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Life throws chaos at us on a reg­u­lar basis—whether it’s our finances, our rela­tion­ships, or our health. In the work world, around 50 per­cent of peo­ple are burned out in indus­tries like health care, bank­ing, and non­prof­its, and employ­ers spend $300 bil­lion per year on work­place-relat­ed stress.

In response, we just keep on push­ing through, sur­viv­ing on adren­a­line. We over­sched­ule our­selves; we drink anoth­er cof­fee; we respond to one more email. If we stay amped up all the time, we think, we’ll even­tu­al­ly be able to get things done.

But all that does is burn us out, drain our pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and lead to exhaus­tion.

There’s anoth­er way—a calmer way. Cul­ti­vat­ing a more rest­ful, relaxed state of mind doesn’t mean we’ll drown under all our respon­si­bil­i­ties. Instead, research sug­gests it will bring us greater atten­tion, ener­gy, and cre­ativ­i­ty to tack­le them. And sci­ence also points to sim­ple ways we can tap into that calm state of mind to Read the rest of this entry »

Mon­i­tor­ing brain­waves via dreem wer­able device (Qan­tas)

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Qan­tas’ first 19.5‑hour research flight from New York to Syd­ney takes off (Nine News):

“Qan­tas CEO Alan Joyce, who today is in New York for the research flight, told Today Show via a live cross that he will be select­ing an air­craft for the mam­moth job by the year’s end, in line with a pre­vi­ous time-line.

“The flight is going to be ground-break­ing, as you said. We’ve got 19 hours — we’ve got a lot of sci­en­tists and we’re look­ing at dif­fer­ent ways of mak­ing the oper­a­tion actu­al­ly great for our pas­sen­gers,” Joyce said. Read the rest of this entry »

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When writ­ing a song or a piece of prose, I often choose to let my mind wan­der, hop­ing the muse will strike. If it does, it not only moves my work along but feels great, too!

That’s why I was trou­bled by stud­ies that found an asso­ci­a­tion between mind-wan­der­ing and prob­lems like unhap­pi­ness and depression—and even a short­er life expectan­cy. This research sug­gests that focus­ing one’s thoughts on the present moment is linked to well-being, while spac­ing out—which I per­son­al­ly love to do—is not.

Now, new stud­ies are bring­ing nuance to this sci­ence. Read the rest of this entry »

Top Brain­no­va­tion to boost Work­place Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and Resilience (record­ing requires reg­is­tra­tion; view slid­edeck Here). The three Final­ists were:

• Beam Rid­ers – pitch by Jafar Sab­bah, Founder & CEO
• MyCog­ni­tion – pitch by Mar­ti­na Rat­to, Cog­ni­tive Sci­en­tist
• The Touch­point Solu­tion (WINNER) – pitch by Dr. Amy Serin, Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist & Co-Founder

• Judged by: Ariel Garten, Founder and Chief Evan­ge­lism Offi­cer at Inter­aX­on; Char­lie Hartwell, Oper­at­ing Part­ner at Bridge Builders Col­lab­o­ra­tive; Kath­leen Herath, Asso­ciate Vice Pres­i­dent Health & Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty at Nation­wide Insur­ance; Lisa Neu­berg­er, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Strat­e­gy + Inno­va­tion at Accen­ture Cor­po­rate Cit­i­zen­ship

Slid­edeck sup­port­ing ses­sion held dur­ing the 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Brain Health & Enhance­ment in the Dig­i­tal Age (Decem­ber 5–7th). All ses­sion record­ings avail­able for pur­chase (50+ Speak­ers, 15+ Hours, $150).

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Quick heads-up:  The 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit start­ing tomor­row Tues­day, Decem­ber 5th will host a Brainnova­tions Pitch Con­test to dis­cuss the lat­est tech­nolo­gies for Brain Health & Enhance­ment, and 12 select­ed star­tups will get to pitch their inno­v­a­tive approach and solu­tions to our dis­tin­guished Judges –our very own “Sharp Tank”– and to all Sum­mit par­tic­i­pants. Read the rest of this entry »