Pile On Motivation

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Category: Entrepreneurial

  • Working memory of brain is limited – Use it judiciously for top performance

    Our brain’s working memory like a computer’s RAM is of limited capacity.

    Though there is still dispute on maximum number of items that can be kept in working memory at one time , the number 4 is the mostly accepted number.

    This being said a lot of the great personalities can efficiently multi task for top performance.

    How this is done is through rigorous practice , to convert mundane work into routines that become habit patterns in the basal ganglia.

    Habits do not occupy the conscious mind and can operative out of our subconscious mind , thus enabling efficient multi tasking by tricking the brain.

  • Brain circuitry and their types

    David Rock in his book “Your Brain At Work” introduces us to the circuitry in our brains.

    Whenever we are faced with a situation it is human nature to activate our mental maps and try to find similar situations we have faced in the past.This is where our default circuitry inclusive of basal ganglia(habits) & hippocampus(long term memory).

    But when we are starting from scratch , this default circuitry is seldom of any use.This is where “direct experience” circuit that learns by doing actions on the fly is needed.This circuit requires lot of space to do problem solving.Medial prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex dominate.

    Use of the relevant circuit needs to be chosen judiciously depending on a case to case basis.

  • Practice “Mindfulness” for better problem solving

    David Rock in his book “Your Brain At Work” talks two very catchy terms namely “mindfulness” & “interoception“.

    Both relate to that circuit of the brain that helps us focus in the present , live for the present moment.Practicing “Mindfulness” through techniques like meditation help us understand and interpret all our incoming brain signals.

    This keeps us in better shape in tackling problems and taking resurrective action.

  • This is when our mind arrives at “Insights”

    David Rock in Your Brain At Work has touched upon this fascinating topic.

    Arriving at an “insight” is purely a right brain activity to connect the dots as against going through a checklist of items.

    Activities that give us peace of mind for e.g. meditation results in activation of right anterior temporal lobe to aid in arriving at an “insight” or an “eureka” moment.

    Thus in order to arrive at insight we need to detach ourselves from hustle and bustle for peace of mind.

  • Ways to hike mental performance

    An optimum level of arousal or stress is needed to fire up the neurons in the prefrontal cortex of brain to result in high performance.

    Instilling fear and increasing stress levels results in the flow of chemical noradrenaline to hike performance.

    A much better way involves using humour and conmunication of positive outcomes.This results in flow of dopamine as well thus being a much more effective way to increase mental performance.

    This is the reason why mentoring is a much more effective technique compared to Carrots & Sticks to hike performance.

  • Balancing mental performance with appropriate Arousal

    David Rocks in Your Brain at Work makes a mention of the inverted U plot of performance vs Arousal.

    This means stress/arousal should reach a perfect balance to trigger great mental performance of the brain.Anything more than this threshold proves detrimental causing burn out due to over stress.

    The neural circuit of the prefrontal cortex of our brain fires absolutely perfect when there is an appropriate combination of two neural chemicals i.e. dopamine & noradrenaline.

    By training our minds in the right manner it is indeed possible to generate the right amount of these chemical for optimal brain performance.

  • Making your brain stay away from distractions

    David Rock in his book Your Brain at Work very scientifically explains the natural tendency of human brain to get distracted.

    Our brain is attracted by anything novel , with the Anterior Cingulate Cortex primarily responsible for detecting anything novel.

    There is a braking mechanism though that inhibits our brain towards distractions and helps to focus better.This is known as Ventro Lateral Prefrontal Cortex and this needs to made use of judiciously to remove negativity and focus better.

    Thus knowing the working of brain helps focus our energies in the right direction.

  • How to train our brain to effectively “Multi-Task”

    David Rock in his book Your Brain at Work, clearly explains the limitation of working memory capacity of the new rational human brain i.e. Prefrontal Cortex

    As a result of this trying to perform more than one conscious task at a time can be detrimental in terms of performance.

    Yet few people effectively multi task.They practice and practice to create habits out of mundane tasks e.g driving a car.The habits sit in long term memory i.e. Basal Ganglia and have nothing to do with working memory.This is precisely the reason that few have mastered the art of driving as well as taking conference calls at the same time.

  • What is “Dual Task Interference”

    David Rock in his book “Your Brain at Work” , very scientifically explains the fact that our rational brain i.e. Prefrontal Cortex is not capable of performing more than one conscious task at a time.

    This syndrome named “Dual Task Interference”.

  • How does “chunking” improve brain efficiency

    David Rock in his book “Your Brain At Work” states that smaller the information the prefontal cortex(processes thoughts , decisions etc.)is loaded with better the efficiency.

    Chunking of information into manageable pieces results in efficient brain processing with less energy drainage.