—
Listen to the podcast here:
The Brain At Work
I’m in the middle of a book called Your Brain at Work. I love studying the concept of how the brain works and the energy in the brain. How much ATP do we use up? How many calories an hour does the brain eat up? I’ve caught myself throughout my life, in the 3:00 to 7:00 hour walking up to my wife saying, “I’ve ran out of ATP. I’ve got to go watch TV or I have to turn my brain off.” I never truly understood what I meant until I read this book. The book is called Your Brain at Work. I urge everybody to rush out and get this book. I want to get you caught up to speed so far. I won’t give anything away but to tease you a little bit, let me give you some nuggets here.
I knew because of reading other books that the brain has almost unlimited in computing power. This book confirms that. We only use a tiny fraction of our brain. There are studies where people can get hit by a car or football players can have this collision where their brain gets jumbled up and certain synapses cross and all of a sudden, these people can compute things and get photographic memories. They see numbers and color. The brain is very interesting. Here is what I didn’t know. What I didn’t know is how much the brain can hold at any one time in front of us. Did you know that at any one time the brain can only hold four thoughts or four images? It can’t see five things clearly at one time. It can see four but it can only process two items at the same time. Why is this important?
At any one time, the brain can only hold four thoughts or four images. Click To Tweet
The book starts out with a little story. It’s a story of a gal. She’s in somewhat of a management position at work. She wakes up and has this incredible idea for work. She can’t wait to get to her job and she wants to launch this big idea. She’s in management. She’s got some people that report to her and she reports to other people as well. It’s Monday and the whole drive to work, she’s thinking about this big idea. She walked into her office. She turns on her computer and there were 100 fresh emails. Unfortunately, her job description says by midnight she has to have all 100 emails cleared out because the next day she’s going to get another 100. She thinks the smart thing to do, “Let me get through some of these emails, some of the urgent ones. I’ll scan through it. Look for the urgent and rip those off then I’m going to start on my project.”
She scans and does about 20 to 30 emails and gets ready to start on this big idea. Her boss walks in and drops a new assignment on her. She’s now frustrated because she’s cleared out about twenty emails but to her dismay, she’s got 40 more. The boss gave her a new assignment and she knows she’s got to get this big idea done because it’s going to impress her boss and everybody else. Here’s the question, how should this lady proceed? What methodology should she take at this point? Should she crank through the emails so she can focus on the big idea? Should she do her boss’s job project first then get to the emails? What’s the process?
There’s a blueprint as to the right and the wrong way that the mind can go about setting priorities. Click To Tweet
According to the book, there’s a blueprint as to the right and the wrong way that the mind can go about these many moving parts in that order. There’s a managerial business way to navigate the situation. I don’t want to give it away. I’m right in the middle of the perfect system for how to go about this process. Ironically, I stumbled upon a plan that works for me, that happens to get mentioned in this book. It involves doing a little journaling every day, clearing out a to-do list, putting the hot burns, getting them set and getting some emails cleared but not all. I hope you will run out and get the book, Your Brain at Work because the majority of the people that get through the first three chapters will change how they set up their day and how they go about ripping through the timeline of their day. What a powerful book. I hope this helps. Take care.
Important Links:
Leave a Reply