Seeking a new way of life

First of all, as only the Japanese member, I'm very delighted to introduce the renewed official website of the 'Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM)' society. The NDM society was founded in 1989 by Gary Klein, an American cognitive psychologist, who was one of the initiators of the NDM movement.

The key concept of NDM is to study how the expert make a judgment and decision under stressful conditions such as life-threatening, time pressure, physical constraints, ambiguous goal, little information, etc. For further information about the society, click the above picture and you can have access to the official website.

By the way, due to Covid-19 pandemic, we are now living in a very stressful world and society. Everyday, more people are infected with the virus and lose their lives. We must always wear face masks outside home, but there is still a possibility of virus infection.

In Japan, many companies have been opt for remote work. Also, schools and universities started distance learning. Because many Japanese people are not familiar with remote work and distance learning, some people complain that such working and learning styles are not productive. However, other people started to seek their new ways of life. Rather, they doubted if their previous life styles really made them happy.

For instance, it's not an unusual story that typical Japanese office workers of big corporations and government agencies spend 13-14 hours (8am to 9 or 10pm) in their offices from Monday to Friday. Sometimes, they work on Saturday and Sunday.

Children also have similar life schedules as adults do. Children spend at 8 hours at school. However, almost all Japanese schools offer assignment and homework after the classes. They need to spend 2 to 4 hours to do them at home. Moreover, some children go to cram schools after school hours to prepare for high school and university admission exams. They study 2 to 3 hours there.

Do longer working hours in office and studying hours in school really make Japanese adults and children happy? Some people started to reconsider their previous ways of life and seek new directions. Ironically, this 'stressful' Covid-19 pandemic has changed our 'stressful' life styles and core values.