The Meta Cognitive Training Bracelet

Time Ferris, author of the 4-hour series of books and more, posted an article a while back about the use of Rubber bands as cognitive training tools. Like many things in meta cognitive training, an action, a behavior and an object are blended into a simple program which has become popular with personal development enthusiasts and trainers.

You can read more about that program in Tim’s post here:

Meta Cognitive Training

I happen to like the idea of meta cognitive training but as a designer and 3d printing nut I wanted to add something to that mix. While the rubber band bracelets were truly inexpensive, I thought a much more mechanical “switch” would be more symbolic and perhaps safer in a way.

That thought occurred to me while driving to work. Since the original meta cognitive program in Tim’s post was about complaining, I thought many people would be wearing these rubber bands while driving. If you add rabid cell phone use to complaining about traffic, the act of switching the rubber band from one wrist to the other as instructed in the training protocol above spelled disaster.

You can just see the disdain on the police officer’s face – “You see officer, I was just following my meta cognitive training protocol …”

The biggest advantage to the rubber bands, of course, is that they fit a much wider range of wrists without modification. Perfect design. But my next version of this bracelet may include a flexible wristband as I want to start experimenting with flexible 3d printing filaments.

It’s a little odd that I have not done so in the few years I have been printing. I have never liked the fact that many of these filaments’ early versions were in fact difficult to use and often ended up requiring a hardware upgrade to the printers before being truly usable.

But after the latest reviews of some of the latest flexibles, that may have finally changed. I’ll know more by the end of summer.

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