It's well-documented that as a species we like to identify ourselves with winners and those we perceive as having the highest potential to win. This tendency seems to validate the statement that our brain is hard-wired for survival, an observation made by John Medina and others. But human behavior is rarely that straight forward.
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Each year, I write the same basic post about why your brain needs a vacation and each year I fail to really take one myself. To be honest, this year is beginning to look like more of the same behavior, since I don't have any days off planned just yet and we are well into August. So I'm not going to regale you with all the studies that show how your brain benefits from a change in the daily routine and is recharged by traveling to different places.

by Bill Jensen

Why I like it
If you attended Brain Matters 2015 you had the pleasure to see Bill Jensen share his "simple Bill" to work and learning. Now, in his new book, Future Strong,  Bill reveals the five deeply personal choices that determine your relationship with the future.

When I wrote Brain Matters: How to help anyone learn anything using neuroscience , I stated in my introduction that I fully expected the content in my book to change over time as new evidence became available. I didn't realize just how much difference a year could make until I updated the content for our 2016 second edition. I removed a whole section on the now thoroughly debunked "learning styles" and clarified some references and passages. I'm so proud that the book now has readers in the U.S., Canada, India, France, UK, Spain, Russia, Italy and Thailand and rated 4.6 out of five stars on Amazon!

Apparently someone out there also thinks my book is really underpriced at $14.95 for the paperback. They're reselling it for $39.92. This gives me something to think about for my next book, but I wanted to make this book very accessible, so I won't be raising my price. Enjoy!

In order to build a smarter organization you need to start with smarter brains. The pace of change today demands that your team become nimble, ready to respond to new threats and capitalize on new opportunities with utmost speed and mental agility. However, the human brain evolved over centuries to keep us alive, so it is still responding to our current work environment as though we are hunting for food - and trying to avoid being hunted - on a daily basis. Within this framework we can train the brain to learn new skills, process information in new ways and develop a mindset that is open to new possibilities. We have only recently begun to understand the inner workings of the brain, thanks to neuroscience. Sadly, most of what is written on the subject is either too theoretical to be practical or so over-hyped as to be meaningless.

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