Flex Your Cortex – 7 Secrets To Turbocharge Your Brain – TED Talk*
By Redcoatlondongirl
Art graduate, Medical Student, UK
Reading Time:
2 minutes
Main big ideas from this TED Talk by the neuroscientist Sandra Bond Chapman:
“Secret 1: Single-task.
Our brain is exquisitely designed to do one thing at a time, and yet, in our fast-paced, charged life, we literally do 1 to 5 things on top of each other. When you’re multitasking you’re degrading your brain systems, lowering your mental function, and increasing stress hormones. Single-task and you will see a significant increase in mental productivity.
Secret 2: Inhibit Information.
It turns out the highest performing individuals are not those who can remember the most. But rather those who know ahta to block out, what to inhibit, what to bounce from the get-go, and just to focus on the few things that they’re doing.
Secret 3: Detox Distraction.
Secret 4: Big Idea Thinking
Big Idea Thinking is when you’ve taken ideas from disparate areas, you combine it with your rich knowledge that you already have and you form some generalized higher-level way of thinking.
Big idea Thinking is what makes your memory and thinking and learning the most robust.
Secret 5, and this fits in with balance: Calibrate.
Calibrate, how much effort you’re going to spend on things. When you’re hunting elephants, don’t waste your mental energy chasing rabbits. So do your rabbits quickly, but take time to do your elephants.
Secret 6: Innovation.
Our brain is really wired to be inspired from young till late life. Every single day it likes to create something new, jump-start. It hates status quo. It quickly goes backward on rote. But when you start innovation on things, your brain starts firing on all cylinders.
Secret 7: Motivation.
One of the secrets to motivation is using some of these other strategies. Think about a task that you don’t like and what if I said I want you to take this task and innovate a little bit. Why don’t you change it and make it a little bit interesting? Motivation injects in our brain the most powerful neurotransmitter, dopamine. Dopamine is the right balance which makes us happier and it increases speed of learning.”
