Word: brainful
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...Your Brain at Work...
Ever feel guilty that you can't do six things at once as some co-workers seem to? Don't. We're not made to multitask, says consultant Rock, who interviewed 30 leading neuroscientists to explore how the brain functions at work. "The reality is you are not doing two tasks that use the stage at any one time," he writes. "You are switching attention between tasks." For optimal use of brain cells, do one thing at a time, no matter how long your to-do list is. Otherwise, he says, "if you do multiple conscious tasks at once...
...dropped more than 50% since 1980, yet parents lobbied to take the jungle gyms out of playgrounds, and strollers suddenly needed the warning label "Remove Child Before Folding." Among 6-to-8-year-olds, free playtime dropped 25% from 1981 to '97, and homework more than doubled. Bookstores offered Brain Foods for Kids: Over 100 Recipes to Boost Your Child's Intelligence. The state of Georgia sent every newborn home with the CD Build Your Baby's Brain Through the Power of Music, after researchers claimed to have discovered that listening to Mozart could temporarily help raise IQ scores...
...That was a searing epiphany," Honoré concludes. "I didn't like what I saw." He now writes and lectures about the many fruits of slowing down, citing research that suggests the brain in its relaxed state is more creative, makes more nuanced connections and is ripe for eureka moments. "With children," he argues, "they need that space not to be entertained or distracted. What boredom does is take away the noise ... and leave them with space to think deeply, invent their own game, create their own distraction. It's a useful trampoline for children to learn...
...play as an essential protein in a child's emotional diet; were it not, argue some scientists, it would not have persisted across species and millenniums, perhaps as a way to practice for adulthood, to build leadership, sociability, flexibility, resilience - even as a means of literally shaping the brain and its pathways. Dr. Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist and the founder of the National Institute for Play - who has a treehouse above his office - recalls in a recent book how managers at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) noticed the younger engineers lacked problem-solving skills, though they had top grades...