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    Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long
    Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long
    Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long
    Audiobook9 hours

    Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long

    Written by David Rock

    Narrated by Bob Walter

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Meet Emily and Paul: The parents of two young children, Emily is the newly promoted VP of marketing at a large corporation while Paul works from home or from clients' offices as an independent IT consultant. Their lives, like all of ours, are filled with a bewildering blizzard of emails, phone calls, yet more emails, meetings, projects, proposals, and plans. Just staying ahead of the storm has become a seemingly insurmountable task.

    In this book, we travel inside Emily and Paul's brains as they attempt to sort the vast quantities of information they're presented with, figure out how to prioritize it, organize it and act on it. Fortunately for Emily and Paul, they're in good hands: David Rock knows how the brain works-and more specifically, how it works in a work setting. Rock shows how it's possible for Emily and Paul, and thus the reader, not only to survive in today's overwhelming work environment but succeed in it-and still feel energized and accomplished at the end of the day.

    YOUR BRAIN AT WORK explores issues such as:

    - why our brains feel so taxed, and how to maximize our mental resources

    - why it's so hard to focus, and how to better manage distractions

    - how to maximize your chance of finding insights that can solve seemingly insurmountable problems

    - how to keep your cool in any situation, so that you can make the best decisions possible

    - how to collaborate more effectively with others

    - why providing feedback is so difficult, and how to make it easier

    - how to be more effective at changing other people's behavior

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMar 29, 2011
    ISBN9780062080974
    Author

    David Rock

    David Rock is a consultant and leadership coach who advises corporations around the world. The author of Coaching with the Brain in Mind, Quiet Leadership, and Personal Best, he is the CEO of Results Coaching Systems, a leading global consulting and coaching organization. He is on the advisory board of the international business school CIMBA and the cofounder of the NeuroLeadership Institute and Summit. He lives in Sydney, Australia, and New York City.

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    Reviews for Your Brain at Work

    4.5/5

    187 ratings28 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This was an interesting read, especially in the reference frame of more modern research on human perception. Our knowledge of the inner workings of the brain has expanded considerably since Huxley's days, but he's got the basic idea narrowed down surprisingly well. It's quite a testament to how reality can be explored by looking into within.What especially stands out in this book is the quality of the writing. Huxley has extraordinary ability to convey exotic internal experiences in text, and it's no wonder the book gained quite a following during the rise of the hippie movement. I disagree with the spiritual implications Huxley drew from his experiences, but the parallels to how artists perceive the world are doubly interesting. Transporting, indeed!
    • 5/5
      Amazing. If you had one book to read in your lifetime this is it. Understanding your brain will help you figure out every other aspect of your life.
    • 5/5
      Huxley's fascinating account of LSD experimentation in the early 1950's.......Title of his book was taken as a nameby the Rock group, "The Doors of Perception"
    • 5/5
      After reading book after book on the subject, THIS is the book that stands out for me!! YES!!
      It's brain fact and science-genius, served in a bite-sized manner so it's easier to digest! - chock full of examples of how our brain works!!
      Thank you so very much!!!!
    • 4/5
      Huxley's "The Doors of Perception" is one of the most interesting books i've encountered. Obviously, its notable for its account of an experiment with the drug mescalin, found in peyote. The fundamental notion of the work is that the mind acts, in its most normal and evolved state, as a "reducing valve." The world of perception is way too intense for one mind to encounter so it seeks to reduce experiences as a need for survival. A drug induced experience allows for the opening of said "reducing valve" ushering in opportunities to see things "isness" and "suchness." I found it particularly interesting that Huxleys suggested that the increase in drug use is in direct relationship to the lack of "transcendance" provided by organized religion. A shortcoming Huxley thinks the church should be addressing. I found this book to be interesting, informative, and challenging. All symptoms of a good read.
    • 3/5
      It was good- but pretty matter-of-fact. I felt as though he was just recounting what he did. It was interesting, but nothing novel or inspirational for me- probably because I had already known.
    • 5/5
      could huxley get any better? i think not.
    • 5/5
      Reads like no other book - mesmerising! The title incidently, is where the band 'The Doors' took their name from.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed Huxley's perspective as a research subject experiencing the effects of mescalin for the first time. Also enjoyed the description of art/artists and how Huxley sees art history as connected to the visionary experience of a 'mescalin taker.'
    • 3/5
      An interesting read, although very lacking in parts. I enjoyed Doors of Perception quite a bit, and found Huxley's insights onto mystic visions and their relation to religion insightful. He also does a nice job giving the feeling of experiencing mescalin with him. Heave and Hell, however, was very dissappointing. I felt that most of his claims were ill founded and that he made several leaps in logic that weren't valid (like religious singing's purpose is to expel oxygen to create visions). Huxley is also very much an art scholar, so familiarity with various art styles is a must. The appendixes are worth a read as well. I would recommend this book to someone interested in how visions/drug experiences are reflected in art and the social conscience.
    • 5/5
      I can not recommend this book enough. It starts off very dry.
    • 5/5
      Careful- the Doors of Perception is a life-changer.
    • 5/5
      As of now my favorite book. In easy way, through story telling David Rock in life situations explains how our brain works. Definitely will recommend this book to my friends.
    • 4/5
      Huxley's theory is that the mind takes in all sorts of incredible experiences but that it then filters those (through what he calls the "reducing valve") into what we're conscious of. In the first part of the book, The Doors of Perception, he experiments with peyote. He has a psychiatrist present and records everything he says, so the account of his actions and experiences is presumably reliable. This part of the book was highly entertaining. He is fascinated by details like chair legs, and he sees cosmic significance in them. He also advocates allowing the use of peyote over alcohol and tobacco because he thinks it has fewer downsides (and because he thinks people will always seek some kind of drug-induced escape from their lives). In the second part of the book, Heaven and Hell, he talks about "transporting" artwork--stained glass, jewels, and certain kinds of paintings. He thinks that the colors and ways of representing landscapes are similar to what people experience when they have visions of an "other world" or heaven, and we like these because they give us a glimpse of that world. He also argues that while for most visionaries the visions are blissful, for some, like schizophrenics, visions of this other world are terrifying and hellish. At the end, he includes a couple of short sections on the various ways to have visions--carbon dioxide, strobe lights, fasting, etc. I thought his comments on fasting were really interesting. He speculates that people in earlier times had more religious visions because they were malnourished and engaged in more religious fasting, and the lack of vitamins affects brain chemistry enough that the "reducing valve" is opened to allow for visionary experiences. I read the more scientific sections with skepticism because I'm not sure Huxley is a reliable source, but the book is nonetheless interesting and often entertaining.
    • 5/5
      excellent book, full of great information that can change the way you live.
    • 5/5
      "the doors..." changed the way i look at things [ like black moon (movie) ]. "heaven hell" brings to mind jewels. i am thankful for the former.
    • 4/5
      Interesting read about how a great writer experiences mescalin. Second part (heaven and hell), I found less interesting. Appendices are interesting again..
    • 5/5
      As did AA co-founder Bill Wilson and former senator Eugene MacCarthy and Ram Doss and manyh others, Huxley writes of the experience of ingesting mescalinl, also known as peyote, a drug that southwest American natives have used for eons as a spiritual aid. he explained things that put its proper use into place for me. When I was raging and thinking hurtful things, if I had dropped that or LSD then I would have had a "bad trip," but now that I have a serene heart and a loving soul, I want to have some; i want the experience.
    • 5/5
      anyone who has interest in the future and everyone who has experimented with acid or psychedelic drugs in general must this book (preferably before the drugs)
    • 5/5
      This particular reading had my mind space cornered in several areas of subjective reality. Huxley's illucidating writing was defined and very subjective of course from his own experience with the ontological experiences of perception. Subjectivity begets subjectivity, and the beauty which is invoked within this text is provacative beyond reasonable doubt, and in my opinion unparralled by any other pschedellic laureate from this particular era. Huxley was well into his fifties when Albert Hoffman's LSD came to market; leading me to believe Aldous had quite the foundation of intellect and knowledge to extrapolate upon. And the greatest Door of Perception...Huxley's wife administering LSD directly into his blood, while he lay dying in the hospital, sending him to the heavens on Nov. 22, 1963....the day John F. Kennedy was assasinated...."People are strange, when you're a Stranger"
    • 5/5
      the book and narration is extremely well presented. since I listened into this audiobook, involuntarily I have started to be conscious of actors in prefrontal cortex trying to get hold of directing right ones.
    • 5/5
      Great book on how to do work better - really enjoyed this
    • 3/5
      Great advice but the presentation via examples made the material hard to endure. Also the examples were so extreme I found them to be a bit off-putting. They followed a pattern of saying that without the miracle techniques being presented in the book you would end up poor and unloved and it would be your own fault. But by applying the strategies from the book you would be successful in business, friendship, parenthood, and you would have more sex.Don't get me wrong. There is undoubtable good advice in this book but results will vary. Some of the strategies will likely offend other people because they might feel that they are being manipulated. Read this book with a large pinch of salt.
    • 4/5
      Pleasantly surprised with this one. Saw it referenced in a webinar a few months back, looked it up and decided to put it on "the list". I wasn't keen on the actors device Rock used to bracket his point...thought them rather juvenile and distracting to the meat of the text...but I expect that he can reach a larger audience with it. Anyway, the science is good and he writes well.
    • 5/5
      This is a book that assists the reader in becoming more aware of how our own brain works. Written with the lay person/non-medical person in mind, David Rock shares his research, insight and experience into common problems in processing thoughts and emotions. He names the "main character" of the brain the "director" . A "stage and actor" metaphor is used for explaining the brain processing information as it comes at us in our everyday lives, both personal and at work. Very easy to relate to the situations given.
    • 3/5
      This pertains to the audiobook version. The book felt like it held a lot of good information and maybe someday I'll pick it up and read it a second timeandappreciate the contents that you can find here.

      But when the narrator has a very orang professor feel throughout the recording any student or reader will fail to stay glued toll the facts being expressed here especially when your start referencing facts about the brain that the majority of those who picked this up withno beforehand knowledge of the biology of the brain would be put off by such a attempt.
    • 5/5
      What good is knowledge if you can't do anything with it? Statements like we only use ten percent of our brain capacity are frustrating because they don't offer a solution for accessing the other ninety percent. Basically, what they amount to is like hearing: your brain function is roughly equivalent to that of the Geico caveman. You might as well make peace with the stultifying universe of mediocrity and ennui you're doomed to inhabit.Then along comes a book like David Rock's Your Brain at Work and the neurons start firing all over the place. The synapses start connecting so rapidly that my shriveled cerebrum can hardly keep pace. Answers, at long last! It's like a Christmas miracle. All over again.In clear, concise language Rock explains the physiology behind our lack of focus, constant frustration and befuddlement at missed cues, lost opportunities and the sense of feeling overwhelmed. Or as an old lady shuffling down the soup aisle in my local grocery store called it, "a brain fart". Couldn't have said it better myself.And yet. Rock offers hope in the form of lucid metaphors that expose our "stinkin thinkin" for what it really is. His central premise is that all the brain's a stage and all the thoughts merely players. It's up to us to get the most important players on stage at any given time. And keep the least helpful players off or on for the shortest amount of time. Once the brain latches onto an unhelpful thought, it quickly spirals down into more unhelpful thoughts until we're caught in a quagmire of our own making. Rock offers a plethora of friendly suggestions:...become aware of your own mental energy needs and schedule accordingly. Experiment with different timings. One technique is to break work up into blocks of time based on type of brain use, rather than topic. (p. 15)When you sense a strong emotion coming on, refocus...quickly...before the emotion takes over. (p. 118).Playing against yourself to improve your understanding of your own brain can be a powerful way of increasing your performance (p. 200)Chapters are structured with dual scenarios; what happens when you're on autopilot (translation: using the same old ten percent) vs what happens when you understand how the brain works and capitalize on that. Each chapter ends with (a summary) "Surprises About the Brain" and "Some Things to Try".I've been trying them. Rock's strategies work. With continued practice the other ninety percent of my brain might kick in more frequently, increasing my chances of completing all those unfinished projects. Hold on world, here I come.
    • 4/5
      David Rock has written an entertaining book with immediately practical application for one's working and non-working relationships. He has synthesized much of the latest neuroscience, applying it, in particular and in a heretofore unique way to improving one's use of one's brain/mind, in working situations. That the eminent neuroscientist and mightsight expert, Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., wrote the Forward for the book is further testimony to the quality of David Rock's synthesis and application of the concepts.Mindfulness is a key concept of the book - using one's "director" to observe one's mental processes and that the neuroscience explains how this works to improve ones mental functioning while at work.I was, at first, concerned when I read that David Rock had structured the book like a "play" with"acts", thinking that such a construct would only distract and/or add "filler" to the concepts. However, I found that after reading only a few pages, I immediately liked his use of the play, because he did this so well. Furthermore, as David Rock points out (and I believe Daniel Siegel would agree) the brain "likes" stories, which help integration in the mind/brain.