Train Your Brain to Focus - Paul Hammerness, MD, and Margaret Moore by Paul Hammerness, MD, and Margaret Moore | 1:32 PM January 18, 2012 Next time you are sitting in a meeting, take a look around. The odds are high that you will see your colleagues checking screens, texting, and emailing while someone is talking or making a presentation. Many of us are proud of our prowess in multitasking, and wear it like a badge of honor. Multitasking may help us check off more things on our to-do lists. Over the past decade, advances in neuroimaging have been revealing more and more about how the brain works. Here are three ways you can start to improve your focus. Tame your frenzy. Frenzy is an emotional state, a feeling of being a little (or a lot) out of control. What can you do? What can your team do? Apply the brakes. Your brain continuously scans your internal and external environment, even when you are focused on a particular task. What can you do? What can your team do? Shift Sets. What can you do? What can your team do?
Why Successful People Leave Work Early Nine Things Successful People Do Differently - Heidi Grant Halvorson Learn more about the science of success with Heidi Grant Halvorson’s HBR Single, based on this blog post. Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren’t sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do. 1. To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. 3. Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong — abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. 7. 8. 9.