训练大脑，让你生产力更高的七个窍门

    • 为大型社交网络做规划。列维京写道：“我们的祖先生活的社会群体变化缓慢，他们从生到死都和同样的人打交道，因此他们几乎可以把所有需要了解的社会细节都记在脑海里。”现在，跟我们共事和交流的可能有几百人，而且普遍期望我们能记在他们的名字和上次谈话的细节。只靠我们的大脑完成不了这项工作。因此，要把你见到了什么人以及你们谈了什么事写下来。社交网站（领英、Facebook）可以帮你记下基本细节，还可以就生日和工作周年纪念日做出提醒。而对我们的大脑来说，如果不映入眼帘，根本就想不起这些信息来。制定一项计划，以便定期查看自己的通讯录。

    • 专注。我们的大脑可以在各项工作之间切换，但从新陈代谢角度讲，这样做成本很高。列维京写道：“专注需要的能量较少。通过安排自己的时间而进入专注状态的人不仅能完成更多的工作，还不会那么累，在神经化学方面的消耗也不会那么大。”如果要做一些杂事，就把类似的杂事放在一起完成。“如果你有一叠账单要付，那就只管付账——别在这个时候去考虑重大问题，比如是否搬到一所更小的房子里，或者是否买辆新车。”把这些留到一个专门的时间段去做。

    • 预备和回顾。当然，虽然把大块时间用于解决某一个问题是最佳做法，但工作环境几乎不允许我们这样做。许多经理都在会议之间奔波，就像高中生一样，上了这门课又要上那门课。大家可能觉得自己能记住每次会议的内容，但实际上我们做不到这一点。正因为如此，精神病医生上班时每小时只工作50分钟。列维京指出，“他们用剩下的10分钟把刚才发生的情况写下来。”因此，制定计划时不要环环相扣，给自己10分钟时间，以便把需要做的事记录下来。同样的，“从新陈代谢角度讲，在不同事物之间切换注意力的成本很高。因此，给我们的大脑一些时间，让它在下一个会议开始前逐步而放松地转换思路对神经健康很有利。”理想情况下，原定一小时的会议应该推迟10分钟开始，并且提前10分钟结束。试试看吧。只要进行尝试，就几乎没有不能缩短的会议。

    • 不要纠结于不重要的事物。选衣柜或者考虑吃什么是否让你心烦意乱呢？如果我们的大脑每天只能做这么多决定，那最好把它留给那些重大事务。清理一下自己的思路，只留下那些管用的方案。至于工作餐，每次都选同样的好了（比如凯撒沙拉）。我们总得吃饭，而少做些决定就意味着在重大问题上我们可以做出更好的选择。

    • 睡眠。这是成功认知的秘密武器。列维京写道：“实际情况表明，睡眠可以改善人们对抽象关系的构建和理解，它所能强化的推理能力不仅限于语言，还包括数学、逻辑和空间。这种改善很明显，一觉醒来，人们往往能解开睡前无法解决的难题。”每个人都有自己最佳的睡眠方式。打盹对某些人效果最好。有些人会一觉睡到天亮，另一些人则会在半夜醒来一阵子。但无论哪种方式管用，首先要做的就是去睡觉——一个快乐的大脑能帮助我们多做许多工作。（财富中文网）

    劳拉•温德尔凯姆是一名记者，她的新书《她们自己的甜蜜时光：成功女性如何构建美满生活》很快就会问世。

    译者：Charlie

    审稿：李翔

    • Plan for a big network. “Because our ancestors lived in social groups that changed slowly, because they encountered the same people throughout their lives, they could keep almost every social detail they needed to know in their heads,” writes Levitin. Now, you may work and interact with hundreds of people who expect you to remember their names and details about your last conversation. Your brain alone isn’t up for the job. So write down notes about people you meet and what you talked about. Social networking sites (LinkedIn, Facebook) can help with basic details, and with birthday and work anniversary reminders, but for the human brain, out of sight really is out of mind. Plan to review your contacts regularly.

    • Focus. The human brain can switch between tasks, but it’s metabolically costly. “It takes less energy to focus,” writes Levitin. “People who organize their time in a way that allows them to focus are not only going to get more done, but they’ll be less tired and less neurochemically depleted after doing it.” If you have chores to do, put similar chores together. “If you’ve collected a bunch of bills to pay, just pay the bills — don’t use that time to make big decisions about whether to move to a smaller house or buy a new car.” Defer those decisions to a different designated time slot.

    • Prep and review. Of course, while it’s best to spend big chunks of time focused on one problem, the workplace is seldom set up for this. Many managers tromp from one meeting to another like high schoolers switching classes. You may think you’ll remember what transpired in each meeting, but you won’t. This is why psychiatrists work a 50-minute hour. “They use that extra ten minutes to write down what happened,” notes Levitin. So rather than scheduling things back to back, give yourself ten minutes to write notes about what needs to be done. Also, “Because attention switching is metabolically costly, it’s good neural hygiene for your brain to give it time to switch into the mind-set of your next meeting gradually and in a relaxed way before the meeting starts.” Ideally, hour-long meetings would really run from ten after to ten before the hour. Give it a shot. It’s the rare meeting that couldn’t be compressed if people tried.

    • Don’t dither over things that don’t matter. Do you agonize over wardrobe or food choices? If your brain can only make so many decisions in a day, then it’s better to preserve its power for weighty matters. Edit your closet to limited options that all work. At business lunches, just choose the same thing (e.g. the Caesar salad). You’ll eat again, and making fewer decisions means you can make better ones when it counts.

    • Sleep. It’s the secret weapon of cognitive success. “Across a range of inferences involving not just language but mathematics, logic problems, and spatial reasoning, sleep has been shown to enhance the formation and understanding of abstract relations, so much so that people often wake having solved a problem that was unsolvable the night before,” writes Levitin. Good sleep looks different for different people. Some people do best with naps. Some people sleep straight through the night, and others wake for a while in the middle. Whatever works for you, though, prioritize making it happen — and your happy brain will help you get a lot more done.

    Laura Vanderkam is a journalist and the author of the forthcoming book Their Own Sweet Time: How Successful Women Build Lives That Work (Portfolio, June 2015).