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Review
"Rock makes the science of your mind accessible and relevant."--Fortune Small Business
Product Description
Meet Emily and Paul: The parents of two young children, Emily is the newly promoted VP of Marketing at a large corporation while Paul works from home or from clients' offices as an independent IT consultant. Their lives, like all of ours, are filled with a bewildering blizzard of emails, phone calls, meetings, projects, proposals, and plans. Just staying ahead of the storm has become a seemingly insurmountable task. We travel inside their brains as they attempt to sort vast quantities of information, prioritize it, memorize it, and act on it. Fortunately for Emily and Paul, they're in good hands: David Rock knows how the brain works-and more specifically, how it works in a work setting. He shows how it's possible for Emily and Paul, and thus the reader, not only to survive in today's overwhelming work environment but succeed in it - and still feel energized and accomplished at the end of the day. "The Brain at Work" explores such issues as: why our brains feel so taxed, and how to maximize our mental resources; why changing behavior is so difficult - and how to make it less so; why focusing on problems doesn't seem to create the desired change; how concentration and focus change the brain, and how to maintain energy and productivity at work; why providing critical feedback is so difficult, and how to make it easier; how corporate/office culture is formed and can most effectively be altered.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
One of the best books I've ever read. David Rock collects together a bunch of neuroscience, explains it extremely clearly, and shows how it affects the way your brain works at home, in the workplace, and in social interactions.
Each chapter is pretty short (ca. 14 pages, big writing). It introduces the topic by showing Emily and Paul in some situation (getting lost on the way to lunch with a client, meeting work colleagues in a new job, shouting at the kids, getting distracted, duking it out with co-workers) which inevitably goes badly. Then he introduces the brain systems involved in that interaction, explains how they work, and helps us to realise that those bits of the brain were only doing their thing - so it wasn't surprising Emily/Paul got flustered, lost, exasperated, etc. Then, now that we understand this, he suggests some very small changes Emily and Paul could make, and reruns the scenario - which inevitably turns out much better. Each chapter ends with a summary and four or five suggestions we can try out ourselves in similar situations.
The neuroscience explanations are straightforward and simple - you don't need a science degree to understand them. When you've read it, you'll probably think "why didn't we get this in school?!" (Much of it has only been discovered in the past 10 years or so.) We find out about dopamine, the amygdala (he calls it "amygdale"), the limbic system, the frontal lobes, alpha and gamma waves, mirror neurons, and more, and how they produce/influence our behaviour. To back it up, there are also about 20 pages of literature references and notes at the end.
Oh, and he has a nice, light sense of humour. A good person to sit next to on a transatlantic flight - puh, he'd even recognise when to stop talking!
Each chapter is pretty short (ca. 14 pages, big writing). It introduces the topic by showing Emily and Paul in some situation (getting lost on the way to lunch with a client, meeting work colleagues in a new job, shouting at the kids, getting distracted, duking it out with co-workers) which inevitably goes badly. Then he introduces the brain systems involved in that interaction, explains how they work, and helps us to realise that those bits of the brain were only doing their thing - so it wasn't surprising Emily/Paul got flustered, lost, exasperated, etc. Then, now that we understand this, he suggests some very small changes Emily and Paul could make, and reruns the scenario - which inevitably turns out much better. Each chapter ends with a summary and four or five suggestions we can try out ourselves in similar situations.
The neuroscience explanations are straightforward and simple - you don't need a science degree to understand them. When you've read it, you'll probably think "why didn't we get this in school?!" (Much of it has only been discovered in the past 10 years or so.) We find out about dopamine, the amygdala (he calls it "amygdale"), the limbic system, the frontal lobes, alpha and gamma waves, mirror neurons, and more, and how they produce/influence our behaviour. To back it up, there are also about 20 pages of literature references and notes at the end.
Oh, and he has a nice, light sense of humour. A good person to sit next to on a transatlantic flight - puh, he'd even recognise when to stop talking!
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
In years to come we may look back on this book and see it as an early important entrant in what will have become a significant field. From that perspective the book's shortcomings may be clearer, but today it is well worth reading to get a good overall understanding of how insights from brain research can help us improve our own effectiveness in our daily lives.
It is very clearly written, and David has followed his own advice in how to get messages across in an effective way.
There are many great insights in this book which are immediately applicable. Among them, the importance of labelling, and reappraising our thoughts, and the overall importance of being able to observe our own mental processes. Other useful ideas include the fact that our default position is to regard others as foes, and the overriding importance of the threat response. The fact that multitasking drastically reduces our effectiveness is also well explained, as is the importance of fairness.
Overall I found this book easy to read, well researched, interesting and useful, and definitely recommend it. My only reservation is that sometimes it is not clear what research David is referring to, and I would like some of the research to have been explained a bit more fully, so we could judge for ourselves the implications drawn from it. There are plenty of references at the back, but it is not always clear which claims are based on which research work. I'm sure in the future other works by this author and others will make this clearer and also build on the ongoing body of research in this area.
It is very clearly written, and David has followed his own advice in how to get messages across in an effective way.
There are many great insights in this book which are immediately applicable. Among them, the importance of labelling, and reappraising our thoughts, and the overall importance of being able to observe our own mental processes. Other useful ideas include the fact that our default position is to regard others as foes, and the overriding importance of the threat response. The fact that multitasking drastically reduces our effectiveness is also well explained, as is the importance of fairness.
Overall I found this book easy to read, well researched, interesting and useful, and definitely recommend it. My only reservation is that sometimes it is not clear what research David is referring to, and I would like some of the research to have been explained a bit more fully, so we could judge for ourselves the implications drawn from it. There are plenty of references at the back, but it is not always clear which claims are based on which research work. I'm sure in the future other works by this author and others will make this clearer and also build on the ongoing body of research in this area.
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
David writes a readable book and some of the insights in here are extremely powerful. David is not himself a neuroscientist and so his book is written from the perspective of a business coach who is intrigued to see how understanding the functioning of the brain can help people best manage themselves. I would personally rate it 5 stars execpt for two small caveats. One is you get a sense that in order to make his points clear he sometimes makes them overly simple - thus losing, on occasion, some important nuance. Secondly he does occasionally mix in some of his own theories (not proven using neuroscientific techniques such as fMRI) but does not clarify which findings are scientifically proven and which may simply be theories.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
I understood how to be a superwoman!
When you have to babysit your own kids and work, it's ok. No big deal. But when you have to babysit numerous artists, own kids and still rock as a woman it becomes tough. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Public Different
Tough to Get Your Brain Round 'Your Brain'
I had a difficult time getting into and through this book. Unfortunately, I really can't tell you why. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Project Management Recruitment
Great read
David Rock has a great skill about being able to bring academic research to the real world.
In this book, David has successfully helped my understanding of what is going... Read more
In this book, David has successfully helped my understanding of what is going... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Simon
Fascinating! Am recommending it to all my friends
Am absolutely fascinated by this book. I have a science degree and used to work for an imaging company, so I love the combination of neuroscience and observation to explain how and... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Miss Julia A Levy
Think easier, buy this book
I bought this book after watching the Youtube video of the same name, and I have to say its just been brilliant to read, have noticed myself thinking differently about a number of... Read more
Published 23 months ago by Mr. M. Hughes
A very useful view of your own bran
This book has helped me become more focused, less stressed and more mellow. Oh yes, and more productive. Read more
Published on 23 April 2010 by Frode Alexander Hegland
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