Your Brain at Work

My streak of outstanding books continues.

Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long by David Rock is different than other brain books that I’ve read. This one directly tackles understanding the brain as an energy system that is impacted by emotions.

Each chapter lays out a problem with how we respond to our environment in a way that negatively impacts our mental performance. Then the author explains how we are working against our brains and then he details strategies to improve our mental performance. Every chapter is concluded with bullet point lessons.

Topics covered include:

• Memory
• Multi-tasking
• Distractions
• Uncertainty
• Expectations
• Fairness
• Status
• Autonomy

This book is outstanding. If you are in a management role, this book is for you. Many of the lessons deal with our brain deals with social conflict. If you want to sample some of the ideas in this book, watch this 55-minute lecture the author gave to Google employees last year.

Your Brain at Work – Google Tech Talk – Nov 19, 2009