This month Ford reviews the book Your Brain At Work by David Rock:
Your Brain At Work, helps you discover how to fit your brain into your business. Imagine if you understood the limitations of your brain – yes, it has limits – and instead of fighting those limits only to become frustrated, you instead used that information to your advantage. Well, that’s the power of knowing how your brain works and that’s the knowledge this book delivers!
David Rock knows a little bit about the business mind. For many years, he has been studying the brain and how the latest in brain science can help people improve their work. In this book, Rock explains the deep connection between how our brain functions and the ways we can tap into the latest discoveries in the field of neuroscience to become more effective and efficient in our work.
In reading Your Brain At Work, you’ll walk through lessons David has learned from his studies, but he also applies that information to the format of his book and the way he formulates his delivery of the information he has gathered. For example, his research — and that of many leading scientists in the field of brain studies — has shown him that the brain can quickly become overwhelmed by too much information received too quickly. Keeping this lesson in mind, he taps into a few simple tools that help him share his discoveries. By applying those tools to the way he has written his book, the science he delivers is much more appealing to his readers’ brains than an avalanche of facts and statistics.
Basic storytelling is a powerful tool Rock uses. By telling stories about the daily routines of a couple of fictional professionals, he presents his readers with many scenarios to which anyone can relate. By connecting his lessons directly to the decisions and actions of his realistic protagonists, Rock captures the abstract ideas from neuroscience and brings them down to earth. While developing and guiding his characters, he makes use of the idea that our brains can retain more information faster when we use visual stories to tack it to our memory.
Another tool that can help anyone plan his or her day better and become more effective at work is the idea that our brains have a limited amount of energy. Rock explains that our capacity to make sense of our thoughts gets depleted over time as we engage in mentally challenging tasks. Since our brainpower is a resource that can easily be drained and our focus can dwindle when we are involved in difficult work for too long, we need to treat our mental energies as a limited resource, he writes. This means we should remember to put tighter controls on how and when we make our most brilliant decisions.
Rock points out that complicated thinking can be very taxing. When we get to work, open our e-mails, and handle the vast variety of complex tasks involved in responding to those requests and demands, our brains can get tired. Once we have used up our early stores of mental energy with so much brain activity, we have less energy to focus on other important mental activities, such as prioritizing our day. Rock suggests that we should start our days by prioritizing our activities; then dig into the other complicated aspects of our work, such as dealing with e-mail. This way, the vital activity of prioritizing can get the best of our attention rather than the leftovers.
Pick up this book today for a variety of tips and a multitude of fascinating facts and ideas gleaned from the cutting edge of today’s best brain science, you’ll definitely pick up better ways to get your work done!
About Ford Kyes
As a corporate business leader, Ford gained valuable coaching experience by mentoring graduate students in hospital management and MBA programs for five different universities. He continues to work through the chambers of commerce to share his knowledge and experience with other business professionals and lends his expertise to many nonprofit organizations on a volunteer basis. Ford Kyes, the founding partner, has proven himself to be a dynamic and inspirational business leader by achieving outstanding success for both large and small companies throughout his career. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University’s Master’s program in management, Kyes is passionate about helping individuals and businesses achieve their full potential by passing on his own business knowledge.
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