Morning Chorus

Words by Sean Douglas

So I recently found out I belong to a group which includes Apple CEO, Tim Cook, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, George Bush Senior and Gwyneth Paltrow. Members of this group include some of the most powerful people in the world, from CEO’s of international brands, to politicians whose decisions shape the world we live in.

Ok, so at this point I’m sure you’re thinking I’ve become an honorary member of the illuminati. Unfortunately my realisation was a little more pedestrian. It turns out that one major thing we all have in common is that we all start our work days at 4am?!

Look! Now before you start the chorus of ‘you’re mad’, ‘so when do you sleep’, ‘don’t you know that it’s recommended you get at least 7 hours sleep’, stop! I’ve heard this again and again and again. My friends and family bombard my inbox with links, screen grabs and articles telling me, ‘if you don’t get more than 8 hours of sleep you will, die slowly and horribly from sleep deprevationitis! I know they mean well, but when will they realise, I’m a big boy and I can handle a few early mornings. And yes, I get it. Sleep is part of the fuel our bodies need to function. But for me, a 4am start is the rocket fuel that turbo charges my day, in a way that no lie-in could ever compete with.

I appreciate a 4 am start is not for everyone, but I find there is no part of the day more productive than the hours between 4 and 9am. There are no distractions, no phone calls, no what’s app, no Facebook, nothing to watch on TV and most importantly, no new email to deal with.

If Dyslexia affects you the way it affects me, you’ll know how down right exhausting writing emails can be, especially when what you need to convey isn’t particularly straight forward. Having the time and space to get through my emails, with no time pressure and no distractions, means I can really focus on my favorite act of war. Email obliteration!

As well as a chance to get some email warfare under my belt, these few hours before the world wakes, feels like the calm before the storm. This calm also gives me the head space to visualize my day. Being Dyslexic means that every day will be full of challenges. I find that taking some time in the mornings to preempt scenarios that I will find challenging, then playing them through in my head, really helps when I meet those challenges for real. I go through all the possible solutions in my head, so when I finally encounter that challenge I can just pick the best solution I made earlier. What I like to call, stress free problem solving.

4am working means that when the clock strikes 9 and the rest of the world’s computers slowly boot into action, I have a totally clean slate and am ready to take on whatever the world throws at me. Either that, or I’ll leave it to be dealt with at 4am the following morning.

As I said, my friends and family think my 4am starts are nuts. But this morning, at 4.15am, I noticed a flagged item in my inbox. This was one that had slipped through the net and I hadn’t quite got round to dealing with. It was an email I’d been sent by Linkedin and it totally validated my diurnal lifestyle. The email was promoting a series of posts under the #productivityhacks hashtag. The subject line instantly caught my attention, ‘why 4am is the best time to work’. Reading through the article I soon realised I now had some inbox ammunition of my own. I now had missile defense against the onslaught of incoming email from friends prophesying that, early morning working would send me to an early grave.

As well as enforcing the fact that, for me, 4 am starts could be a good and healthy thing. Using the #productivityhacks hashtag, I was able to access a whole host of articles and posts, giving great advice on how you can work smart as well as hard. If you’re in work, studying or running a household, there’s bound to be a hack that helps you get things done faster, better and smoother. To access this great resource check out the #productivityhacks on LinkedIn or subscribe to The Codpast on Facebook or Twitter as we will be bringing you monthly productivity hacks from across the web.

The Letters Project December Pick

Our friends over at Dyspla, are always beating the drum for dyslexic writers. When looking through the great resources and content on their site we came across this cool little project (thank you Dyspla).

The Letters Project is Dyspla’s way of engaging with as many dyslexic writers from around the world as they can. Dyspla invite dyslexic’s  for across the planet to submit work for inclusion in the project. This can be a letter, drawing, painting, poem, short story, or anything else that can be popped into an envelope.

The only requirements are that the work is original, handmade, and spell check is not allowed; If submitting a  letter, it must be handwritten. 

Each month we’re doing our bit to promote Dyslexic writing by showcasing some of our favorite letters and artwork from the project.

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Dear Planet Earth

This letter will have you laughing out loud, and if you’re in a public place, you’ll probably be seen as insane, but it is still worth it. In this letter, we see the writer thanking (or perhaps not thanking) Mother Nature for their dyslexic mind. You get the sense that this person is quite interested in their dyslexia (who wouldn’t be?).

Click on the image to enlarge.

Click here to see all submissions for this project.

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Curation and words by Vanessa Rocha our resident Lexic (or if you’re a film buff, you might want to check out her review blog Ereimul Reviews).

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For more news and views on dyslexia check out The Codpast, the Internet’s best Dyslexia Podcast. Listen Here

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Cultural Dyslexia

Words by Sean Douglas

As I have discussed in a previous blog (Learn Chinese to beat Dyslexia?) there are parts of the Chinese Language that may actually be more suited to Dyslexics than phonetic languages like English. Associating pictures with sounds and meaning, in some cases can be easier than: working out what sound a cascade of phonetic symbols make, creating a sound from that deciphered symbol code, inputting that sound into our mental database, drawing the associated meaning to that sound from our mental database to complete the process of reading a word.

Any academics reading this are probably screaming at their screen right now as this is a hugely simplified account of the reading process. Research shows that much of the words we process are recognised by their shape as well as the letters contained within them; this is one of the reason road signs always start with capital letters. Apparently our brains can recognise the shape of words more quickly when there is a mixture of upper and lower case characters.

In my case I read pretty slowly and much of what I read, I assume, is processed by recognising the shape of the word rather than the letters it contains. This works great most of the time but problems arise when I come across a word I’ve never seen before, my reading comes to a halt and the laborious process I’ve described above kicks into action. Yesterday I was sitting in traffic and as I looked at my surroundings, I noticed a restaurant I’d never seen before, The Amalfi. I’ve heard of the Amalfi Coast in Italy, I’ve even looked at it on maps, but I’d never seen the word in print before. So after ignoring my normal reflex reaction when I see a word that I can’t pronounce; skip it, continue reading and hope the context of the text brings some enlightenment. I decided to grapple with the word in question. I cycled through the possibilities, Ama-lfi, Am-alfi, Am –alfi, Am-al-fi, Am-al –fi, Amalfi. Ooooooh! Amalfi! As in the Amalfi Coast! I so could have done with a symbol in that situation.

Ok, so my argument has holes in it. If I were reading a symbol based language, chances are I may have not recognised the symbol that depicted the Amalfi Coast. This is a big flaw with the Chinese language. Although there are clues within each character, if you’ve never seen a character before, you are sometimes forced to look that word up in a Chinese dictionary. Now I could go into the in’s and out’s of using a Chinese dictionary but, that’s a whole other blog post.

Anyway the reason I started this particular blog post was because I came across this intriguing article in The Economist.  It say’s that research from Hong Kong University shows that as well as being Dyslexic in both English and Chinese, there could be cases where a bilingual Dyslexic could be Dyslexic in one language and not in the other! How awesome would that be, to be struggling one day in English, but be able to think, ‘ah well tomorrow I’ll be fine as I’ll be writing in Chinese.’ Also if this was the case, would the Dyslexic pros follow the language you were thinking, speaking and writing in? For instance would you be more creative in one language than the other one or be a better problem solver depending on which language you were talking in? The theory proposed by Wai Ting Siok of Hong Kong University doesn’t take all these possibilities into account. It only studies abnormalities in brain function while a participant is reading. As we all know Dyslexia is so much more than your ability to read and write. That said, this article is still a fascinating read.

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For more news and views on dyslexia check out The Codpast, the Internet’s best Dyslexia Podcast. Listen Here

Alan Turing and The Imitation Game

Words by Vanessa Rocha (Our in-house Lexic)

It seems like the British intelligence service is finally seeing the potential in dyslexics, but before you don your James Bond tux and bow tie, you might want to read on. In an article by The Independent, we discover that GCHQ is recruiting 120 “neuro-diverse” intelligence officers. That’s right “neuro-diverse”. This means that anyone with dyslexia and/or dyspraxia may be able to work for the government. So rather than James Bond, you’re more likely to be Q or any of his technical elves.

This new development may be due to the fact that one of the granddaddies of computing was a dyslexic. Who is this granddaddy? He was the one who cracked the German code in World War II. If you know your history, yes, I’m talking about Alan Turing.

Who was this Alan Turing? Well, he was a mathematician, cryptanalyst and a computer scientist. He was born in Paddington, London, on June 23^rd 1912, and became one of Britain’s most important mathematicians, in the time of World War II. Turing worked with the government, even before the war; he worked mostly on code breaking. On September 1939 he reported to Bletchley Park, now the most iconic place for code breakers. Here, Turing managed to break Germany’s codes and because of this the war ended at least 2 years early.

After World War II, Turing went on to create the “Turing Test”, which tests a machine to determine how “intelligent” it is. He theory gave was to the he first ever computer chess game which proved computer can “think” like a human, if only in terms of logic.

Now we know this man is very iconic in the mathematics and code breaking worlds, so where is his move? Strangely a movie about his life has been released right around the same time the GCHQ is announcing that they are recruiting 120 dyslexics; coincidence? If you haven’t heard of it the film is called, The Imitation Game, and stars Benedict Cumberbatch, and fellow dyslexic, Keira Knightley. It’s already showing in , but if you haven’t seen it, you can watch the trailer above.

The Imitation Game:

Release: 28th November 2014

Synopsis:

“Based on the real life story of legendary cryptanalyst Alan Turing, the film portrays the nail-biting race against time by Turing and his brilliant team of code-breakers at Britain’s top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, during the darkest days of World War II.” (IMDB – Studio Canal)

Cast:

• Benedict Cumberbatch
• Keira Knightley
• Matthew Goode
• Rory Kinnear
• Allen Leech

 

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Words by Vanessa Rocha our resident Lexic (or if you’re a film buff, you might want to check out her review blog Ereimul Reviews).

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For more news and views on dyslexia check out The Codpast, the Internet’s first Dyslexia Podcast. Listen Here

Walk in the shoes of a Dyslexic

There is a theory that says, the way each individual experiences the world may be unique to that individual. The theory states that although we all agree strawberries and tomatoes are red, what our brains interpret as the colour red could be totally different. This theory could hold some water, as the world we experience really is only our brains interpretation of light and sound waves bouncing into our eyes and ears, chemical analysis of air samples in our noses and electrical pulses from our nerve endings. When we get in to the animal world things get even weirder. Bats could potentially hear colours and snakes taste sounds!? Just imagine a conversation with a Bat. Me: “have you heard the new track by Beyonce?’ Bat: ‘yeah, I love the green and orange of the rap by JayZ.’

Personally, from what I’ve experienced of the world I would say the human experience is pretty consistent, when there are inconsistencies, those inconsistencies are constant within a large group; Dyslexic’s being one such group.

Although there are some variations, there is a consistency to the process mine and other Dyslexic brains use, compared to a Lexic brain completing the same task. In the past friends and family have tried to understand the frustration and difficultly I find in tasks that they see as routine. Conveying my experience to them is a little like talking to a Bat about music. Our experiences of the same process are so different it’s almost impossible. That may soon change, as today; my attention was drawn to a simulation that takes us a few steps closer to sharing the Dyslexic experience.

Through Your Child’s Eye’s is an online simulator which allows parents, teachers, friends and family to experience some of the frustration and fatigue we suffer when reading, writing and organising our thoughts. The simulator was created by understood.org and can be found here: https://www.understood.org/en/tools/through-your-childs-eyes

One thing this simulator highlighted, is that us Dyslexics seem to be a lot more persistent and tenacious than our Lexic counterparts. Most Dyslexics that I watched try the simulator found the tasks hard but quietly persevered. Lexics on the other hand, in a surprising number of cases, easily gave up or purposely sabotage the tests to get it over and done with. Very interesting!

To use the simulator you first choose the age group of the person whose experience you would like to simulate, you then choose from a list of five tasks Dyslexics may struggle with.

(This site is in Americanese so if you are not familiar with the US grade system click here for a UK comparison.)

Each simulation starts with a video from a Dyslexic, detailing some of the issues and feelings they have when completing the chosen task. This is followed by a short video from an expert to give a bit more insight (you can skip these if you wish). You then move on to the simulation itself. I tried the reading and writing simulations. As I already have difficulties with these two tasks it was hard to tell how accurate they were. I could however see how they may give a Lexic some idea of some of my frustration. The organisation and attention simulations were another story.

I am super organised and now after a lot of self-training am able to focus my attention pretty well. Being thrown into a world of hyper concentration, frustration and confusion was an eye opener and will now make me more sympathetic, understanding and patient when dealing with people that have these issues.

At this point I decided a Dyslexic trying to review a Dyslexic simulation wasn’t the most scientific of tests, so I roped in the services of a Lexic mate. I first made them try the writing test as this best illustrates the way Dyslexia affects me. I watched as they speeded through the first sentence and was almost sadistically amused by the look of confusion when they realised the sentence they had just written, was littered with spelling mistakes. They then went back to correct the mistakes, but upon reviewing the sentence again, realised there were yet more unseen mistakes. They soon realised that to successfully complete the sentence, they would have too slow their typing to almost a third of their original typing speed. They also needed to spend a huge amount of time and energy checking every single letter was correct. I tortured my Guinea pig further by making them complete each of the five tests, by the time we got to the final attention test, they point blank refused to do anymore.

Now, whether these tests are an accurate representation of what we experience is debatable. Dyslexia affects each and every one of us in a different way and this would be impossible to simulate. But after years of telling my friends how difficult I sometimes find simple tasks, I feel this was the first time I got some real recognition of exactly how challenging life can sometimes be.

If you are reading this and have a loved one that suffers from Dyslexia, I would highly recommend having a go at this simulation. As well as giving you some insight in to the effect Dyslexia has on their daily life, there is also some helpful advice at the end of each test. If you are Dyslexic, then I’d say dare your friends and family to take on the challenge. It’s loads of fun to watch the frustration slowly build as a routine task becomes a battle of wit, tenacity and persistence. Ok maybe I’m a bit mean, I’m guessing you are nicer to your friends and family, but hey what can I say, that’s just how I roll.

Speaking of amusing reactions to this test, I think it would be great if people would record there reactions to the test on their webcams and up load them to YouTube. Let’s make Dyslexia appreciation go viral! Tweet a link to your video to @thecodpast and we’ll share them at the bottom of this post and create a playlist on YouTube to share with our audience.

For more information here or follow this link to try the test for yourself https://www.understood.org/en/tools/through-your-childs-eyes

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For more news and views on dyslexia check out The Codpast, the Internet’s best Dyslexia Podcast.

The Codpast Episode 7

The Codpast Episode 7 – An Upward Spiral

Subscribe on iTunes to make sure you never miss an other show.

Sarah Chapman is a campaigner, entrepreneur, course manager, mother of two and force to be reckoned with. If you are familiar with work of Jay Z. There’s a line in one of his tracks where he states, for him, ‘difficult takes a day’ and  ‘impossible takes a week’. Looking a some of what Sarah has achieved, these lyrics could have been penned by Jay Z while attending one of Sarah’s events. But when talking to Sarah, her bubbly personality and infectious passion for her cause reveal little about her turbulent past. On The Codpast we generally celebrate the positives of dyslexia, but in this episode we hear the story of how, in the wrong environment dyslexia can be devastating. This episode really illustrates how a little understanding and the right support for Dyslexia can make a massive difference to one’s personality, aspirations and level of achievement.

For more news and views on dyslexia check out The Codpast, the Internets first Dyslexia Podcast. Listen Here

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