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July 2 - August 29, 2019
As a matter of fact, study is only one part of heurism. Experience and practice are the others, and it’s the consolidation of the three that leads to the sense of intuitive knowing.
practice things slowly, in a controlled way and with focus, we eventually get to that heuristic quality.
practice being comfortable with discomfort.
It’s the “struggle” that helps the brain grow. For both our brain and our confidence to benefit, the new learning doesn’t have to be something sophisticated, and—this is important and exciting—we don’t have to achieve mastery in the new skill or knowledge to benefit from a growing brain.
Confidence is not competence; it’s a willingness to try, and that, in turn, could lead to competence.
importance of learning delayed gratification.
One could argue that the easier path leads to trouble more often than the path that requires more patience. But it often takes willpower to make the better decision. It’s been discovered that the same limited resource we use in our brain for self-control or willpower is also used in effortful decision making.
things to strengthen our willpower and ability to focus,
First, we can take control of the distractions in our environment to lessen their impact on us. Second, we can practice willpower, particularly in times when we may have more of it. Third, we can practice being “in the now” to improve our attention. Finally, we can adopt an abundance mindset when it comes to willpower.
As our anxiety goes up, our ability to control our attention goes down. It’s a merry-go-round. The more distracted we become, the more difficult it is to manage distractions.
Willpower is a finite resource.
When you multitask, you are training your brain to be good at paying attention to distractions. Multitasking is not how the brain does its best work.
two things at once, it is mentally impossible to give each of the tasks 100 percent of our attention.
We are effectively quick-switching b...
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The more tired our brain gets, the more easily distracted it becomes, so it takes even more willpower to stay in the game and remain focused.
The later in the day it gets, the more decision fatigue we tend to experience.
When we start to become more distracted or irritable, it could be a very good indicator that our willpower is depleted and that it’s time to take a break.
It’s about mindfulness—attention training, not relaxation—and it goes to the impact you have in all aspects of your life.
executive control network (ECN).9, 10 This is the network that helps us intensely focus on the present—on being wherever we are. It focuses our mind with only the content we want it filled with. In short, it is mindfulness.
Your subconscious brain is checking about five times every second to see if there is something relevant to heed.
ECN is associated with keeping the normal atrophy of our brain’s gray matter at bay, and in some cases, even thickening it. Gray matter is the matter of the brain that is involved in processing and cognition.
The brain is a completion machine.
It loves getting things done and rewards us with a good feeling—that dopamine bump—when we do.
achieving small goals has about the same neuro-reward as achieving big ones (cleaning out a closet that’s been staring at you for months can feel just about as good, brain-wise, as getting a promotion that you’ve worked for).
We can’t complete the behaviors necessary to achieve the goal because we are completing other behaviors necessary to deal with the distractions.
the results of the study also suggest that when one of the operations was on, the other was not. They found that the how and why are both parts of achieving the goal. We naturally switch back and forth between the how circuitry and the why circuitry as we work toward a goal
One of the biggest wastes of energy and resources is keeping little things we need to remember floating around in our prefrontal cortex (PFC).
physical energy it takes for the brain to manage multiple competing tasks is considerable, and making a firm decision on which item to begin gets us activated and going.
more complex goal,
initiate a chain of events in our brain that don’t fully end until we complete the goal. When we stop moving toward the goal, the brain is still waiting in the background to continue.
That’s what a messy brain looks like—distracted and unable to accomplish the task in front of it because it’s got a host of priorities floating around. The messy brain is being pulled toward competing open orders in a sort of masochistic tug-of-war.
David Allen’s classic Getting Things Done
Setting healthy parameters is a path to goal achievement and overall well-being.
What things are you saying no to by saying yes to other things?
But the happiest people with the healthiest brains are leaving space in their lives to say yes to themselves as well.
hoping you’re not as attached to the clutter—literal and figurative—in your life, but this rating method is a simple and interesting way to set your parameters.
not properly resting and refueling, we may shrink and age our brain without even knowing it until it’s too late.
what separates those who succeed in achieving difficult goals from those who don’t. Grit is about perseverance and passion for long-term goals.
achievement of difficult goals entails not only talent but also the sustained and focused application of talent over time.”1
reliving stressful experiences, and the constant replaying was depleting their energy reserves.
We are not designed to have our threat response on all of the time.
Stress can have both positive and negative effects on our success.
Write down all of the things that stress you in your life this very moment.
She was controlling what she could control in order to better manage the stressors she knew would arrive.
The way you think about stress can positively predict your physiological response to it. Reframing how you think about stress can have a constructive impact on your brain and body.
Yerkes-Dodson law.3 In essence, it says that when we are learning a task, as stress goes up, our performance does too—to a point.
nevertheless excel to a point and then break apart in a similar fashion.
taking three slow, deep breaths to calm yourself and put yourself in the moment.
decisions about whether stress is an energy sucker or stamina maker.
can say that the health of your brain has a lot to do with what goes into the holes in your head: what you see, what you hear, what you breathe, what you smell, and what you eat and drink.
