BrainChains Quotes

“DON’T TRY TO COMMUNICATE BY E-MAIL: APPLY THE RULE OF THREE Apply the rule of three: as soon as three mails are exchanged on a subject and it’s still not settled or whenever there is the slightest suspicion that it will take more than three e-mails to get an agreement, pick up the phone, go and meet, or have a conference call.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“Give me 6 hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – ABRAHAM LINCOLN”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“If you are dealing with an extremely important decision, you should always sleep on it.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“The greatest gift in a real conversation, discussion or meeting is undivided attention.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“to be useful, to develop understanding, insight and knowledge, the information has to be reflected on and stored in our long-term memory by our archiving brain. This is simply impossible to do without disconnecting.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“not only do emotional reactions that we are consciously aware of influence our reflecting brain, but so do the unconscious emotional reactions and shortcuts of our reflex brain.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“Taking a break for a brainworker is not losing time but refueling energy and sharpening your axe (think about the archiving brain) for the next task.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“Reflection is sustained, focused critical thinking with a purpose. The goal is finding a solution to a problem, an answer to a question. It is conscious, persistent, logical, critical thinking at an abstract level: manipulating concepts, mental images, memories, hypotheses and theories in the absence of the objects or the phenomena we are thinking about. It’s about defining goals, making plans, conscious decisions and choices.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“My philosophy is: if you don’t have goals, you never get lost”.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“Shakespeare wrote: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“As important is the fact that not making a decision, postponing the decision or just sticking to the status quo consumes less energy. That’s exactly what happened to the parole board. The criminals being judged just after the break had a much greater chance of being freed, whereas for the ones coming later the judges tended to opt for the status quo. “When in doubt, do nothing” is your brain’s guideline, especially when the decision is difficult and your brainpower is running low.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” – ALBERT EINSTEIN”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“WE ARE ALL BRAINWORKERS AND OUR SUCCESS DEPENDS ON OUR INTELLECTUAL PRODUCTIVITY”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“Young adults know that texting while driving is very risky and riskier than talking on a cell phone [400] and that it should be forbidden. [401] About 50% of teens and adults have been passengers in a car when the driver used the cell phone in a way that put themselves or others in danger. [402] And yet 70% of young adult drivers text, 81% reply to texts and 92% read texts while driving, notwithstanding their awareness of the risks!!!!! They keep their subjective perception of risk low by driving a little more slowly, which of course doesn’t make much of a difference in terms of risk. [403]”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“Texting while driving is a recipe for disaster: not only is your conscious brain busy but on top of that your eyes don’t look at the road for an average of 5 seconds and your hands are more or less off the wheel. Studies show that there is a logarithmic relation between the risk of an accident and the time you don’t look at the road. When you send a text or a brief e-mail, you take your eyes off the road repeatedly for an average of 5 seconds. Five seconds at about 40 miles/hour (70 km/h) means that you didn’t look at the road for about 100 yards (110 meters)! That’s the same as driving with your eyes closed for the length of an entire football or soccer field and doing so several times in a row!”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“25% of people (60% of young people) text while driving. 80% use their phone and think that making a call does not negatively impact their own driving performance.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“People send 182 billion e-mails every day or 66 trillion a year.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“There is no expedient to which man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.” – SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS 1902”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“We now know that 24 hours without sleep or a week of sleeping 4-5 hours a night induces an impairment equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.1%. We would never say ‘This person is a great worker! He’s drunk all the time!’ yet we continue to celebrate people who sacrifice sleep.” – CHARLES CZEISLER, PROFESSOR OF SLEEP MEDICINE AT HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“Albert Einstein: “It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer”.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“The conclusion is very simple: multitasking is very bad for your intellectual productivity.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“instead of your brain spending maximal time and energy working for you, you force it to spend a lot of time and energy getting in and out of tasks.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“when people ask you to do something, you should think how much time the execution of the task will take you and then make it a rule that you never put tasks on a to-do list, but go immediately to your diary and find out when you have time, when you are going to do the task.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“MULTITASKING IS LIKE JUGGLING MANY BALLS WITH ONE HAND; IT CAN’T BE DONE”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“This reflecting brain is slow, it needs sustained attention and concentration, and because of this it consumes lots of energy and easily becomes tired. For the purposes of this book it is very important to note that the reflecting brain can only handle one thought at a time; as such, it is like a serial processor.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“When we do not sleep enough or when we are tired or exhausted, for example after a day of work in an open office, it is our reflecting brain that is tired and it is our cognitive resources that are depleted. This is even visible in brain scans where we can see that the part of the brain that moderates the emotional brain is too sleepy to do its job. [321] This not only has a negative impact on the quality of our thinking, but since our reflecting brain then has difficulties regulating our emotional reflex brain our emotions become more primitive and exaggerated, we become over-reactive, over-emotional towards negative stimuli and are much less able to see negative things in their proper context. It also leads to a decrease in emotional intelligence in general and less socially intelligent behavior, due to a lessening of our intrapersonal awareness, interpersonal skills, emotion management, empathy and moral judgment. [322] A well-researched aspect is that with a lack of sleep we have greater difficulties appraising emotional facial expressions, [323] which of course reduces our ability to react in an emotionally and socially intelligent way.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“Your job as a professional, however, is to digest, understand, process, produce and create information, knowledge and insights both for your company and for your personal development and career.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“In a company all the habits together define the company culture. This is what doesn’t change, even when you gradually replace all the people.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“People as well as businesses put a lot more effort into avoiding small losses than maximizing long-term gains.”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world

“Thinking Fast and Slow”. [97]”
― Theo Compernolle, BrainChains: Discover your brain, to unleash its full potential in a hyperconnected, multitasking world