Our minds are basically organized like human computers. They function to a great extent in much the same way. So, if we want to improve our daily productivity, efficiency and focus, we need to empty the cache of temporary “files” and reboot for our brains to allow us perform at our peak levels. Otherwise we…

Think about some of your favorite sci-fi films. How many of them reference futuristic technologies that are used to augment a character’s brainpower? Turns out that not all these movies, books, and TV shows are based in completely in fiction. Modern scientific research is slowly working to make these brain hacks a reality. Here…

We’ve all heard the same statistic: 1 out of every 4 Americans don’t read any books during the course of an average year. It seems that, for many Americans, learning stops after formal education. Once we’re done with high school or college, we forget everything we learned in school and just focus on advancing…

During the course of any given day at the office, you undoubtedly drink coffee to help you stay alert, or try deep breathing exercises to calm your nerves after a particularly harrowing staff meeting. But what if there was an easier way to regulate your moods and trick your brain into performing to its…

One of the keys to any productivity system is to actually put things into the system. Who knew? Obvious though it may seem, many of us have trouble taking the time to enter our thoughts into our task-manager, to-do list, or organizational system. This can happen for any number of reasons – no paper nearby, no easy…

One powerful way to live a more creative life is to cultivate an “insight outlook” — the art of looking more deeply at everything we experience with an open, inquisitive spirit. Creative people are intensely observant, paying careful attention to everything they think and hear. They realize that their environments – the people they talk…

“Just do it!” “Do Something!” “Act now!” “Ready, Fire, Aim!” We are surrounded, on a day-to-day basis, by the exhortation to act. Hustle, hustle, hustle, get a move on, get going. Whether its a friend giving us advice or a multi-million dollar ad campaign, everyone seems to be telling us – in the vaguest way possible – to get…

Which job should you take? What car should you buy? Should you ask him to marry you? Are you ready for another baby? Is this house right for you, or should you keep looking before you make an offer? Life is full of hard choices, and the bigger they are and the more options we have…

What happens in our heads when we set goals? Apparently a lot more than you’d think. Goal setting isn’t quite so simple as deciding on the things you’d like to accomplish and working towards them. According to the research of psychologists, neurologists, and other scientists, setting a goal invests ourselves into the target as if we’d already…

Storytelling is a demanding craft. Not only do you have to be able to write or perform the story accurately, you need to create vivid descriptions. Boring, complex or difficult to understand metaphors can turn an imaginative journey into a lifeless plot. You may not think of it deliberately, but learning is very…

The important thing is not to stop questioning… Never lose a holy curiosity. Albert Einstein Curiosity is an important trait of a genius. I don’t think you can find an intellectual giant who is not a curious person. Thomas Edison, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, they are all curious characters. Richard Feynman was especially…

I’m not a big fan of mind mapping, though I concede that it does have its uses. Recently, I learned of a different approach to brainstorming that seems both more practical and better grounded in the way the mind works than traditional, Buzan-style mind mapping. This approach, called the Rico Cluster after its…

Last week, I explained some of the ways that our brain tricks us. There’s more ways than just the three I listed that the brain works in odd and mysterious ways, causing us no end of mischief. Here’s three more: I am not a racist! In 1964, a woman named Kitty Genovese was…

A mind is a terrible thing. Whether because of the brain’s internal structure or the way social and cultural pressures cause our minds to develop and function, in the end the result is the same: minds that are not only easily deceived and frequently deceptive in their own right, but when caught out, refuse…

A few weeks ago I wrote a post on note-taking skills. One common experience many people have, and that several people mentioned in response to that post, is that when they take good notes they remember things well enough that they rarely end up having to look at their notes again. In fact, it…