Your Brain at Work, Revised and Updated : Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long

A researcher and consultant burrows deep inside the heads of one modern two-career couple to examine how each partner processes the workday—revealing how a more nuanced understanding of the brain can allow us to better organize, prioritize, recall, and sort our daily lives. Emily and Paul are the parents of two young children, and professionals with different careers. Emily is the newly promoted vice president of marketing at a large corporation; Paul works from home or from clients' offices as an independent IT consultant. Their days are filled with a bewildering blizzard of emails, phone calls, more emails, meetings, projects, proposals, and plans. Just staying ahead of the storm has become a seemingly insurmountable task. In Your Brain at Work, Dr. David Rock goes inside Emily and Paul's brains to see how they function as each attempts to sort, prioritize, organize, and act on the vast quantities of information they receive in one typical day. Dr. Rock is an expert on how the brain functions in a work setting. By analyzing what is going on in their heads, he offers solutions Emily and Paul (and all of us) can use to survive and thrive in today's hyperbusy work environment—and still feel energized and accomplished at the end of the day. In Your Brain at Work, Dr. Rock explores issues such as: why our brains feel so taxed, and how to maximize our mental resources why it's so hard to focus, and how to better manage distractions how to maximize the chance of finding insights to solve seemingly insurmountable problems how to keep your cool in any situation, so that you can make the best decisions possible how to collaborate more effectively with others why providing feedback is so difficult, and how to make it easier how to be more effective at changing other people's behavior and much more. In this revised edition updated with new findings, a researcher and consultant burrows deep inside the heads of one modern two-career couple to examine how each partner processes the workday—revealing how a more nuanced understanding of the brain can allow us to better organize, prioritize, recall, and sort our daily lives. Emily and Paul are the parents of two young children, and professionals with different careers. Emily is the newly promoted vice president of marketing at a large corporation; Paul works from home or from clients' offices as an independent IT consultant. Their days are filled with a bewildering blizzard of emails, phone calls, more emails, meetings, projects, proposals, and plans. Just staying ahead of the storm has become a seemingly insurmountable task. In Your Brain at Work, David Rock goes inside Emily and Paul's brains to see how they function as each attempts to sort, prioritize, organize, and act on the vast... Title Page 2 Dedication 4 Contents 5 Foreword by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. 7 Introduction 9 Act I: Problems and Decisions 13 Scene 1: The Morning Information Overwhelm 14 Scene 2: A Project That Hurts to Think About 29 Scene 3: Juggling Five Things at Once 41 Scene 4: Saying No to Distractions 53 Scene 5: Searching for the Zone of Peak Performance 67 Scene 6: Getting Past a Roadblock 78 Intermission: Meet the Director 92 Act II: Stay Cool Under Pressure 102 Scene 7: Derailed by Drama 103 Scene 8: Drowning Amid Uncertainty 120 Scene 9: When Expectations Get Out of Control 138 Act III: Collaborate With Others 152 Scene 10: Turning Enemies Into Friends 153 Scene 11: When Everything Seems Unfair 170 Scene 12: The Battle for Status 182 Act IV: Facilitate Change 197 Scene 13: When Other People Lose the Plot 198 Scene 14: The Culture That Needs to Transform 214 Encore 234 Further Resources 238 Acknowledgments 240 Glossary 241 Notes 245 Index 264 About the Author 280 Praise 282 Also by Dr. David Rock 284 Copyright 286 About the Publisher 287 In this revised edition updated with new findings, a researcher and consultant burrows deep inside the heads of one modern two-career couple to examine how each partner processes the workday-revealing how a more nuanced understanding of the brain can allow us to better organize, prioritize, recall, and sort our daily lives. Emily and Paul are the parents of two young children, and professionals with different careers. Emily is the newly promoted vice president of marketing at a large corporation; Paul works from home or from clients' offices as an independent IT consultant. Their days are filled with a bewildering blizzard of emails, phone calls, more emails, meetings, projects, proposals, and plans. Just staying ahead of the storm has become a seemingly insurmountable task. In Your Brain at Work, David Rock goes inside Emily and Paul's brains to see how they function as each attempts to sort, prioritize, organize, and act on the vast quantities of information they receive in one typical day. Rock is an expert on how the brain functions in a work setting. By analyzing what is going on in their heads, he offers solutions Emily and Paul (and all of us) can use to survive and thrive in today's hyperbusy work environment-and still feel energized and accomplished at the end of the day. In Your Brain at Work, Rock explores issues such as: why our brains feel so taxed, and how to maximize our mental resources why it's so hard to focus, and how to better manage distractions how to maximize the chance of finding insights to solve seemingly insurmountable problems how to keep your cool in any situation, so that you can make the best decisions possible how to collaborate more effectively with others why providing feedback is so difficult, and how to make it easier how to be more effective at changing other people's behavior and much more "David Rock takes the reader inside the heads-literally-of a modern two-career couple as they mentally process their workday and show us how a more nuanced understanding of the brain allows us to better organize, prioritize, remember, and process our daily life"-- Provided by publisher