Introduction_Information and Honest Organization

Part 1
01 Information overload, too many decisions to make: The inside story of cognitive overload
Information Overload, Past and Present
Mental categorization in prehistoric times
The outstanding categorization ability of successful people

02 The first thing to understand: How attention and memory work
The Neurochemical Principles of Attention
Where do memories come from?
Why categorization is important
Offload the burden on your brain to your surroundings.

Part 2
03 Organizing the House: Organizing starts at home.
From junk drawer to filing cabinet, from filing cabinet to junk drawer
Organizing Digital Information at Home
A house organized just the way I want it

04 Sorting Out the Social World: How Are People Connected Today?
Modern social relations are too complex to be organized
Why do people beat around the bush?
What influences social judgment?
When you want to escape the social world

05 Hour Summary: What is the Mystery?
The biological nature of time
Conquering a seesaw-like event
Sleep time and memory organization
The habit of procrastinating
Make time for creativity
For the time of your life

06 Organizing Information for Difficult Decisions: Moments When Life is at Risk
Why You Need to Understand Probability
No, it just came back positive!
Either way, there is risk involved
What doctors offer
Alternative Medicine: Violation of the Principle of Informed Consent
Your way of thinking and acting
Medicine, Mathematics, and Meaningful Choices

07 Business World Summary: How to Create Value
Hierarchical organization and decision-making
Who should take on what responsibility?
Organizing documents for productivity and efficiency
From multitasking to planning for failure

Part 3
08 What to Teach Children: The Future of Organized Minds
Information literacy
Can you guess it roughly as "about that much"?
“What else can you do with a pencil besides writing?”
Things to check about where to get information

09 Organizing Everything Else: The Power of the Junk Drawer

Appendix: Creating Your Own Quadrant
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In an age of information overload and over-choice, can we find our bearings on our thoughts and lives?
The latest research in cognitive psychology and brain science reveals how to organize information, thoughts, and life.

We once believed that as society became computerized, computers would handle all the repetitive and monotonous tasks, leaving humans free to pursue nobler pursuits and secure more leisure time.
But the prediction was wrong.
Our brains have become more and more hectic.
According to research, Americans processed five times more information per day in 2011 than they did in 1981, equivalent to 175 newspapers.
The quality of information has not improved as much as its accessibility.
“We are being bombarded with facts, lies, nonsense, rumors, and all sorts of things that are presented as information.” The workload has also increased tremendously.
Just 30 years ago, travel agencies would take care of all our flight and train reservations, and store clerks would help us find our items, but now we have to do most of these things ourselves.
As we enter the digital age, there has been a rapid increase in "shadow work," where we do the work that experts or companies in the field used to provide as an additional service, and our expected leisure time has actually decreased.
The number of items and options has exploded.
In 1976, when shopping at the supermarket, you had to choose between 9,000 different products; now you have to choose between 40,000 different products.


Our brains are highly developed, but because they evolved to accommodate the prehistoric hunter-gatherer lifestyle that occupied most of human history, the information, material, and decision-making overload of our time is bound to be overwhelming.
Cognitive overload symptoms result in our minds and our surroundings becoming distracted.
Clutter piles up in our homes and offices, we forget where we put important items, we're blinded by misinformation, and we make mistakes and errors in important decisions.
Professor Daniel Levitin of McGill University, a neuroscientist and cognitive psychologist, has stepped forward to identify and address the problem of cognitive overload in the information age.

Professor Levitin is the person who scientifically explained the '10,000-hour rule' that became a worldwide topic of conversation after being mentioned in Malcolm Gladwell's book 'Outliers', and is famous for his books on brain science, such as 'Brain Waltz', which was number one on the New York Times bestseller list for 15 weeks.
He emphasizes that in an age of cognitive overload, the key to organizing information, thoughts, and the surrounding environment and making efficient decisions is understanding how the brain works and developing the habit of organizing accordingly.
And based on the latest research in various fields such as neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and behavioral economics, it suggests a method to systematically organize your home, business, time, society, and interpersonal relationships, starting from your mind.
This book covers the A to Z of organization in the digital age, including how to systematically organize everything in our daily lives so that we don't lose them, from personal items like car keys and documents to digital information like online site IDs and passwords, how to organize our time and relationships more creatively and productively, how to organize business tasks and organizational structures more efficiently, and how to think systematically about information and situations for better judgment and choice.


Transfer the burden of your brain, which is suffering from information bombardment, to the outside world!
How to organize your mind and daily life to fit your brain's way of working

In the information age, where all kinds of information compete in our brains for our attention, the most important ability is 'attention', the ability to focus only on what is important.
To activate the attention system, millions of neurons in the prefrontal cortex of the brain constantly monitor the environment and perform the attention filter function of selecting the things we need to focus on and passing them to consciousness.
Professor Levitin points out that many of the cases where we lose our car keys or wallets or forget important appointments occur when this attention system is overloaded.
So how do executives, politicians, and artists successfully accomplish their tasks without falling into the trap of cognitive overload, despite handling enormous workloads and schedules and constantly encountering new information and people?

Professor Levitin has provided cognitive science management consulting to companies such as Sony, Apple, and the U.S. Navy, and has also worked as a record producer for world-renowned musicians such as Stevie Wonder and Sting.
Along the way, he witnesses successful people become completely absorbed in their work without losing focus, resulting in incredible creativity and productivity.
The key to this amazing focus is to offload the brain's attention filter function to the outside world.
In other words, you can have a secretary or assistant handle the tedious and trivial tasks for you, and use your time and attention solely for more valuable 'current tasks'.
Most ordinary people don't have that luxury, but Professor Levitin explains that they can apply similar methods and reap just as many benefits.
And this book advises on various organizing methods that use various external devices and electronic devices in daily life, or apply the results of brain science and cognitive psychology research to transfer the burden of an overloaded brain to an external source and improve memory and attention.
From how secretaries of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies manage their schedules and organize their files, to the idea recording and memory recall secrets used by executives of cutting-edge IT companies like Google and Facebook, to renowned psychologist B.
It is interesting to see how scientific information organization methods used by various people are presented, from F. Skinner's method of not forgetting to packing up one's belongings.


Professor Levitin says that multitasking is a natural behavior that we engage in when we are overwhelmed by information and cannot focus our attention.
The socio-cultural climate also encourages multitasking.
The biggest culprits that force us to multitask are email, text messages, and social media.
There are many organizations where employees constantly check emails and have to respond to their superiors' questions immediately even during work hours, and countless individuals scroll through Facebook to see what their friends are up to even while eating with friends.
But our brains aren't designed for this kind of multitasking.
“People think they are multitasking, but in reality they are just switching their attention very quickly from one task to another.”
Moreover, this shift in attention comes at a tremendous biological cost.
Rapid, continuous attention-switching can quickly "run out of fuel for the brain, leaving you exhausted and disoriented." Even the mere opportunity to multitask can negatively impact cognitive performance.
According to research by Glen Wilson of Gresham College, London, “trying to focus on a task and knowing that an unread email is sitting in your inbox lowers your effective IQ by 10 points.” Email, texting, and social media that force you to multitask are addictive to your brain.
Receiving a text message activates the brain's novelty center, so responding to it, no matter how trivial, gives the brain a sense of accomplishment and a rewarding dopamine rush.

Professor Levitin recommends setting "productivity time and space"—times when you can focus on work without interruption.
During that time, I recommend turning off your smartphone and email, setting aside a specific space where you can focus on your work, and working there.
If all of this is difficult, I recommend using an email filtering feature to check only emails from urgent and important business partners or people, and collecting the rest of the emails and checking them all at once later.
Also, as seen in the secrets of successful people's immersion, we introduce various daily strategies to avoid multitasking and recover attention, such as focusing with the mindset that 'what you are doing now is the most important thing you can do' and grouping small tasks that can be done within 5 minutes and doing them all at once.


In this book, the concept of organization is applied not only to objects and situations, but also to the social world and human relationships.
It's easy to think we have a pretty perfect grasp of the situations or people we encounter, but our brains, by their very nature, often make cognitive "illusions" about this.
For example, we are more tolerant of the group we belong to and recognize the diversity of each individual in the group, while we reject other groups as a kind of lump with a consistent character without considering the diversity of each individual.
These in-group/out-group effects involve neurological biases.
“In a region of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex, there is a group of neurons that become excited when we think about ourselves or people who resemble us.” The author explains, from a cognitive psychological perspective, various situations in which the brain’s illusions lead to misprocessing of information about others and the world, and the formation of assumptions and prejudices. This helps readers draw out their potential and diversity in human relationships in the social world.


Deciphering Patterns and Meaning in the Big Data Era
Organizing techniques for everything from time management to decision-making about information flow

While most people seek ways to utilize and organize their waking hours, this book points out that sleep, which accounts for one-third of our lives, is the golden time needed for organizing, storing, and learning information, and encourages us to actively utilize this time.
“For a memory to solidify, the neural circuits that first encountered the new experience must be fine-tuned, and research shows that this happens while we sleep.
… … The fine-tuning, retrieval, and consolidation of memories do not occur overnight, but over several consecutive nights.” Therefore, if you have trouble sleeping for two or three days after an experience, you may have difficulty recalling that memory later.
Additionally, one night's sleep has been shown to more than double the likelihood of solving insightful problems and has been shown to enhance learning.
Musicians who learned a new melody improved significantly after sleeping on it overnight, and students solved calculus problems they couldn't solve the first day more easily after sleeping on it than if they had stayed awake for the same amount of time.


The key to effective time management is to combat distractions and maintain focus. To achieve this, he advises, “writing down everything that catches our attention, without missing a single one.”
This is a neuroscience-based idea that prevents thoughts about a particular project or situation from constantly replaying in your mind, while also preventing you from missing out on potentially useful ideas.
This is also a strategy to transfer the functions of the frontal lobe to the outside world, that is, the work of externalizing information.


Professor Levitin emphasizes that the attitude and ability to handle information, or “information literacy,” is now more important than the amount of knowledge, and that “the ability to estimate results and make decisions with incomplete information” is more important than simply getting the “right answer.”
It is precisely these information literacy and decision-making skills that we must teach our children.
“The Internet is like the Wild West, where you had to take care of yourself.
“It is up to each Internet user to protect themselves from the scammers, liars, and bogus salespeople of the digital age.” While publishers, editors, librarians, and academic journals used to be the censors of information, the proliferation of individual Internet editors with all sorts of agendas, and free academic journals that publish even unverified and bogus research, has made most of the censorship the responsibility of individuals.
This book uses a variety of scientific data, including psychology and statistics, to teach you how to objectively judge unverified information floating around the Internet, advertisements disguised as science or medicine, and news that cleverly utilizes statistics and data to present biased claims as fact.


It also introduces important decision-making methods in the information age and digital age.
One of them is 'guessing', which allows one to draw conclusions that are similar to the facts by making inferences based on insufficient information within a limited time. This book examines the reasoning process of guessing through questions such as 'Guess the weight of the Empire State Building', which was a question in Google's job interview.
There are times when we need to calculate the probability of an event occurring relatively accurately using more precise inference than guesswork.
This type of reasoning is absolutely necessary for issues involving numerous variables and risks, especially surgical decisions that may have serious side effects.
However, because doctors are not provided with education on how to think about these situations, both doctors and patients are struggling when faced with difficult medical decisions.
The author introduces thinking methods such as Bayesian inference to help people draw more accurate and objective conclusions based on probability and statistics, without being swayed by emotions or biases, regarding such important issues.
These ways of thinking are even more important in the era of big data because they foster the ability to break down randomly tangled masses of information into smaller pieces or to reassemble relationships between pieces of information to read patterns and meaning.


It also covers essential information management techniques for the digital age, from advice on the optimal amount of information to consider when making decisions as consumers or business managers to technical methods for safely backing up data in case electronic devices like computers break down or become outdated and incompatible with other devices.


Recommendation

Each page is packed with insights that no neuroscientist can match.
It's a smart, important, and well-written book.
-Daniel Gilbert, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and author of Stumbling on Happiness

Daniel Levitin, our neuroscience's eloquent spokesman, writes fascinatingly about the brain in a familiar and accessible style.
-The late David Hubble, neuroscientist and Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine

This book neatly organizes neuroscience and cognitive psychology.
… … provides valuable insights into the world of family, society, time, decision-making, and business.
-Nadine Castle, President of the American Psychological Association and Professor and Vice Dean of the Emory University School of Medicine

It offers valuable advice on how to leverage the emerging world of big data and fosters a deeper understanding of the human mind.
-Mark Hurd, Oracle Co-CEO

It's a book brimming with wit and charm, and packed with scientific information.
Shows how principles of psychology and cognitive science can help us organize our daily lives.
-Gary Altman, professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut and author of The Talking Brain

From "How to avoid losing your keys" to "Medical choices like deciding whether surgery is worth the risk," it teaches you how to intelligently process the constant stream of information your brain must face.
-[Washington Post]

This book contains both broad and deep knowledge.
… … The book is rich in interesting facts and examples, making it a useful read from a variety of perspectives.
-The Wall Street Journal
With his signature clear prose and scientific insights, Daniel Levitin offers tips on how to declutter our mental closets.
-Joseph LeDoux, Professor, New York University Center for Neuroscience, author of Synapses and the Self


This book is a novel combination of neuroscience and self-development.
-〈Kirkus Review〉

The result of combining true knowledge and scholarship with common sense is a book truly worth reading, like "The Organizing Brain."
-George Shultz, former U.S. Secretary of State

An extraordinary work by one of the most talented writers of our time.
-The late Phil Ramone, album producer for Bob Dylan, Elton John, and Luciano Pavarotti

It's fascinating to read, as if a neuroscientist friend were telling us how creating a little order in our brains can free up so much creativity.

-Len Blum, screenwriter of The Pink Panther and Meatballs

The Organizing Brain is the perfect antidote to information overload.
—Scott Turow, New York Times bestselling author of Identical and Innocence

It can be considered a manual for my mind that will help me manage the fire hose of information and choices that pours out every day and direct me towards my goals.
-Alan Grayson, U.S. Representative

We present a series of ideas on how to organize your life and business using the latest information about the brain and how it works.
This is a must-read for anyone who aspires to become a competent person.
David Edelman, Dean of McGill University School of Medicine