Science Has Just Confirmed That If You're Not Outside Your Comfort Zone, You're Not Learning | Inc.

Jessica Stillman, freelance writer based in Cyprus summarizes, "Stability shuts down your brain's learning centers, new Yale research shows."

Photo: Inc.

Not knowing what's going to happen next is generally stressful. Uncertainty signals that you're unsure of your environment, your skills, or both. But uncertainty also signals the brain to kickstart learning, new Yale research published in the journal Neuron has found.

That means crazy, unstable situations might be uncomfortable, but they're also essential if you want to make the most of your brain.

Stability is a shut off switch for your brain.

If you want to maximize learning you need to make sure you're doing hard things 70 percent of the time, five-time entrepreneur Auren Hoffman has advised. It's tough to face the possibility of failure for such a huge chunk of your working life, but this new research confirms Hoffman is on to something. If you're not at least a little stressed about the outcome of what you're doing, your brain shuts down learning.

To figure this out scientists taught a group of monkeys to hit various targets for a reward of  tasty juice. Sometimes the odds of a particular target producing a sweet treat were fixed -- the monkeys consistently got a reward 80 percent of the time, say. Sometimes the target was more unpredictable -- the frequency with which it paid and the amount of juice the monkeys received varied...

How to add strategic instability to your life

How should we humans put this insight to use? There are, as I noted above, some occasions when a tapering off of learning is fine.
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Source: Inc.