Mindframe

After I graduated from college, I spent the first seven years of my professional career teaching school. If you think back to your own school days, you probably remember there was always one kid sitting in the back, not quite with the program, off on a secluded mental island where white sands and a steady sea breeze allowed him to float downwind from the cacophony of classroom chatter, unrestrained flatulence and the general din of anything I might be trying to teach. His unique approach also made it acceptable to eat a crayon from time to time, usually the red ones. ("Ah," you say, "yeah, I remember that kid…”) As I stood in the front of the classroom, I used to try to imagine what the kid with the crayon stained teeth might be thinking about.  I’m reminded of how 21st century sage Jeffrey Lebowski, a.k.a. The Dude, once described his own ruminations. “You know, a lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-you's. And, uh, lotta strands to keep in my head, man. Lotta s...

In 1927, Charles Lindberg, a.k.a. Lucky Lindy, took off from Long Island on the first successful nonstop Atlantic flight in history.  In 2010, I flew about 140,000 miles aboard various beat-up Delta aircrafts. Since the distance around the entire earth is about 25,000 miles, you can see I put in just a couple more hours than Mr. Ticker Tape Parade. Not only that, but Lindy never had to compete for overhead luggage space, or sit next to obese folks whose preponderance of pounds is not contained by the flimsy excuse of an armrest. To be fair, Slim also made the voyage sans biscotti and small hermetically sealed bags of peanuts. And if you believe the movie (Lindberg was played by an aging Jimmy Stewart), his only in-flight companion was a housefly. Which, I can tell you, are horrible conversationalists. But even though Lindy turned out to be a racist, and his fabled flight is no longer so impressive when stacked up against the punishment of modern air travel, he did manage to do ...

“So, what's up with the pile of words?” you ask. This is part of an experiment we conducted earlier this year on how to be the perfect leader. Sooner or later, most of us wind up in a position of some power, whether it’s running a cub scout den or a girl scout troop, heading up a committee at church or your job, or residing over your flamenco dance group or your flamingo lawn ornament club. And when you nobly accepted the challenge of being in charge, your brain released a little shot of cortisol, the stress hormone. In your moment of panic, you made the executive decision to discover the secret to being a good leader. If you were like me, you went down to your local bookstore and perused the aisles looking for books on leadership. After all, you wanted to be the best president the flamingo lawn ornament club had ever known, recognizing a club needs to be more than really swanky pink shirts. In my case, the bookstore anticipated my arrival and had at the ready a slew of...

Stanford neuroscientists have determined that 72 hours after someone delivers information verbally, we tend to remember only about 10% of what we've heard. That’s right: we forget 90% of what people tell us. This explains a lot. Our working memory dumps out faster than a guy on an all-prune diet. (Prunes are basically mummified plums––brutal way for a fruit to age) Teenagers and the elderly have been taking a bad rap for years. It turns out those of us who are neither teens nor elderly have bragging rights when it comes to  short-term memory.  What was I talking about again? Oh yeah: why are our collective memories so drastically inadequate? It’s a design problem. Our brains were built to operate in a world that existed somewhere around 40,000 years ago. Life on the savanna was different back then. A good tree to scurry up, a slow moving caribou,  a poisonous frog to tip your arrow with, and you were set. Pretty basic stuff. So what’s the answer to surviving in toda...

In 370 BCE, the great Greek philosopher Hippocrates was chilling out in the local public square (no one had invented the mall yet) and doing a little scientific inquiry.  In modern jargon we’d call this  "people watching."  As he hung out and observed, he realized people fell into roughly four groups: the pushy ones, the ones that talk too much, the anal retentive, and those who think the sky is falling. Of course he called them by different names, because he spoke Greek, but you get the idea. Fast forward to circa 2008 ACE. Helen Fisher, noted anthropologist, chilling out in the local research lab doing a little scientific inquiry.  In modern jargon we’d call this "people watching."  Along with some neuroscientists, she discovered that people fall into roughly four groups. The pushy ones, the ones that talk too much, the anal retentive, and those who think the sky is falling. Of course she called them by different names , because scientific terminology...

What do the lightbulb in your garage and your brain have in common? They both operate on about 60 watts of power. This is a problem for two reasons: first, your garage tends to be under-lit, and second, your brain doesn't have enough processing power to deal with today's environment. The human brain blueprint was built 40,000 years ago and hasn't had any serious upgrades since. (Steve Jobs would be rolling over in his grave, if he hadn't been cremated.) Rene Descartes, 17th century mathematician and father of western philosophy (apparently nobody remembers the mother; let's just call her Jane Doe), focused on a different problem: the mind-body one. In his discourse Passions of the Soul and The Description of the Human Body , he suggests that the body is like a machine, built of material properties, and the mind consists of non-corporeal properties. So how then do these two entities interact, you ask? Descartes asked that, too. His solution was the brain's pine...

In 1935, Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in order to become the greatest blues guitarist of all time, or so the story goes. Prior to his Devil deal he’d been a general pain in the ass around Greenwood Mississippi, pestering anyone with a guitar to teach him how to play. Eventually he left town, and legend has it that when he came back three months later, Johnson was the best damn blues player anyone had ever heard. Unfortunately, Johnson had an eye for the ladies and in 1938 he was poisoned by a jealous husband. I have just concluded my experiment of attempting to leverage everything I know about brain science into accomplishing 14 goals. None of them as ambitious as the deal Johnson struck with the Devil. Unless, of course, you count goal #14: eating more slowly. I wish I could look you all in the eye and tell you I have achieved 100% success over the last 40 days, that my experiment proves that I am the master of my destiny like fitness guru and Power Juicer pitch...