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Our brains essentially have two modes, focused and unfocused. Focused mode is a mind at attention. It’s on when we’re processing outside information, completing a task, checking our cellphone, watching TV, listening to a podcast, having a conversation, or anything else that requires us to attend to the outside world. Unfocused mode occurs when we’re not paying attention. It’s inward mind-wandering, a rest state that restores and rebuilds the resources needed to work better and more efficiently in the focused state. Time in unfocused mode is critical to get shit done, tap into creativity, process complicated information, and more. The 11 hours and 6 minutes of attention we’re handing over to digital media isn’t free. It’s all spent in focused mode. Think of this focused state like lifting a weight, and the unfocused state like resting. When we kill boredom by burying our minds in a phone, TV, or computer, our brain is putting forth a shocking amount of effort. Like trying to do rep after rep after rep of an exercise, our attention eventually tires when we overwork it. Modern life overworks the hell out of our brains.
The Comfort Crisis
Michael Easter
The truth is that everything starts from the top. What determines your failure or success is your style of leadership and the chain of command that you design. If your orders are vague and halfhearted, by the time they reach the field they will be meaningless. Let people work unsupervised and they will revert to their natural selfishness: they will see in your orders what they want to see, and their behavior will promote their own interests.
The 33 Strategies of War
Robert Greene, Joost Elffers
Tom was always a great part of the team, and he would often run with us in the morning, even when he had been up half the night, if not all of it, recutting sails or redirecting our entire computer-analysis programs. His arsenal was huge. He estimated very early on that we would be taking to Newport 40 genoas, 10 mainsails, and 50 spinnakers, with probably 20 sails on the boat for anyone race. Each sail’s shape, configuration, and driving power were Tom’s responsibility. And he attended to every single detail throughout the campaign. He was not interested in extravagance, only in scientific conclusions. For instance, in the American camp, if a sail is not doing its job, Dennis Conner will just whistle up a half-dozen new sails. In earlier campaigns, we had a tendency to do the same thing. Tom detested this approach. He thought it was crazy because he did not think sail manufacturing was sufficiently accurate. He thought recutting was more progressive, correctly working to a scientific conclusion. Once we had a sail that was good, we just kept recutting it, sometimes to a fraction of an inch, keeping it good, dealing with the stretch instead of starting again with a new one. In that way he was extremely conservative, but he was at the same time extremely potent, because he made sure we always had our fingers on every pulse with great accuracy. Amusingly, after all this heavy concentration on his job, Tom’s hobby is sailboarding. He is, I suppose, totally consumed with the effect of the wind in the intricate science of driving a boat, of whatever weight, forward. Money does not do it for him—nor, apparently, does recognition, for in his own country he is just about unknown, despite his international reputation. Tom’s raison d’être is, I suppose, the pursuit of excellence for the sake of pure excellence. That is an ennobling way of living your life and one of which I very much approve.
Born to Win
John Bertrand
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