Today in a Project Management workshop was way too much Math than I would expect project managers to be normally exposed to. I'm sure there are project managers who handle projects that deal with some math, but I'm not one of them. All the math I usually have to do is counting how many days it'll take to complete each phase of a project. Plus, as a friend pointed out, we now have software to do all that math. Check!
But, this post isn't really about how much I hate math. It's about how much my brain hates math. I didn't realize until today that the adage about how, if you put your mind to something, you could achieve it, could actually have a physiological explanation. I just always thought that, since I'm generally bad at math and I zone out usually during math lectures (or almost anything that involves complex math), that it means I don't like math. Now, I've realized that my brain is, in a way, designed to hate complex math.
Before we move on, I just have to say that I don't hate everything math. I'm actually very good at algebra, which is kind of weird considering that it involves way too many formulas. But I see it really as logic, and my brain will accept anything that's logical and immediately applicable.
The kind of Math that my brain will die on is anything that involves graphs, charts, permutations, statistics, functions, yadda yadda yadda... In my mind, they take too much work and I don't see how they're useful for me in my every day life. And besides, as I mentioned earlier: we now have software to do all that math! If there's a better and easier way to do things, I'll go with that.
So, going back to how I figured out that my brain isn't designed to like math: While our PM workshop trainer was explaining how to use a certain formula and diagrams in computing for...uhmmm...some sort of project scheduling number-of-days counting thing, the left side of my brain began shutting down. I felt it power down and then I went kind of glassy-eyed. But, here's the amazing part -- my hands automatically reached for a piece of paper and a pencil, and they just doodled away. I have two pages of doodles to show for it. For 30 minutes, I was totally inspired. It's like all the power from the left side of my brain was switched to the right side, which probably explains my auto-pilot artistic mode suddenly turning on full power.
Just to make this easy for me, let's call the left side of my brain "Jen" and the right side "Emma". Anyway, so I was happily doodling away, looking up from time to time at the numbers and circles and arrows our trainer was drawing on the board. Emma was throwing a party in my head and my eyes were like the bouncers. I wish the moment could last forever...but suddenly, our trainer declared, "Now let's do some exercises." Emma froze. Then it cried out in anguish, "We're dooooooomed!!!" And just like that, Jen went back online again.
Interestingly though, I think Jen will never really run on full power, not in the way that Emma did. Because while Jen was crunching those numbers during the exercises, Emma was groaning in pain. I kid you not; I really had a migraine in the right side of my brain. I still got the work done, though, and Emma only shut up once the point of all those formulas and computations began to make sense. And by "sense", I mean, "Oh, look! How nifty is that? I can actually use this in real life."
Isn't the human brain just amazing?
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Before we move on, I just have to say that I don't hate everything math. I'm actually very good at algebra, which is kind of weird considering that it involves way too many formulas. But I see it really as logic, and my brain will accept anything that's logical and immediately applicable.
The kind of Math that my brain will die on is anything that involves graphs, charts, permutations, statistics, functions, yadda yadda yadda... In my mind, they take too much work and I don't see how they're useful for me in my every day life. And besides, as I mentioned earlier: we now have software to do all that math! If there's a better and easier way to do things, I'll go with that.
So, going back to how I figured out that my brain isn't designed to like math: While our PM workshop trainer was explaining how to use a certain formula and diagrams in computing for...uhmmm...some sort of project scheduling number-of-days counting thing, the left side of my brain began shutting down. I felt it power down and then I went kind of glassy-eyed. But, here's the amazing part -- my hands automatically reached for a piece of paper and a pencil, and they just doodled away. I have two pages of doodles to show for it. For 30 minutes, I was totally inspired. It's like all the power from the left side of my brain was switched to the right side, which probably explains my auto-pilot artistic mode suddenly turning on full power.
Just to make this easy for me, let's call the left side of my brain "Jen" and the right side "Emma". Anyway, so I was happily doodling away, looking up from time to time at the numbers and circles and arrows our trainer was drawing on the board. Emma was throwing a party in my head and my eyes were like the bouncers. I wish the moment could last forever...but suddenly, our trainer declared, "Now let's do some exercises." Emma froze. Then it cried out in anguish, "We're dooooooomed!!!" And just like that, Jen went back online again.
Interestingly though, I think Jen will never really run on full power, not in the way that Emma did. Because while Jen was crunching those numbers during the exercises, Emma was groaning in pain. I kid you not; I really had a migraine in the right side of my brain. I still got the work done, though, and Emma only shut up once the point of all those formulas and computations began to make sense. And by "sense", I mean, "Oh, look! How nifty is that? I can actually use this in real life."
Isn't the human brain just amazing?
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