What's Going On In Your Brain

September 7, 2012

Interview with David Rock, author of the book Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long

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Mike Carruthers:
 If you want to do your very best work you should probably do it in the morning.

David Rock:
Most people only have a few hours of really, really high thinking level ability every day – it tends to be after a good rest, in the morning.
 

David Rock, author of the book Your Brain at Work ...

And what we do is we get to work and we use that for things that absolutely exhaust our brain that don’t really create much. So, the first thing is, use your brain's resources wisely – they are very limited everyday.

What’s fascinating is your brain, says David, is always categorizing everything coming at you as either a threat or a reward.

The biggest rewards and threats are actually social. And I’ll give you an example; there are two things that you can do to really upset someone. One is, of course, to threaten them with physical violence, which we shouldn’t do. But the other is to say to someone, “Let me tell you what other people have been saying about you.” I can tell you that phrase really sets people off.

Why? - because if people are talking negatively about you it threatens your social status, and your brain (beyond your conscious control) desperately wants to protect your status.

And something like status is treated by the brain as what’s called a primary reward or primary threat – meaning we treat it as if our life was in danger or our life was possibly going to get better. And it turns out status does actually improve your longevity and your health. People with high status (in whatever community they’re in) do tend to live longer and have less overall stress.