From the Intergalactic Journal of Biology and Mechanics.
The study of the human species has gone on for significantly less time than others, though during that time we have discovered oddities about the human race that are not present in any other species in the galaxy.
It was originally thought that the human race possessed a cortical system non-conducive to sustained attention. Research from both human and non-human scientists has determined that the average human attention span may only last for 25 minutes at a time before falling away significantly. Employers with human employees are even encouraged to give the humans many breaks during a work-related period or support a system that allows the humans to switch between tasks at a rate, which keeps their attention and productivity.
However, certain sources claim to have seen humans keep attention for expanded segments of time. This attention expands beyond the category of normal attention and is described as a state where the human does not process the passage of time, outside distraction, sound, pain, or even emotion other than, perhaps, joy.
Human Athletes and creative minds have described this experience of advanced attention in slang terms as "The Zone.". Relatively scholarly sources have examined this heightened attention as a slope on a graph between skill and Challenge. If the skill and the challenge follow each other along the line, then flow can be experienced, and the level of heightened attention becomes more likely. If the skill is high and the challenge is low then boredom is experienced. If the skill is low and the challenge is high anxiety is experienced. In both cases, "The Zone" cannot be reached.
While, naturally humans tend to be less productive than their non-human counterparts during normal work periods, within this heightened state of attention and capacity, the human can outdo their counterparts by almost five times the rate of productivity and performance.
If you wish to have productive human employees you must find and challenge skilled workers in the working environment, and only after that will you see such heightened productivity.
***
The ship seemed ready to shake itself in half. Even as he motored his way down the hall, Krill was almost thrown against the doorways in danger of rupturing his delicate hydrogen sack keeping him afloat and upright at all times.
Around him, sirens blared and long red wavelengths washed through the ship from the warning lights. Though he did not hear sounds like the humans did, the radio frequencies given off at his behest were frequent and distracting.
Finally making his way to the set of stairs, He raced upwards using his four limbs to steady against the railing as he glided onto the bridge where pandemonium had taken a tight hold.
Chaos flowed around him in a confused wave as the human bridge crew attempted to regain control of the ship. The ship's hull cameras were being projected onto the far wall giving the view of an asteroid field of unknown size hidden as it were by a thick cloudy wall of space dust.
The nebula was massive, many lightyears across stretching out into infinity in towering arcs of darkened dust backlit by an unseen star. Where the light reached, waves of short and long reflected wavelengths brought blue and red to his eyes.
The ship rocked again as one of the outer propulsion units made contact with the rock. The deck around them bucked sending Krill skidding across the floor. Those humans, that had not the foresight to strap themselves in, ended up flat on the deck. The strength of the impact was enough to knock unfastened equipment from the far wall and hurl it halfway across the room. Those who didn't react quickly enough cried out in pain as they were struck.
Krill gripped tightly to the closest railing using his four upper limbs to suspend himself safely in place before deflating his hydrogen sack to avoid rupturing. The weight on his lower extremities increases as his buoyancy decreased.
Above the clatter of the ship's deck, he heard a clatter from behind followed by a string of creative curses.
A second later, the captain came stumbling onto the bridge catching his prosthetic foot on the lip of the stair taking him painfully down to his other knee.
"S***!" He yelled gritting his teeth as he limped back to his feet rubbing his good, and only, knee, "Status report!" He bellowed silencing the other humans with the power of his voice.
In a show of deference to their most dominant male, the rest of the human crew grew silent.
"Sir, the emissions from the nebula is playing havoc with our navigation equipment. We didn't see them until it was too late."
The captain nodded marching up to the command chair, placed centrally in the bridge where all stations were in full view of his eyes, and sat down strapping himself in, "What do we have that WILL work."
From the other side, one of the females shook her head, "Radar, and I would only trust short wave at this point. We cannot risk waiting for the ping to get back to us while inside the field."
The captain gave a grunt, "That's no better than the visual field at this point."
One of his hands flicked downwards, and the command chair swiveled. Two sets of joysticks clicked upwards from opposing armrests while two foot-pedals clicked into place under his feet. A visor rolled down from the headrest hissing into place as it dropped over his face giving him a partial view from one good eye.
Krill quickly hauled himself along the floor, "Captain, this decision is unwise. Operating the ship manually in your condition is reckless."
The look he received from the human then was unsettling enough to remind him that the captain was ranked as an A-1 apex predator, and could have ripped him apart if he really wanted to.
"What because I'm missing a leg and an eye." The human snapped, "Need I remind you that outside of 30 feet binocular cues are almost useless, besides we have no other options, and no one else here is trained to manually pilot a ship anyway."
Krill wilted.
The captain's expression softened, "I'm sorry, Krill, I didn't mean to snap, but this is my only option, and I'll be damned if I let anything happen to my crew."
Krill gave an uncertain nod but kept his mouth shut.
The captain nodded and looked up giving a thumbs up to one of his officers, "Lieutenant, run the manual program, the rest of you strap in and pray to whatever deity that we survive this."
Krill scurried over to an auxiliary seat glancing at the next passenger over.
"Manual program?"
The human gave him a signature reckless grin, "You'll see."
Up at the captain's chair, the man had removed his eye patch to reveal a metallic aperture where his empty socket had once been.
Krill stared in shock.
The captain grinned, "Thought I'd give myself a few upgrades as compensation for losing an eye."
A metallic snap later and the captain was wired directly into the ship.
The lieutenant gave a thumbs up, and the captain nodded, "Hit it."
Krill wasn't sure what he should have expected, but it surely wasn't the frantic drum line and roll of electric guitars that suddenly overtook the bridge.
The captain gave a loud shout, one that Krill now recognized as a human war cry, he wasn't sure if there was a true meaning behind it, but if he were to give a translation he would say that it meant the human was telling odds and statistics to go to hell because humans didn't follow the proper rules of survival. In other words, he was challenging surmounting odds, and he was sure he would win.
That's when the ship rolled, and the world around him became a confusing mass of color and noise.
The asteroid field might as well have been a wall of impenetrable stone, but still, the ship, not made for maneuvering, cut through pours in the stone skin with a precision that only a well-tuned supercomputer should have been able to do.
Whenever the ship leveled out, and Krill could finally regain his composure, he saw the captain sitting in his chair single eye fixed on the visual field. Teeth gritted in an expression of animalistic joy and maddening concentration. Men and women screamed in terror as the ship rolled around them, but not once did his expression waver.
At one point, the ship was struck by something caching them off-path to be thrown sideways. The crew was assaulted by flying debris from unbound equipment. The Captain bled freely from the nose and gouge in his scalp, but even as blood trickled down his face and neck he remained fixed with the same joyous intensity as if he hadn't noticed.
Every movement he made, every visual calculation, the human was not mistaken. No matter the noise, no matter the distraction. Krill wouldn't have believed it if he didn't see it. This man, who was known for growing distracted in a matter of seconds, stayed fixed on his monitor for hours maneuvering them past insurmountable odds without the aid of advanced calculations and only his flawed human mind and body to guide them.
The last few moments of terrible horror as the ship took a vertical up an asteroid wall, rolled past a set of pillars, and broke outwards into open space. The ship slowed and then the engines released. The ship floated forward on its remaining momentum.
The captain rested back in his seat with a sigh of deep exhaustion though his eyes glittered with an intoxicating joy.
The bridge erupted into a mixture of cheers and groans.
The look on the captain's face was proof of another human oddity Krill had only seen a few times. Like most species do drugs to get high, the human brain injects its own drug as a chemical reward. In other words, humans can make themselves high and from near-death experiences no less after disregarding normal human behavior to concentrate for hours at a time.
News of this sort of thing not only sparked research on the topic of human concentration but ended up starting a black market trade of the human reward chemical known as Dopamine.
Humans were the universe's new high.