Success Secrets:

Knowing People

The Way Our Mind Works

The Nature of Thinking and How To Manage It

Limited Attention Span

The limited attention span means that only part of your memory surface can be activated at any one time. "This limited attention span is extremely important for it means that the activated area will be a single coherent area and that single coherent area will be found in the most easily activated part of the memory surface. The most easily activated area or pattern is the most familiar one, the one which has been encountered most often, the one which has left most trace on the memory surface. And because a familiar pattern tends to be used it becomes ever more familiar. In this way the mind builds up that stock of present patterns which are the basis of code communication."¹

Mental Patterns

Mental pattern is a memory trace formed in your brain tissue to record something that you have experienced. As you see, hear, feel, smell, sense or taste something over and over, your brain builds a pattern of it.

When you experience it again, or something like it, your brain activates the existing memory trace or patterned thinking and you go on autopilot.⁸

Your Brain Can Process Only Positive Information

The language of brain are pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes and smells, i.e. inputs from your senses. Your brain cannot work with negative information, i.e. inputs you haven't experienced. It can work only with positive information, i.e. "information from the experiences of your five senses, which it then manipulates in the emotional blender we call the imagination."⁴

Can You Reflect and Act at the Same Time?

Well... sort of. Reflecting and acting at the same time is very difficult as our mind can only hold one thought at a time. You can be going through periods of reflection and action at the same time but at any specific moment in time you are only spending energy in one of these two areas. You need to be focused on either reflection or action at one point and then be able to switch quickly and effortlessly to the other polarity when required. This is an important point to remember when you are considering focus and balance your life.⁹

Left Brain / Right Brain

Research on brain theory helps you understand why some people are excellent inventors but poor producers or good managers but weak leaders. The research indicates that the brain is divided into two hemispheres, the left and the right, and that each hemisphere specializes in different functions, processes different kinds of information, and deals with different kinds of problems. The left brain works more with logic and analysis, the right works more with emotions and imagination.

"As we apply brain dominance theory to the three essential roles of organizations, we see that the manager's role primarily would be left brain and the leader's role right brain. The producer's role would depend upon the nature of the work. If it's verbal, logical, analytical work, that would be essentially left brain; if it's more intuitive, emotional, or creative work, it would be right brain. People who are excellent managers but poor leaders may be extremely well organized and run a tight ship with superior systems and procedures and detailed job descriptions. But unless they are internally motivated, little gets done because there is no feeling, no heart; everything is too mechanical, too formal, too tight, too protective. A looser organization may work much better even though it may appear to an outsider observer to be disorganized and confused. Truly significant accomplishments may result simply because people share a common vision, purpose, or sense of mission."⁵

Divide Your Time Between the Left-Brain and Right-Brain Activity

If you keep bouncing back and forth between creative and analytical activities, you'll get a headache and won't produce your best results. Analysis, evaluation and judgment get in the way of creativity. That's why in brainstorming sessions we suspend judgment while we generate ideas. Similarly, radical innovation project managers apply the loose-tight leadership technique to divide time between divergent and convergent thinking by their team members at different project stages.

Your Brain Cannot Think While It Focuses on Two Sensory Inputs

Research shows that "when a person is thinking actively (as documented with EEG equipment) and then focuses on one perceptual happening such as sound, a tactile sensation, or an image, the brain waves remain basically the same and thoughts continue flow through the mind.

We can expand our mind's attention to include one perceptual input and still keep thinking actively without loosing our concentration on our thoughts. However, when the human mind focuses on two distinct sensory inputs at the same time (a sound and an image, for instance, or breath and heartbeat), all thoughts almost immediately stop flowing through the mind."⁷

The Brain Likes to Race Ahead

Once your mind gets moving in a direction, be it a left-brain direction (logical, mathematical, judgmental, analytical activities) or a a right-brain one (creative, visual, spatial concepts), it tends to keep going. To illustrate this, try this easy test suggested by Timothy Foster⁶:

What do you call a funny story? – joke

What are you when you have no money? – broke

What's another word for Coca Cola? – Coke

What's the white of an egg? --------------------

It isn't yolk, it's albumen. Were you tricked? Most people are. The brain likes to race ahead, because it already knows the answer.

Capacity of Our Working Memory

The maximum amount of items we can store in our working memory, or conscious mind, is three or four. If you need to hold more items in your mind at one time. use tricks like repeating items over and over or grouping items together, like we do with phone numbers.

Intelligence is related to working memory. The more information you can hold in your mind at one time. the more information you can interrelate. If you have a better working memory your creative problem-solving abilities are better.

Memorization Problems: Solved!

Have you ever had problems in remembering names, numbers, grocery items needed, and other little details such as the location where you placed your car keys this morning? The truth is, we all have our moments of forgetting little bits of information that matters at the exact moment we need them.

But did you know that memorization techniques boil down to two basic things?... More

Mediation

Meditation is the most powerful mind tool ever developed. Meditation has been scientifically proven to improve creativity, intelligence, memory, alertness, and to integrate left and right brain functioning. It has been shown to improve physical, mental, and emotional health... More

References:

1. Lateral Thinking, Edward de Bono

2. Differentiate or Die, Jack Trout with Steve Rivkin

3. Decision Making and Problem Solving, John Adair

4. How To Connect in Business in 90 Seconds or Less, Nicholas Boothman

5. Principle-Centred Leadership, Stephen R. Covey

6. 101 Ways To Generate Great Ideas, Timothy R.V. Foster

7. Seven Masters, One Path, John Selby

8. Accelerated Success Course, Mike Brescia

9. The Tao of Success, Paul Frazer