The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload

mode of attention, and it is responsible for so many high-level things we do that researchers have named it “the central executive.”

Two of the key ways that we can control and improve the process are to pay special attention to the way we enter information into our memory—encoding—and the way we pull it out—retrieval.

his aides managed time and space for him. They evaluated, in real time, whether the greatest value would be gained by continuing to talk to the person in front of him or someone else who was waiting, whether he should be here or there. This allowed Carter to let go of his time-bound cares completely, to live in the moment and attend one hundred per

drop them.

In the mind-wandering mode, our thoughts are mostly directed inward to our goals, desires, feelings, plans, and also our relationship with other people—the mind-wandering mode is active when people are feeling empathy toward one another. In the central executive mode, thoughts are directed both inward and outward.

To recap, there are four components in the human attentional system: the mind-wandering mode, the central executive mode, the attentional filter, and the attentional switch, which directs neural and metabolic resources among the mind-wandering, stay-on-task, or vigilance modes.

For many of us, a number of items on our To Do lists require a decision and we feel we don’t have enough information to make the decision.

there are some things that just aren’t worth your time anymore—priorities

European home had a single room, and families would crowd around the fire most of the year to keep warm.