The Way Your Brain Was Meant To Work

September 24, 2012

Interview with Margaret Moore, author of the book Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life: Train Your Brain to Get More Done in Less Time

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Mike Carruthers:
Today we’re all multi-tasking because we have to there are just so many things to do but actually…

Margaret Moore:
The brain is designed to focus on 1 thing at a time and so when we focus all of our attention and all of our brains resources are on tap that’s when we’re at our most brilliant.
 

Margaret Moore, author of the book Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life, says that means your brain works best when you do what’s called sequential tasking.

Where you focus all of your attention on 1 thing and then you move all of it to the next thing. You don’t worry about the last task because the brain has a lot of automatic stuff going on and it’ll still solve it even when you’re not thinking about it. And then know when you need a brain break.

And you need a brain break because your brain has to recharge.

Where you just let your mind wander, maybe you do something physical for 2 minutes, you do sort of mindless stuff and in not very long you can actually recharge your brain and be ready to go on the next thing.

And Margaret says your emotions have a lot to do with how well your brain works.

Negative emotions actually dim the lights in the thinking brain. While positive emotions turn up the lights and make the brain work better. And in fact there’s an optimal mathematical ratio when you’re above 3 positives to 1 negative over the course of a day your brain will focus well it will be more creative and that’s when the brains working at its best.