After reading The Organized Mind,* what did I learn? Not a lot, unfortunately, but can I share a few simple truths from this well-researched text on brain science?
Mental health and wellness all rely on a healthier and happier brain. Ignoring brain wellness will impair your well-being.
Not surprisingly, our brain is lazy and is looking for easy solutions and rules to make its job less stressful, yet successful. Our successful brain is largely designed for the hunting and gathering activities of our primate fore-parents of 50,000 plus years ago. Three things mattered then: survival, using the least amount of calories possible and passing on the genes to the next generation. Likely your goals are a little more aspirational, but our brain functions largely according to this simplistic set of guiding principles.
Our brain really does not like stress: over-complexity seriously undermines its effectiveness and efficiency. Where possible outsource (externalize) memory or attention. We really do have a one track mind: multitasking and multi-attention is an impossibility. Trying to do or remember several things simultaneously puts the brain into alarm mode. The solution is simple. Prioritized lists solve most of these stresses to the brain. By writing something down, the brain does not have to remember it, and by prioritizing the list the need to multi-task is materially reduced. The book and research suggest a simple prioritization scheme: Do it, Delegate it, Defer it, or Drop it It took over fifty pages to provide the science behind these essential and obvious observations!
The most interesting conclusions in the book were about sleep. A tired brain is problematic and often unhelpful. Not getting your rapid eye movement (REM) sleep can have serious negative consequences. For best results you need 1.5 hours of REM per night. What was interesting is that you cannot cram or double up on REM sleep. If you don’t get your dose one night, you cannot make it up the next evening. Sleeping in doesn’t recover the deficit or build a surplus. The most important strategy was to get into a regular sleeping schedule of 8 hours (+/- 1 hour) a day: neither over nor under sleeping alters your underlying REM diet. Alcohol and drugs interfere with REM: you may fall asleep quicker, but your REM could be on hold.
A healthier brain does not guarantee wellbeing, but an ill brain certainly reduces it.
Reflection Source: www.Smallercup.org
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*: The Organized Mind, Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload by Daniel Levitin