Project Description

Subtitle: Strategies For Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day LongBook cover Brain-at-Work1

By: David Rock

Notes:

  • Mental tasks hurt the ability do physical activity and vica-versa over the short-term.
    • But exercise increases brain activity over the long-term.
  • Glucose can restore brain activity. That’s why when ppl are tired or hungry, they can’t think.
  • Do the most important work in the morning when I’m fresh.
    • Or after a good rest of physical exercise.
  • Create visuals for complex ideas.
  • Get things out of your head. Saves energy. Physical objects work also.
  • Break work up into segments that use different bits of the brain.
    • Plan to do deep thinking at the same time.
  • Delegate well: Best to get rid of remedial tasks.
  • Brain’s memory works like ram. Turn off all non-essential tasks and focus on one.
  • When pitching things, use what people already know.  Simplest is best.
    • When pitching the movie alien, they said it was Jaws in space.
  • Brain organizes things in to clunks of information. Each chuck is the same of the words that are easy to say. Seventy two, versus, seven thousand, two hundred…
  • Write a time limit to stay focused on the project at hand.
  • New concepts are less intensive than old ones.
  • Prioritize intensive tasks before other tasks.
  • Hold meetings earlier in the day versus when ppl are tired.
  • Break large amounts of information down into chunks.
  • Doing two intensive tasks at once took twice as long, thus no time savings.
    • If accuracy is important, don’t divide your attention.
  • Constant emailing and texting reduces IQ points by 10 points, because ppl are on constant alert.
    • It’s like always watching out for a tiger in the wild.
    • The more email’s, etc. that you respond to, the more hat will get sent.
    • Eliminate constant interruptions and you’ll focus better.
  • For long term memory to form, must focus on that activity.
    • Once an activity is embedded (like driving), one can learn subtle other things.
  • Bottleneck is a series of unfinished connections. Must make a list of thoughts and find the first necessary one to address.
  • Thinking of the right order to make decisions saves time and energy to focus on other tasks.
  • Mix up your attention from full attention to split attention.
  • If you have to multi-task, embed repetitive tasks with deep-thinking tasks.
  • Office distractions eat up 2.1 hours a day.
  • Bigger computer screen is one of the best ways to increase productivity.
  • Simple technique is to switch off all electronic devices when focused on one thing.
  • Stopping internal distractions is energy intensive and requires will-power to stay focused.
    • To train yourself, stop letting distractions take over your senses early in the process.
  • Stress means to emphasize:
    • Positive stress helps focus attention.
    • A moderate amount of stress leads to good performance.
    • Too much stress reduces performance.
    • To get more adrenaline, imagine a fearful situation. Boxer goes into a ring and dies.
      • Key is to rouse the brain, but not obsess about the fear.
  • Positive feelings (imaging rewards, etc.) produces more beneficial stimulus than fearful or negative feelings about something.
    • When you need to produce good work, think about the positive outcomes.
  • Men wait till the last min so they have the chemicals motivate themselves.
  • “Flow” is one of the four keys to happiness.
  • An insight is one that connects different parts of the brain.
    • Might have to go unconscious in order to have an insight.
  • To have an insightful idea, must stop thinking in the current path.
    • To get around an impasses, think of trying to change the direction of traffic on a bridge. Stop it first, but then do again.
    • Anxiety decreases insight. Happiness increases insight.
      • That’s why google mixes fun and play with work.
  • To get past an impasses, do something totally different and then go back to it.
    • Match ppl with lots of detail with someone who doesn’t have much detail. Will lead to better ideas.
  • Insights happen when people can change their brain.
  • Steps to increase insight:
    • Be aware of the problem, but don’t get crazy about it.
    • Simplify idea: fewer words are better. Versus getting too detailed.
    • Relax with the idea. (get everyone off the stage). Focus on the idea.
  • Helpful to take a deep breadth when distracted
  • Practice activating your fun attention on everything that’s directly in front of you. Practice makes perfect.
  • Humans walk towards positive situations, but run away from negative ones…. Naturally.
  • Arousal of the limbic causes mistakes. There are ways to silence this arousal to focus better.
    • Suppression of emotions makes others feel uncomfortable and hurts the subject person.
    • Speak about an emotion in one or two words and it’ll reduce the emotion. Have a dialog about the emotion and it’ll get worse. Recognize the emotion and stay calm.
    • Women tend to be better at labeling their emotions.
  • A sense of autonomy is helpful to dealing with stress.
  • Uncontrollable stressor cause the most destruction.
    • Low level employees die sooner than executives because they don’t have choice.
    • Work / life balance is a main reason to start one’s own business even though they work longer.
    • Terrible teen behavior is unique to western society. It is assumed that they have fewer choices and they causes their problems. Give teens more say and they’ll behave.
    • Key to reappraisal is to find the positive in every situation.
    • Take another person’s perspective can help reappraise the situation.
    • Without any arousal, other thoughts wonder in to your brain
    • Ppl are better off when they reappraise. Ppl who see life through rosy glasses are happier and do better work.
    • Optimist have an embedded positive reappraisal technique.
    • Humor helps to make a crowd reappraise quickly and easily.
  • A goal automatically orients the person in the right way.
  • Unmet expectations can lead to negative effects on people. Managing expectations is key.
  • Exceeded expectations stimulate a great response of dopamine.
  • Brain is best at connecting in person (mirror nuance).
  • The one thing that makes people happy is the quality and quantity of social connections.
  • Learning increases when you speak to someone about an idea, because it creates more connections in the brain.
  • Think someone is a foe makes you less smart when dealing with them.
  • When in a group of ppl that don’t know each other, make sure to spend a few minutes breaking the ice.
  • Companies that encourage water cooler talks leads to greater productivity.
  • Employees want fairness. More productive.
    • Give employees time to volunteer helps to increase fairness.
  • Status is a big driver of behavior. Ppl don’t like to be excluded.
    • High status people tend to live longer and achieve bigger rewards, smarter…
    • “The Status Syndrome”
    • Saying good job often to kids generates great responses.
    • Key to status is to find a niche where you feel you are superior.
    • When people fit for status, they fight over status versus work together.
    • Pointing out what people do well helps to increase their status especially when done publicly.
    • Successful people play against themselves by challenging themselves. Give status boost.
    • Timeouts work on kids, because their lose status.
    • Great leaders are often humble leaders.
      • Let others take charge, speak about the future, keep their promises,
      • Bad leaders micromanage, unclear goals.
  • Better to focus on the solution than to focus on the problem. Can’t do both.
  • When you ask ppl to focus on their own ideas, this initiates their thinking.
    • Making it subtle is best.
    • Ppl are easily threatened by feedback, so it’s best to ask them questions to get themself to produce the feedback.
  • Best to write and leave some time between when you edit the paper.
  • Best way to help someone see something new is to help quite their mind so they can have an insight.
    • Reward ppl for activating their direction.
  • Learning a language is easier in a foreign country, because you have to eliminate your current language to rewrite the brain.
  • Use “would you be willing to do this?” instead of do this.
  • A good story is important for memory and getting a point through.
  • Setting the right goal is fantastic.
  • Writing a task down increases the intensity of the brain which helps.
  • The brain is social, so collaboration is key.
    • Ideas come alive in conversation.
  • Leaders how are overly intelligent tend not discount their weaknesses and those in others.