Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life by Margaret Moore Read Free Book Online Page A

you could also think of it as a compassionate hand on the shoulder, or a sort of impulse control that keeps the efficient organized brain from getting off task and helps put you into a position for the next Rule of Order.
    However you look at it—traffic cop holding up a raised hand or guidance counselor gently steering you away from an ill-advised task—you need to heed the message of the organized brain and stop in order to get to the next step.
    4. Mold Information: Your brain has the remarkable ability to hold information it has focused upon, analyze this information, process it and use it to guide future behavior—even after the information is completely out of sight. This form of brain work involves something called representational thinking.
    Efficient and organized people have the ability to retain and manipulate information or ideas. Like a computer-generated image suspended in space or a hologram in a sci-fi movie, information is “held up” to scrutiny, slowly turned around and considered from different perspectives, almost as if it were a three-dimensional object. You can consider representational thinking to be reflective—not gut-reacting, seat-of-the-pants thinking, as valuable as that can be in certain cases. This is the mind that takes information, steps back, considers and reflects—often looking at things in new and different ways.
    Some people are more comfortable molding visual, verbal or spatial information. Martha Stewart is probably far better at solving a problem of how to decorate a certain-sized room for a holiday party than, say, Albert Einstein might have been. And vice versa if the information that needed to be molded involved theoretical physics. But both illustrate the same principle. No matter how it’s done, or in what context, the ability to “turn over” the information after the stimulus is gone and do something with it—this is a skill to know, embrace, develop.
    5. Shift Sets: People with superior muscle flexibility can touch their toes, demonstrating what exercise physiologists call “range of motion.” In football, quarterbacks come up to the line of scrimmage and observe how the opposing team is arrayed to stop them. In the seconds before the play begins, a quick-thinking quarterback will call what’s known as an “audible”—a last-minute change in what he is about to do, based on the quarterback’s instant reading of the way in which the defensive team is positioned against him. This athlete’s brain flexibility has equal importance to his physical flexibility.
    The organized brain is ever ready for the change in the defense; the new game in town; the news flash; the timely opportunity or last-minute change in plans. You need to be focused but also able to processand weigh the relative importance of competing stimuli and to be flexible, nimble and ready to move from one task to another or from one thought to another.
    In other words, you need mental range of motion and the ability to call an “audible” at your own “line of scrimmage.” Because this is the way life presents itself, isn’t it? To illustrate this cognitive flexibility and adaptability—the ability to shift sets—again consider the particular deficits of persons with ADHD. While those with ADHD are often considered to have a deficit in attention (as if he or she can’t pay attention at all), the better description is that they cannot regulate attention. The mental switch is set to “on” or “off,” and it’s hard for them to change it back; sometimes they can’t pay attention, but sometimes they can’t stop paying attention, even when more important or salient stimuli are at hand.
    6. Connect the Dots: The organized and efficient individual pulls together the things we’ve already talked about—the ability to quiet the inner frenzy, to develop consistent and sustained focus,