Margaret Moore - Train Your Brain: Get More Done In Less Time

If youve ever lost your keys, missed an appointment or been distracted by a frivolous email, then this book is for you.

The key to a less hectic, less stressful life is not in simply organizing your desk, but organizing your mind. Dr. Paul Hammerness, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist, describes the latest neuroscience research on the brains extraordinary built-in system of organization. Margaret Moore, an executive wellness coach and codirector of the Institute of Coaching, translates the science into solutions.

This remarkable team shows you how to use the innate organizational power of your brain to make your life less stressful and more productive and rewarding. Youll learn how to:

Regain control of your frenzy

Embrace effective uni-tasking (because multitasking doesnt work)

Fluidly shift from one task to another

Use your creativity to connect the dots

This groundbreaking guide is complete with stories of people who have learned to stop feeling powerless against multiplying distractions and start organizing their lives by organizing their minds.

Praise

A treasure trove of tips, tools and techniques, making it possible to stay mindful of your self-care priorities while navigating the challenging stresses of everyday life.

Pam Peeke, MD, MPH, FACP
Author of New York Times bestseller The Hunger Fix
WebMDs Lifestyle Expert

Marvelous! This empowering collection of transformative, science-supported tools can help anyone change his or her life in healthier, happier directions. If you want a smart, straightforward guide to taming the crazy-making factors in your life and fulfilling more of your personal potential, this is it!

Pilar Gerasimo
Founder, Experience Life magazine

Hammerness and Moore have translated the latest science in brain function into a few, highly effective skills that help us bring order and control in our lives. In a world where distractions are ever growing and taking new forms, this book offers key insights that will help us lead less stressful and more productive lives at work as well as at home.

Jon Ayers
Past Chairman, President & CEO, IDEXX Laboratories

Together, Dr. Paul and Coach Meg offer hope. They show us what works and help us create a believable, workable plan to be our best in even the most challenging situations. This unique wellness coaching offers reasons, real-life strategies and results.

Ruth Ann Harnisch, President
The Harnisch Foundation

Practical and very accessible, this book significantly empowers anyones ability to nimbly manage the massive amounts of information we all must deal with in an increasingly complex high-tech world.

Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD
Research Psychiatrist, UCLA
Coauthor of You Are Not Your Brain and The Mind & the Brain

TRAIN YOUR BRAIN

Get More Done
In Less Time

Paul Hammerness, MD, &
Margaret Moore with John Hanc

contents

Chapter One:
The Rules of Order/Dr. Hammerness

Chapter Two:
A Change Will Do You Good/Coach Meg

Chapter Three:
Rules of Order/Tame the Frenzy

Chapter Four:
Rules of Order/Sustain Attention

Chapter Five:
Rules of Order/Apply the Brakes

Chapter Six:
Rules of Order/Mold Information

Chapter Seven:
Rules of Order/Shift Sets

Chapter Eight:
Rules of Order/Connect the Dots

Chapter Nine:
Staying on Top of a Fast-Changing World

Appendix 1:
The Rules of Order At-A-Glance

Appendix 2:
The Top 10 (Dis)organizational Complaintsand Our Solutions

HOW ORGANIZED ARE YOU?

(Please answer A, B or C.)

A. VERY ORGANIZED. My desk is neat, I never miss an appointment or a deadline, my friends are amazed, my co-workers are jealous and my boss loves me.

B. MODERATELY ORGANIZED. I manage to stay on top of things pretty well, but sometimes I feel overwhelmed, not sure what to do first, and I must admit that Im a little jealous of my colleagues and my boss who seem more organized.

C. COMPLETELY DISORGANIZED. In fact, Ill be lucky if Ican remember where I parked my car. Thats assuming I dont get a text or a phone call in the next two minutes, which will completely throw me off and...what was the question again?

If you answered A, B or C, this book is for you! In Train Your Brain, we share with you the six key ways in which you can use top-down organization to get more done in a lot less timeand feel good about it.

By top-down organization, we mean brain science. As you will see, there are amazing new insights gleaned about the way our brain works to organize our thoughts, actions and emotions. Through high-tech brain scans, or neuroimaging, we can now see the response of the brain to various situations. Heres an exciting example of what scientists have found.

THE ORGANIZED BRAIN IN ACTION

In a fascinating 2019 multinational study, subjects underwent multiple real time brain imaging sessions while they attempted to regulate their emotional responses to negative pictures. Through the use of high-tech brain imaging or neuroimaging, researchers were able to observe the thinking regions of the subjects brains (including areas called the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex) managing the emotion-generating parts of the brain (amygdala). Its an intriguing new study that sheds light into the brains own built-in system of organization and regulationone that strives for order, one that can tamp down (suppress) our emotions when necessary.

As we will show you, once you can better manage your emotions, you can then begin to harmonize and focus the various thinking parts of your brain, opening up a whole new world before you. Youre on your way to achieving a more organized, less stressful, more productive and, in many ways, more rewarding life. Andheres the most exciting partthe features in the brains magnificent self-regulation system come preloaded in every functioning human mind; these features can be accessed, initialized and utilized to allow you to become better organized and to feel more on top of things.

You just have to know how to do it. Thats what this book will show you.

WHAT MAKES THIS ORGANIZATION BOOK DIFFERENT?

This is not a book meant to give you tips on how to rearrange your desk, to make lists or to set up a better system for keeping track of your appointments.

This is a prescriptive book that will help you better organize your life by better organizing your mind, by making some basic changes in the way you think about and deal with your work, your colleagues, your family and yourself on a day-to-day basis. As a result, you will become better focused, more attentive, less distracted and better able to adapt to new situations and changes that, in the past, might have overwhelmed you.

Train Your Brain is organized differently than most self-help books. At its core is a unique partnership between a leading Harvard clinician-researcher and a leader in coaching and coach traininga collaboration that serves as a model for the future and can help make a big impact on readers like yourself. In a physician-coach partnership, a new concept in personal health, a Doctor of Medicine diagnoses the problem, explains what you need to do and plants the seeds for you to make the change. Then, a professional coach guides you through implementation of the change.