The Organized Mind

The length of a year is determined by the time it takes the earth to circle the sun; the length of a month is (more or less) the time it takes the moon to circle the earth; the length of a day is the time it takes the earth to rotate on its axis (and observed by us as the span between two successive sunrises or sunsets).

the central executive as a unitary entity, in fact it can be best understood as a collection of different lenses that allow us to zoom in and zoom out during activities we’re engaged in, to focus on what is most relevant at the moment.

For Phaedrus, an unassimilated pile helped solve the problem. “He just stuck the slips there on hold until he had the time and desire to get to them.” In other words, this is the junk drawer, a place for things that don’t have another place.

Attention is a limited-capacity resource.

takes more energy to shift your attention from task to task. It takes less energy to focus. That means that people who organize their time in a way that allows them to focus are not only going to get more done, but they’ll be less tired and less neurochemically depleted after doing it. Daydreaming also takes less energy than multitasking. And the n

the act of categorizing is one of cognitive economy.

The unsuccessful person interprets the failure or setback as a career breaker and concludes, “I’m no good at this.” The successful person sees each setback as an opportunity to gain whatever additional knowledge is necessary to accomplish her goals. The internal dialogue of a successful (or eventually successful) person is more along the lines of “

The task of organizational systems is to provide maximum information with the least cognitive effort.

Eastward travel is more difficult than westward because our body clock prefers a twenty-five-hour day. Therefore, we can more easily stay awake an extra hour than fall asleep an hour early. Westward travel finds us having to delay our bedtime, which is not so difficult to do. Eastward travel finds us arriving in a city where it’s bedtime and we’re