“The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.”
Pay attention! Concentrate! Don't get distracted! There are many ways to say it, but the advice is always the same: If you concentrate fully on the task at hand, you will do it better.
Scientists who study the brain measure attention and attention deficit in different ways. Here is a measure you can use: Once a day, can you create a 3-minute "No Distraction Zone" where you engage your brain fully on only one task? It may sound silly, but you can tap your skull and say to yourself out loud: "I'm only going to think about or do this one thing for 3-minutes." If you're not finished in 3 minutes, allow yourself a distraction or two, then do another "3 Minute No Distraction Zone." Once you master the habit for three minute segments, you can stretch the time out further.
Not only is a fully-engaged brain possibly your greatest asset, it is an asset for your team. Especially in large meetings or classes where you are mostly a passive listener, it may be helpful to simply remind yourself to bring your brain. Or, for fun, look around and ask yourself if the other people are engaging their brains or, at least, brought their brain to the meeting.
When you compare your brain to a computer, don’t think about your laptop. Think about the greatest supercomputer ever built. As a human, you are endowed with an incredibly efficient information processor. Weighing just 3 pounds, about 2% of your body weight, it shares approximately 2,000 calories in energy per day with all your other muscles and organs. Your whole body is using the energy it would take to power a single light bulb, whereas supercomputers use energy that would power whole city blocks. And unlike conventional computers, your brain has an infinite number of connections and can generate new ones on its own because, unlike a computer, your brain—and you—are alive.
Don’t just engage your brain, but thank it. Thank your brain? Why not? There it is, working away between your ears and behind eyes. Not only does it remember things, not only does it create new ideas, it processes the enormous volume of incoming data—sights, sounds, smells, tastes, scents, sensations of touch and bodily motion—you use to move through the world each day.
Heightening the powers of this information processing wonder are the connections it makes. There’s your spinal cord, a powerful system even though it is only about the diameter of your middle finger. Tracts of nerves within your spinal cord carry input from the sensory organs to your brain. Tracts of nerves exiting your brain control the whole show, carrying the output information that initiates muscle movement and controls body functions.
Also exiting your brain are your cranial nerves which, at some risk of oversimplification, manage how your face, mouth, nose and head perform for you. The facial expressions that give clues to your inner experiences are controlled by these cranial nerves.
Just as you tap your forehead as a reminder to engage your brain, thanking your brain with a small gesture like a pat on the forehead can also be a good idea. You can also thank your brain by exercising it. Exercising your muscles improves their capabilities, and exercising your brain improves its capabilities and the quality of what it produces.
The concept of quality thinking in a business sense takes on additional meaning in the 21st century, because there is a growing awareness that our human brains are competing with computer brains in the labor force itself. The July/August 2015 edition of Foreign Affairs, for example, has a cover picture of a robot with the caption “Hi Robot.” Gideon Rose introduces the issue by noting that as the fields of automation and artificial intelligence evolve, fears have mounted over the potential for robots to “threaten our jobs, our purpose and our very self- definition as human.”
The human brain is a powerful thing, so each of us should learn how to use it to its fullest potential if for no other reason than because computer-based intelligent systems like IBM’s Watson can already do certain things (e.g., play chess or Jeopardy) better than the top human champion.
Plus, the idea of improvement idea lies at the foundation of PerfectCoaches. As a child, your brain began to acquire the capacity to do things like remember people’s names. Yet this is a skill that can be sharpened through adolescence and into adulthood. PerfectCoaches is designed to help you do new things and improve the things you already do. Don’t be afraid to exercise your brain as if it were a muscle that responds well to a vigorous workout.
For a large part of our lives, especially when we’re young, that brain we treasure is more than a nice-to-have. Rather, it’s a major resource, perhaps a weapon even, in a battle to learn what the world believes you should know. That battle is called studying, and you win it with learning as your signature skill.
When you study, your brain is acquiring a relatively well-defined set of facts and concepts. Often, though not always, that set is defined by someone else. Here it’s like your brain is marching down a path, sometimes well marked, sometimes dimly lit, sometimes having the feel of an obstacle course designed for maximum frustration.
Occasionally, you study facts and concepts of your own choosing. In this case, you have given yourself an assignment. Deadlines and other criteria for success are self-imposed. Now your brain can hum tra-la-la and skip down the path, pausing at your own discretion to concentrate on a fact or concept that is particularly interesting. No matter what you are learning or why you are learning it, you are exercising your brain. Did you give your forehead a little tap to engage it when appropriate, and also to thank it, perhaps at the end of the day, to acknowledge all your brain did for you today?
In the era when the internet and hi-tech devices take up most of our time, it is getting more important than ever to pay attention to the people and things around you. An average attention span — the amount of concentrated time on a task without becoming distracted — has decreased to just 8 seconds. This is 50% less than 17 years ago!
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