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Excerpt: Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life

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Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life (Harvard Health Publications, 2012), co-authored by Margaret Moore, BSc’78, MBA’83 ('Coach Meg') and Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Dr. Paul Hammerness, is aimed at transforming psychic chaos into order, in part by better understanding the biology of the brain.

The first step? Taming negative emotions. “The bottom part of the brain – the limbic system – produces emotions, and the negative ones are designed to take over and get your attention,” Moore explains. “They stick like Velcro – they’re very hard to let go of.” While this offered a survival advantage earlier in human history – fear motivated us to take precautions that kept us from being eaten by animals, for instance – today, it more often leads to distraction, stress, and reduced productivity.

Steps two through six involve learning how to achieve and sustain laser-like focus; battle distractions by curbing impulses; mould information to bolster short-term memory; shift attention completely from one task to another (a skill Moore believes is an underlying basis for creativity, and which is undermined by multi-tasking), and finally, to connect the dots in a particular sphere of one’s life, be it a career or a relationship. “When you do these things well, your frenzy fades,” Moore explains. “You feel more calm and in control even when you can no longer see the big picture – after all, life is always changing -- because you’re confident you can get there again.”

The ability to step back and see the threads connecting a seemingly disparate set of facts comes naturally to Moore, thanks in part to her training at Western. “I loved organic chemistry, which is all about complex systems and formulas,” she recalls. “I discovered an interest in taking things apart and putting them back together in a way I could relate to. The Western MBA was phenomenal, because it’s about absorbing huge amounts of material in the case studies, and finding the big picture. I would sit back – because I didn’t always have my homework done – and listen to what everyone else thought about the different elements. My strength was to sum it all up, and take it to the next level. In a way, that’s what Organizing Your Mind is all about.”

The following is an excerpt from Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life:

COACH MEG’S TIPS

My vision is that all of us working on organizing our brains become master set shifters—not just out of the need to respond to the many valid interruptions of our focused attention. No, it’s more than that. The master shifter has expanded his field of vision to welcome the new opportunities that life presents us. The shifter’s mental flexibility allows him to be nimble and agile, changing the “set”—or situation—fluidly. Instead of reluctantly letting go of the comfortable feeling of his focus on a task, the shifter appreciates the gift of change and what it might bring both to the new situation and to the original task as well.

Dr. Hammerness has described set shifting in terms of cognitive flexibility—which it indeed is. But it’s also a skill of cognitive creativity. And spontaneity—because set shifting is not always deliberate. It could happen during an interruption.

Here’s an example of what I mean by the master set shifter’s attitude and skill on the mental throttle:

You’re in the middle of preparing dinner, and you get interrupted by a phone call. The less-than-organized mind is not prepared for this interruption, not willing to allow it much less embrace it. It’s an annoyance, a distraction. The organized mind—the master set shifter—sees it differently. The organized mind stops in mid-preparation and takes the call. Ten minutes later, when you resume your cooking, you remember, “Oh gosh, I have fresh basil growing in my garden! That would really add a nice taste to this pasta sauce.”

Voilà! You unhooked the brain from its tether and allowed it to wander off from thoughts of recipes and cooking during the phone call, and in that space, new ideas bubbled up, as welcome as the warm and delicious aroma that is emanating from your pot.

Skilled set shifting can be strategic as well. Think about how it could help you at work. You’re plugging away at that PowerPoint presentation you have to deliver, and you arrive at this point of diminishing returns where you just feel you’re spinning your wheels. You could throw your hands up in disgust, adding to your feeling of disorganization and disarray. Instead, a strategic set, stop and shift can change the game—when you say “I’m not getting further on this, so I’m going to jump on to that.” Make a phone call, check e-mails, take a break. That’s the deliberate intention choice—and very often it will result in the fresh idea and the new perspective that pops into your mind when you jump back on the original PowerPoint task.

We chose that verb—jump—deliberately. A shift is like a leap, letting your feet leave the ground for a moment and jumping from one wire in your brain to another. The shift brings new insights, new ideas and new thoughts that will eventually improve your performance on the task temporarily left behind. A deliberate shift is an opportunity not to be missed to get out of a trench and rise to a higher viewpoint. You can’t force set shifting—it’s almost a state of mind; when you suddenly remember the basil that makes the meal, you have no idea why talking to your mother on the phone brought this on. But it did.

Still, while you can’t summon up a set shift on command, you can create the conditions for it to occur when the opportunities present themselves. You need to be open to it and ready to make that leap. Here are some suggestions on how to make yourself the master set shifter—a critical step in getting yourself better organized.

Get light on your cognitive feet
Except for professional basketball players or track stars, most of us find it hard to jump, and don’t do it very often unless we are asked by a cute leader in spandex of an exercise session. Gravity is a tough force to beat. Sometimes we are prone to resist jumping because it feels more comfortable to stay in the groove of a task.

If you’ve ever woken up suddenly from an intense dream, you’ll recall the sense of amazement at your brain’s ability to leap around in wild ways to wild places. Unbridled by the demands of the day, our brains show their raw potential to roam untethered to reality. Let’s wake up and put the “roaming” power of our brains to work. Remember, also, that when our frenzy has been tamed and our brains are more organized, our thoughts start to feel lighter and more agile. Getting better at all of the rules that we’ve shared so far will help you lighten up.

Bust a silo!
You may have heard this term before. “Silo busting” was a hot buzz phrase in business a few years ago. “People talked about ‘operating in silos,’ meaning they weren’t acting cohesively,” writes executive coach and blogger Linda Henman. “The metaphor was apt since the new meaning also meant to communicate you’d have to crawl over a barrier to get a message to someone in another silo.”

Silo busting was targeted at people in an organization who get so locked into their own department, specialty or individual “silo” that they were unable or unwilling to see or think about connections with other silos. Busting these boundaries, the thinking went, would help stimulate interchange and interaction with different parts of the organization, leading to new, happy and productive collaborations.

Implicit in the act of silo busting is the skill of set shifting. That is what happens in those spaces between the silos: perspectives must be changed and new situations, new people and new and unexpected ideas reacted to. And it’s not just limited to the business world. In many areas of science, the greatest discoveries do not emerge in the narrow silo of one specialty but in the cracks between or among specialties—in the spaces outside the narrow field of vision of the specialist.

A way to practice set shifting—the cognitively “light on your feet” skill we’ve been talking about—is to deliberately try and think like a silo buster. These don’t have to be radical, shake-the-world changes, although you may find yourself leaping to new insights that improve the quality of your professional life!

Shift from mental to physical
You’ve heard me say this before in previous chapters: it’s amazing how our bodies and minds support each other. Sometimes the shift we need is to get out of our heads and into our bodies—standing up during a long meeting and stretching, taking a walk around the corridors or the block, doing some yoga stretches or taking a few deep breaths. Many studies have shown the cognitive benefits of physical activity; certainly the “clearing your head” effect is one of them—in this case, clearing and refreshing the mind as surely as it does the muscles. Just as surely as your back and neck feel more supple after that stretch and your legs less tight after a brief walk, so will your mind feel fresher and more flexible—ready and able to shift sets.

Welcome and appreciate the opportunity to shift
Rather than being annoyed or irritated at a call for a shift in your attention, treat it as a welcome messenger or a possibility for new insight and clarity. It’s an invitation to rise above the weight of the task at hand—even better, rise above a disorganized life. Greet it with a smile and light energy just as you might notice a much-loved child, mate or pet. Mindfully ask “How can this shift help me perform better?” The answer may not come until later. The shift may be an opportunity not to be missed.

Make a beautiful decision
Often when a potential shift presents itself, there’s a decision to be made. Stop and consider your options: Should you stay at the task at hand or shift to the new task? What are the benefits of either option? Which one wins? Be fully present and awake to the choice. Engage your thoughts and feelings. What do you think about the choice? How do you feel about the choice? Come to a decision; this can all happen rapidly and beautifully.

Don’t confuse multitasking with shifting gears
As Dr. Hammerness explained earlier, multitasking isn’t about nimble jumping or leaping to engage in new tasks with a shifted attention and focus. It’s about attending to multiple tasks simultaneously and mindlessly without deliberate shifting to or from one task to another and back again—or onto something else.

So whatever you do in shifting the set, don’t try to do both. Don’t try to shift to the new opportunity or task while continuing to attend to the one you were originally focused on. It won’t work—both will suffer. Again, think light feet: attend to the new situation and, if necessary, then return to the other, hopefully with a new and fresh perspective.

Be a confident jumper!
Whatever the new task or situation—a change in work assignments, a new vacation venue or an interruption that compels you to attend to something else—jump into the new task with both feet, holding the intention of greater performance on the task left behind. Focus with mindfulness and appreciation of the opportunity. Let go of fretting and frenzy. Don’t allow yourself to doubt your switch. Trust that the switch will bring new clarity and insight to the newly embraced task as well as the one set aside for a while.

When you return to the task you left behind, stop and pay attention to your mind-set before you shifted and notice where you are now. What is new? What happened to your energy level? Do you find yourself renewed and revitalized? What discoveries have emerged almost effortlessly? What gifts did the shifting bring?

To read the Alumni Gazette profile on Margaret Moore, BSc’78, MBA’83, click here.

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