Cognitive Anchoring

Prior to a game-changing bit of research in 2009(1), most of the research on our little corner of the mind was focused on mind-wandering, daydreaming, and generalized attention issues. The resear...

https://cognitiveanchoring.com/chapter-3-1/

We left off last time on this happy note: In order to fully understand this, it helps to see what would happen without the knitting. What happens to a mind if it doesn’t have something autom...

https://cognitiveanchoring.com/2-4/

Last week I ended our post with this rhetorical question: What is crafting if not a training course in both kinds of mindfulness? Shortly after the post went live I started getting emails and ...

https://cognitiveanchoring.com/chapter-2-3/

In the previous post this week, we ended by talking about being an expert vs. being “automatic” in your knitting, crocheting, throwing pots, gardening, or doodling. I’m willing to bet that ...

https://cognitiveanchoring.com/chapter-2-2-xxx/

We left off last week on the cusp of discussing automaticity—the ability to do something automatically, something you don’t need to apply a whole lot of thought to. You may have heard of Part...

https://cognitiveanchoring.com/chapter-2-1-on-being-an-expert-at-anything/

I hear knitters and non-knitters alike like saying lots of things about knitting—ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous: Knitting is the new yoga… It’s like tai chi, a form of moving me...

https://cognitiveanchoring.com/chapter-1-2-it-still-matters/

Sometime after 9/11 and our experiences at my high school, I started to hear rumblings from school counselors, therapists, occupational therapists, and—when I moved to Tucson, AZ—nurses.*  T...

https://cognitiveanchoring.com/chapter-1-1-it-mattered-before/

So. The three girls asked to be taught how to knit. As I recall at least one if not all knew how to crochet. All were motivated and bright and sweet… and we were all in the throes of our own ve...

https://cognitiveanchoring.com/introduction-1-3-how-it-grew/

From 1996 to 2003 I taught high school English at a marvelous little school in lower Manhattan. The staff was extraordinary. The students were (mostly) motivated, interested, and—best of all—...

https://cognitiveanchoring.com/where-it-all-began/

Welcome to my grand experiment! My book on Cognitive Anchoring will be built like a blog but it will read like a book. I’ll be posting twice a week until the thing is done. Each post will be a ...

https://cognitiveanchoring.com/hello-world/