Brain Food: Prioritization Beats Efficiency

It’s important to have a strong learning signal — a fast feedback loop between effort expended and success. This way, you’ll know quickly what it takes to succeed, and whether you can be happy doing so. Look for environments where competitors see themselves as playing a game, rather than fighting for survival — this prevents rankings within the hie... See more

A laptop operates the same whether it is open on a desk in an office or on a bench in a park. But human brains aren’t like that—they are exquisitely sensitive to context. One of the most fertile and fruitful places to “think with” is nature. That’s because, over eons of evolution, our brains were tuned to the kind of sensory information available

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Efficiency is great in an unchanging environment, but to expect an environment to remain static is unrealistic. Environments change all the time. When workplaces value efficiency in a changing environment, they become fragile. Inefficiency, like a genetic mutation, can allow for serendipitous discovery. Sure, it may produce the same mistakes as bef... See more

Elite knowledge workers, especially those operating remotely, will become increasingly coveted assets. As a result, they've already begun to "train" their brain for peak performance just as professional athletes train their bodies. Apart from learning, strategy, and productivity training regimens, I'm fascinated by how this curriculum will manifest... See more

So let’s start with ingredients. How do we cultivate the right ingredients for great idea fermenting?

III: Ingredients

There are two levels of thinking going on in our heads at any time. There’s the more active and conscious part of your brain that’s reading this article and which you think of as doing the “thinking.” Then a subconscious, processin... See more

Many of both our mental skills and deficiencies can be predicted by recognizing that our brains evolved and expanded in a world in which the crucial selection pressure was our ability to acquire, store, organize, and retransmit an ever-growing body of cultural information.

The human brain is incredible at synthesizing and uncovering meaning from information but is largely deficient (compared to computers) at long-term memory storage and raw processing power. At various work experiences we've had over the years (both Google and Yelp), a common problem came up: critical information didn't arrive at the right place at t... See more