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Motivational Summaries

Here’s how you can improve your brain efficiency.

July 27, 2020 by TCM Leave a Comment

Brain Rules - John Medina

Do you know how our brain works? if not, then it’s a major drawback when it comes to business. Cognitive literacy helps us to understand why we behave in certain ways along with other’s behavior. Here’s a brief outlook about how our brain works and how to use that knowledge to practical use from John Medina’s bestselling book “Brain Rules”.

Without much ado, here are the key takeaways from the book:

1. Like any other system, our brains also need a proper diet, exercise, rest, and sleep

Our mind and body aren’t any different entities. Our brain is a system that has requirements, that shouldn’t be dodged like exercise, rest, and sleep for our mind to deliver optimal performance. This has been proved via a lot of experiments for ages.

2. Every individual’s brain development is different, based on their experiences and the environment they dwell in.

Our brain is malleable, most neuroscientists often term this as “plasticity.” The structure of our brain keeps changing as our experiences & environment change. This continues until the end of our lives.

Since these experiences vary based on different environments & experiences over a lifetime, each individual ends up with a unique brain that processes information in its own way. Though there are many similarities, there is nothing like a “standard” brain.

Fixing Brain

3. A brain is a survival tool that pays more attention to threats and opportunities using emotions and actions.

During our evolution, many years ago our environment was full of threats like predators, dangerous animals, enemy tribes & other similar elements. In order to survive, our ancestors had to utilize available opportunities to live long enough and to reproduce. Thus, our brains are designed to protect us. Though the modern environment is very different, the opportunities are enough & life threats are scarce.

The survival instinct remains the same & the fact is that most of us are trying to run ancient software on modern hardware i.e our brain, that constantly overlooks the opportunities by covering them with magnified threats. That’s why we often seem to do so many irrational and inefficient things. Check out this video by us to understand such behavior.

4. Multitasking is a myth

Our brain can only focus on one thing at a time!

Let’s relate attention to the flashlight beam which can never be flashed on two separate objects simultaneously. However, you can rapidly switch the beam to and fro among them. Paying attention to more than one task simultaneously is beyond the human mind’s capability.

When multitasking, all you are doing is switching your attention to and fro the tasks you are trying to focus on. With every such switch, you lose productivity, as your brain takes time to re-load information about the task you are focusing on. So, multitasking is a productivity killer.

For best outcomes, focus on one thing at a time. Multitasking may feel more productive, but it’s just a feeling which is quite misleading.

Brain Emotions

5. Context, Emotion, & Repetition can help amalgamate and store patterns as memories in our brain.

Unlike computer harddisk, our brain stores memories as patterns once recognized in the world. The key to remember such memories is that it’s contextual & stored in a huge network of associations, used by our brain to quickly recall patterns.

Emotion and repetition help amalgamate memories as they are important indicators. Emotions like excitement, fright, depression, or anger are stored more quickly as they are very important ancestral survival instincts. Repetition indicates the commonality of the pattern in a particular environment, which also indicates that it’s important in one way or the other.

If you wonder why beer ads feature more of women in bikini and confident men, the prime time news is frightening or sometimes depressing, or why people care what brand of sports shoes do Virat Kohli prefers, remember that memory is retrieved via context and association.

6. Our brains associate long-term memories with sensory data to mentally simulate potential actions beforehand.

Our brain often helps us to predict our action’s consequences. Mental Simulation enables us to work out the results of our actions before we act to keeps us away from troubles. As discussed in the previous point, our brain is always in Pattern Matching mode, saving the outcomes in memory.

When we’re trying to figure out our possible actions in any given situation, our brain depends on the stored patterns in memory to figure out what to do. Together with the perceptions, these memories help us judge what to do next when our actions are unknown.

7. Stress and tiredness dramatically affect our brain’s ability to function

Our body is built to handle stress, but not for long. During the ancestral times, sudden threats were imminent but brief. (Either the lion caught and ate you, or you dodged it within a few minutes.)

Though, the stresses are comparatively less acute now but may be chronic. You can be afraid of losing your job or depressed due to a certain financial burden for years. Our body is not designed to handle stress for such a long period. The hormones involved (cortisol, DHEA, adrenaline, etc) if present in our systems can have serious impacts on our body and brain.

During stress, our mind functions at a much lower capacity, reducing our ability to think and take proper decisions. So, in such cases, you need to change your environment to get rid of such stressors ASAP. Exercise and meditation can be the best form to control the same.

Attention

8. Capturing attention

To capture attention one needs to constantly provide new inputs in as many sensory ways as possible.

Our minds always pay attention to stimuli sensed through our sense organs. Media like TV, movies, video games, and the Internet are rapidly changing, always providing new content & concept to pay attention to every now and then. This makes it easy to lose time paying attention to them.

On the other hand, when you ever try to meditate or sit in an empty room for some time, you start feeling anxious, and your brain starts searching for something new to pay attention to.

If your work involves paying attention, your mind needs a change. You may introduce a new idea or stimulus every few minutes – and that’s how author John Medina, intentionally structures his course for long-lasting attention.

Brain Map

9. Plasticity of the brain: Constantly learning throughout the life

The new advances in neuroscience indicate that the brain changes and grows throughout life. So, if you thought you are “too old” to learn a new skill (check this out)or try something different, you are wrong. Our brain always maintains the capacity for any change and growth. The best way to learn new things is to explore and Experiment in various ways (check out one here), so go out into the world and try something new today!

These were the few rules from the book Brain Rules by John Medina. A must-read if you want to explore more such rules and unlock the power of your brain.

 

If you like this article please like, share, and comment down below & let us know if you like any of the above rules. 

You may also like Finance, Self-Help, Technology & Entertainment.

Filed Under: Motivational Summaries, Self Help Pills Tagged With: brain power, Brain Rules, Brain rules by john Medina, how to increase brain efficiency, John Medina, Self help book, self improvement

The Secret of Achieving more with Less!

June 22, 2020 by TCM Leave a Comment

The Secret“Strive for Excellence in few things, rather than good performance in many” – 80-20 Principle by Richard Koch.

Richard Koch’s The 80/20 Principle guides us on how to ensure that our efforts produce the best possible outcome for any job at hand.

This principle has been expressed in many forms namely Pareto’s Law, Juran’s Law of the Vital Few, Zipf’s Principle of Least Effort but the idea behind all remains the same that few things do matter a lot and most things matter less.

This principle is applicable for all aspects of life be it business, you want to learn something new(Read here), studies, Research, etc.

Let’s have a look at a few significant practical aspects of this principle from the book enumerated below:

1: Fewer inputs leads to a majority of outputs(80-20).

Example, think of your wardrobe full of clothes but there are very few (20% of them) that you wear most of the time (80% of the time)

Now check out your smartphone for contacts, it’s certain that there are only a few contacts (20% of them) with whom you spend the majority of your time. (80% of your non-sleeping time)

To reiterate fewer causes create the majority of effects.Portfolio (80-20)

Think about the decisions you’ve made so far in your life. You take many decisions throughout the day, but where you are now can be traced back to just a few decisions you made that have led you to where you stand now.

The same thing is applicable to investments – the majority of the portfolio returns come from a few critical choices you made to purchase or sell certain securities/assets (to learn about stock market click here). Similarly, most of the loss generation on a portfolio also comes from a few decisions.

2: A minority of efforts lead to a majority of results(80-20).

Think of everything you’ve achieved so far in life be it education, career, etc. There are very high chances that the skills you need to do your job are a small section of what you’ve learned or what you can do better, but these small sections produce the majority of what you earn.

3. Identify and build upon 20% of efforts that produce 80% of the results.

The 80-20 Principle
Click on the book to order it now

If you really want to improve at anything, focus only on what matters most. Irrespective of the field whether it’s conducting business, working on a project, trying to crack a competitive exam, or strengthening personal bonds. Few things matter a lot and many that don’t matter at all.

If you pledge to study what matters most, you improve your effectiveness tremendously. You’ll be spending lesser time, money, and efforts – and get far better results.

4. Eliminate or reduce the 80% of efforts that produce poor results.

Vice-versa to the above points also holds true: in every task, there is an umpteen number of ways to waste your time and resources. It pays to use your energy wisely. If something is just a little useful, delegate or delete it.

By making some tough decisions about what to focus on and what to not, you’ll unlock a huge amount of productivity in terms of time and energy to focus on what will really want to achieve.

5: When it comes to business, focus on your products and customers that bring you major profits & reduce the rest.

Every individual is created equal, but the same does not hold true for all the customers. Some will feel like presents sent from heaven & will enthusiastically buy anything you offer. Others will feel as if rising from hell – will buy whatever you sell, but will never be happy, they’ll fill you with complaints, and will demand special treatment.

Here’s the rule: segregate your best customers, and focus on doing everything to serve them the best of service possible. Similarly, identify worst customers, and fire them – they represent a huge opportunity in terms of time and effort.

6: In life, focus on the things that give more satisfaction.

The 80/20 Principle extends to life satisfaction as well. A few activities contribute most to your overall happiness and inner peace. These things are the ones that you should build your life around. For some, its spending time with family and friends, having fruitful discussions with people, sharing knowledge, or reading everything that intrigues your interest. If you want to lead a happy life, then this is how one should spend most of their time.

To summarize up all, always remember Its never your efforts for which you are rewarded. Nobody cares how much time you spent doing something. All that is cared about is how important and meaningful is your final outcome.

For example, You may spend years tirelessly doing labor jobs no one will bother but spending those years doing something like curing a serious disease, and EVERYONE will care.

So, whatever you decide to do, just spend some time, in the beginning, breaking that goal into subgoals (20%) that appears to be more important to master the majority (80%) of end result.

If you liked the summary you will definitely like the whole book, it is one of the must-reads.

To get the book please click on the book icon above or here. 

Filed Under: Motivational Summaries, Self Help Pills Tagged With: 80-20 principle, Achieve more with less efforts, Motivational, Pareto law, Self help book

Learn anything in just 20 hours!!

June 22, 2020 by TCM Leave a Comment

Every Skill has its learning curve

 

20 Hours

For those who believe that time is money and thinking about how to encash it, then this article is exactly what you are looking for. 20 hours is just what you need.

Stop whatever you are doing and just think for a moment what all skills you want to acquire or learn to do in life?

We know there will be many if you list them down.

So, what’s stopping you from getting the learning process started?

And here goes your thinking cycle again and now your brain is manipulating you and giving you reasons why you should not do it, let me list down a few of the reasons it might be giving you such as who has the spare time for that? , there is too much effort involved to master any skill, from whom I am gonna learn it from……..Blah Blah Blah.

As per research, it takes 10,000 hours to master a new skill. Who has that kind of time in today’s fast pacing world?

10,000 hours is almost 4 years if you practice 8 hours daily, but that’s true only if you want to be an expert in that skill. The first few hours of practice are very frustrating and 80% of people drop the idea of pursuing it.

It’s so much easier to sit back relax, watch TV series, and surf the web…

But What if we tell you that you can learn/acquire any skill in just 20 hours… unbelievable right but that’s true. People have done it and it does not require any high-level IQ or any extraordinary talent.

It is just the proper way of planning and the right amount of research which any of us can do.

The First 20 Hours – Josh Kaufman

Click on the Book Image to get this book right now.

In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman makes it possible by offering a systematic approach to acquire any new skill as quickly as possible. Be it playing any musical instrument, to learning how to start a new business. Similar to the 80-20 principle (read here) these 20 hours of practice will get 80% of learning covered which is good enough to serve our purpose.

20 Hours! is what you need, in simpler terms, it’s just 4 hours of practice with the right approach for the next 5 days and boom! you have a new skill.

Josh’s method shows you how to set target performance levels, how to deconstruct any complex skills into subskills & prioritizing them, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers.

With just 20 hours of focused, the regular practice you’ll go from knowing nothing to performing noticeably well.

 

Still not convinced and confused if this method has any practical aspect at all.

Author Josh Kaufman assures you that this method is field-tested. We suggest that you must watch this TedTalk video by the author to believe it. (Trust us this will be the best 20 minutes you’ve spent today, and watch it till the end for the surprise).

 

Believe me, nothing is impossible in this world, you just need the right guidance and approach to achieve it.

In this series of Self Help articles, we are going to bring the best out of you and help discover and unlock your true potential.

After all even Lord Hanuman had to be reminded of his powers by Jamwant, we are just simple Human Beings ;).

Filed Under: Motivational Summaries, Self Help Pills Tagged With: how to learn anything, josh kaufman, learn any skill in 20 hours, the first 20 hours

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