degrees in anticipation of a landing. This significantly increased the aircraft’s fuel burn rate. With fuel exhaustion to all four engines, the aircraft crashed.

To sum up, Flight 173’s crew got preoccupied with the landing gear’s malfunction and harried preparations for an emergency landing. As a result of their inattention, the pilots failed to keep tabs on the fuel state and crashed the aircraft.

Stress Can Derail Your Train of Thought

Under pressure, your mind will digress from its rational model of thinking.

The emotional excitement from fear, anxiety, time-pressure, and stress can lead to a phenomenon known as “narrowing of the cognitive map.” This tunnel vision can restrict your field of mindful attention and impair your ability for adequate discernment.

Situational close-mindedness can constrict your across-the-board awareness of the situation and force you overlook alternative lines of thought.

Idea for Impact: To combat cognitive impairment under stress, use checklists and standard operating procedures, as well as increased training on situational awareness, crisis communication, and emergency management, as the aviation industry did in response to the aforementioned incidents.

Inspirational Quotations #725

February 25, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi

A person well satisfied with themselves is seldom satisfied with others, and others, rarely are with them.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Sorrow is mere rust of the soul; activity will cleanse and brighten it.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Philosophy can add to our happiness in no other manner but by diminishing our misery; it should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of. Happy were we all born philosophers; all born with a talent of thus dissipating our own cares by spreading them upon all mankind.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Irish Author)

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world—that is the myth of the atomic age—as in being able to remake ourselves.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Wise to resolve, patient to perform.
—Friedrich Schiller (German Poet)

Miracles seldom occur in the lives of those who do not consider them possible.
—Neale Donald Walsch (American Spiritual Writer)

Leadership is not magnetic personality–that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not making friends and influencing people—that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.
—Peter Drucker (Austrian-born Management Consultant)

No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.
—Henry Miller (American Novelist)

There is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

The result of the educative process is capacity for further education.
—John Dewey (American Philosopher)

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
—Jacques Barzun (French-born American Historian)

Tough times never last, but tough people do.
—Robert H. Schuller

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
—Ambrose Bierce (American Editor)

Actions speak louder than words.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

And above all things, never think that you’re not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.
—Anthony Trollope (English Novelist)

Inspirational Quotations #724

February 18, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi

Whoever said, “It’s not whether you win or lose that counts,” probably lost.
—Martina Navratilova (Czech-born American Sportsperson)

The first duty to children is to make them happy.—If you have not made them so, you have wronged them.—No other good they may get can make up for that.
—Charles Buxton

The horse fed too freely with oats oft becomes unruly.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.
—Isaac Newton (English Physicist)

We are more sociable, and get on better with people by the heart than the intellect.
—Jean de La Bruyere

We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.
—Jawaharlal Nehru (Indian Head of State)

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity … and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
—William Blake (English Poet)

The intensity of your desire governs the power with which the force is directed.
—John D. MacDonald (American Novelist)

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

If you do not wish a thing heard, do not say it.
—John M. Ford (American Novelist)

When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.
—Thomas Paine (American Nationalist)

Instruction does much, but encouragement does everything.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

I have the greatest of all riches: that of not desiring them.
—Eleonora Duse

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified. He that labors in any great or laudable undertaking has his fatigues first supported by hope and afterward rewarded by joy.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Writing Clearly and Concisely

February 13, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In my judgment, most books should be booklets, most booklets essays, most essays articles, most articles paragraphs, and most paragraphs should be statements.

It is far more important to write well than most folks realize. Writing not only communicates ideas, it also generates them—in the minds of both the author and the reader.

Effective Writing is a Lifelong Pursuit

One of my 2018 goals is to peruse two classic texts on writing clearly and concisely: William Strunk and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style (1918) and William Zinsser’s On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction (1980.)

Strunk and White affirm that brevity is the essence of good writing in these three sentences:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Succinctness, simplicity, and humanity are also dominant objectives in William Zinsser’s On Writing Well.

Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Re-examine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any thought be expressed with more economy? Is anything pompous or pretentious or faddish? Are you hanging on to something useless just because you think it’s beautiful? Simplify, simplify.

On Writing Well is a celebrated guide to concise, unmistakable, and well-crafted writing. The book has sold several million copies worldwide, and is a required reading at many a university course.

Good writing doesn’t come naturally, though most people seem to think it does … Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.

Zinsser’s central premise is that good writing is the result of hard work, not inborn talent. The book’s particular strength is in Zinsser’s selection of paragraphs by great writers, and his instruction on how to learn from those writers: “Writing is learned by imitation. If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I’d say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.”

On Writing Well is a must-read for anyone who writes and desires to his or her prose. Read Derek Sivers’ helpful synopsis of the book.

Inspirational Quotations #723

February 11, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
—Wilhelm Stekel (Austrian Physician)

In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.
—Horace Mann (American Educator)

Youth, abundant wealth, high birth, and inexperience, are, each of them a source of ruin. What then must be the fate of those in whom all four are combined.
—Hitopadesha

Altogether too often, people substitute opinions for facts and emotions for analysis.
—Andrew Grove (Hungarian-born American Businessperson)

He is the wisest and happiest man, who, by constant attention of thought discovers the greatest opportunity of doing good, and breaks through every opposition that he may improve these opportunities.
—Philip Doddridge (English Nonconformist Religious Leader)

There’re two people in the world that are not likeable: a master and a slave.
—Nikki Giovanni (American Children’s Books Writer)

Considering the unforeseen events of this world, we should be taught that no human condition should inspire men with absolute despair.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking processes attempt to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of plausibility. This level of consciousness is supposed to reflect reality; it is the map we use for organizing our life.
—Erich Fromm (German Psychologist)

It is more easy to get a favor from fortune than to keep it.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

When a subject is highly controversial… one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.
—Virginia Woolf (English Novelist)

Inspirational Quotations #722

February 4, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi

The height of human wisdom is to bring our tempers down to our circumstances, and to make a calm within, under the weight of the greatest storm without.
—Daniel Defoe (English Writer)

It’s too easy to criticize a man when he’s out of favor, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else’s mistakes.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

Health is a precious thing, and the only one, in truth, meriting that a man should lay out not only his time, sweat, labor and goods, but also life itself to obtain it.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Philosopher)

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one’s faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one’s memories.
—W. Somerset Maugham (French Playwright)

The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work.
—John Ruskin (English Art Critic)

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

Whenever a man’s friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.
—Washington Irving (American Author)

I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write and then I remember that it was always difficult and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.
—Ernest Hemingway (American Author)

Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

We may convince others by our arguments, but we can only persuade them by their own.
—Joseph Joubert (French Essayist)

A man’s errors are his portal to discovery.
—James Joyce (Irish Novelist)

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.
—Baruch Spinoza (Dutch Philosopher)

It’s not the increasing competition; it’s going back to real work that most of us complain about.
—William Feather (American Publisher)

So often we dwell on the things that seem impossible rather than on the things that are possible. So often we are depressed by what remains to be done and forget to be thankful for all that has been done.
—Marian Wright Edelman (American Civil Regrets Advocate)

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
—Nelson Mandela (South African Political leader)

Discouragement is not the absence of adequacy but the absence of courage.
—Neal A. Maxwell (American Mormon Religious Leader)

If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame for their not wanting to hear you.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)

Wisdom is to the mind what health is to the body.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

He who gives way to his wrath makes desolate his house.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)