The Organized Mind

This book is a hefty one—I recommend the audiobook if you’ve got a bad back—but it will help you understand how your brain works in a way that almost no other book can. And the better you understand your mind, the better you’ll be able to make it do what you want, and how to protect yourself from the things that might otherwise sabotage your creative thinking.

For my recommendation, it was a choice between this and How We Learn by Benedict Carey but I had to choose The Organized Mind because I had so many page markers stuck in it! Yes, this is a book I’ve referred to over and over again because it reveals so much about how our busy minds work and why when they get too busy they don’t work so well. I think for most people nowadays, especially students, parents, and teachers, recognizing, understanding, and dealing with “brain bandwidth” overload is fascinating, revealing, and empowering. For me this book was transformative. It… show more.

I’ve learned and applied so many great things from this book. For instance, I’ve learned to stop multitasking, because it makes us less efficient. I’ve learned how to organize To Do items to stop overwhelm. I’ve learned to get around my faulty memory by creating physical records. I’ve learned it’s more efficient to check email only a few times a day. This book is loaded with great strategies based on research that have streamlined my important, everyday tasks, and I think this book would help you too.