Information Overload? Seven Learning and Productivity Tips

By Alvaro Fernandez | October 19, 2007 |

We often talk in this blog about how to expand fun­da­men­tal abil­i­ties or cog­ni­tive func­tions, like atten­tion, or mem­o­ry, or emo­tion­al self-reg­u­la­­tion. Think of them as mus­cles one can train. Now, it is also impor­tant to think of ways one can use our exist­ing mus­cles more effi­cient­ly. Let’s talk about how to man­age bet­ter the…

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Mind & Life Institute

By Alvaro Fernandez | April 24, 2007 |

My wife and I were for­tu­nate to con­duct recent­ly a mind train­ing exper­i­ment, in the form of a breath­ing & med­i­ta­tion retreat, with some neu­ro­sci­en­tists and Adam Engle, Co-Founder and Chair­man of the Mind & Life Insti­tute (nice name, isn’t it?) The Mind and Life Dia­logues “start­ed in 1987 as an exper­i­ment to deter­mine whether a scientific…

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Books on neuroplasticity and memory training

By Alvaro Fernandez | April 3, 2007 |

Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty: the brain’s abil­i­ty to reor­ga­nize itself by form­ing new con­nec­tions through­out life. (see more con­cepts in our Glos­sary). We coud­n’t be hap­pi­er about the grow­ing num­ber of books pop­u­lar­iz­ing the key lessons about brain train­ing that Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg has been research­ing and writ­ing about for years, and that moti­vat­ed us to embark ourselves…

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I am busy executive with a challenging job. How is brain fitness relevant to me?

By Caroline Latham | March 29, 2007 |

How is brain fit­ness rel­e­vant to me?Key Points: Reduce your stress to improve con­cen­tra­tion and learn­ing readi­ness and reduce distractions.Increase your men­tal stim­u­la­tion to help main­tain a healthy, flex­i­ble brain.Answer:Executives, or any­one involved in com­plex and rapid­ly evolv­ing envi­ron­ments, need to make pres­sured deci­sions based on sound log­ic, instead of emo­tion­al impuls­es.… Stress can also lim­it our men­tal flex­i­bil­i­ty and abil­i­ty to see alter­na­tive solu­tions, there­by pre­vent­ing us from adapt­ing to, and suc­ceed­ing in, new circumstances.

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Baby Boomers, Healthy Aging and Job Performance

By Alvaro Fernandez | March 25, 2007 |

There has been an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about the issues relat­ed to the aging of the legal pro­fes­sion. Stephanie intro­duced us to the arti­cle “the Gray­ing Bar: let’s not for­get the ethics” by David Giacalone. In short: sta­tis­tics about the increas­ing ratio of lawyers over 70 in active prac­tice, on the one hand, and the general…

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Brain Fitness News

By Alvaro Fernandez | March 24, 2007 |

Anoth­er great week full of inter­est­ing and rel­e­vant arti­cles. We will start a new tra­di­tion: we will end up the week (either on Fri­day or dur­ing the week­end) with a round-up of the arti­cles we haven’t been able to com­ment on dur­ing the week. Please feel free to send us your sug­ges­tions too! (You can join…

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