The Organized Mind

Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload

By: Daniel J. Levitin

Narrated by: Luke Daniels

New York Times best-selling author and neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin shifts his keen insights from your brain on music to your brain in a sea of details.

The information age is drowning us with an unprecedented deluge of data. At the same time, we're expected to make more - and faster - decisions about our lives than ever before. No wonder, then, that the average American reports frequently losing car keys or reading glasses, missing appointments, and feeling worn out by the effort required just to keep up.

But somehow some people become quite accomplished at managing information flow. In The Organized Mind, Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, uses the latest brain science to demonstrate how those people excel - and how listeners can use their methods to regain a sense of mastery over the way they organize their homes, workplaces, and time.

With lively, entertaining chapters on everything from the kitchen junk drawer to health care to executive office workflow, Levitin reveals how new research into the cognitive neuroscience of attention and memory can be applied to the challenges of our daily lives. This Is Your Brain on Music showed how to better play and appreciate music through an understanding of how the brain works. The Organized Mind shows how to navigate the churning flood of information in the 21st century with the same neuroscientific perspective.

©2014 Daniel J. Levitan (P)2014 Penguin Audio

Best read in a long time

The organized mind is what you are looking for. I would highly highly recommend this book to anyone.

Productive Thinker

Okay, I really liked this book. I do feel a little weird because I do many of things he illustrates for helping people be productive and organized. Loved the readability, the examples, and the tips. The chapter on information literacy was mostly accurate though I did cringe bit on his view of Wikipedia. Also, he definitely didn't have good things to say about alternative medicine. Highly recommend the book.

Sounds like text to speech

The author’s voice sounds exactly like text to speech, robotic intonations and all. It’s uncomfortable to listen to.

One of the best books i've listened/read.

This book is only amazing! It cater to a very broad audience and is able to give you insights and valuable information regardless of your background/interests. I listened to several best seller in mgmt, business, entrepreneurship and fiction and this one is on top of the list.

less should be more

If the statement of the book is Organization as a mindset and a tool for productivity I found this book overwhelming lacking of order and structure. The book has good core concepts but many unnecessary stuff that just confuse.

very informative and thought provoking

While I don't agree with this books perspective of evolution, it was a very good and thought provoking piece of literature. I plan to revisit and take notes in some areas of organization and the many tips of offered on various subjects.

excellent information

very info filled book. can learn a lot from it. a bit dry at some parts but it all connects in the end.

Very Relevant

pretty long, but VERY relevant to living in today's world. This book will be outdated in 10 years, but today, it's perfect. The author goes into practical things you can do right now all the way into theory about why, all the way into why that's how our brains have evolved and what we know scientifically about that. Quite fascinating at times, a little hard to follow some of the more math-based ideas, but that's probably just me. I enjoyed it a lot and recommend it.

Great tips but with a bunch of other ideas

When giving tips on how to organize your mind, the tips and Info were actually great, example when it came to topics about multitasking. However, this book contained critical thinking as a topic which could have been another book.

Control freak heaven.

Book stuffed with wide range of information and stuff/guides about proccessing information. Nice for me that author knows and probably like David Alens GTD. Featuring how our memory works (and how it can be edited, which you can used during psychotherapy for example), how our inate evolution based organizing system works (and therefore why we are forgotting things when using more or less incompatible systems), how we create paterns from our world with most effective processes: cognitive economy (autistic people have problems with this "paterning" and HSP-highly sensitive people are on the opposite side: categorizing too granularly, therefore both can get easily overwhelmed), our "zooming lens" going from default mode network to central executive, categorizing (our brain theoretically has capacity to store information about every particle in the universe and have leftover capacity to categorize it into categories. ). Some more bits I found interesting: 46 out of 47 prostate cancer operations actually doesn't add any years to the patient life but greatly cuts on the quality of his life (not the case of Steve Jobs unfortunately). Statistically vitamins and dietary suplements don't really work. We focus on the numerator, not the whole picture hence fearing of flight even if it is much safer then driving for example. Naturalist (body can usually cure itself) vs technologist (every ache have medical solution) aka minimalist vs maximalist, usually a mix: I am probably mostly naturalist acting sometimes as technologist, especially past times. I like to have technologist backup. I think many aches are more about calibration of mind and according to principle of antifragility, our bodies evolved to thrive with some degree of damage, therefore pure technologist attitude harm us in current state. Multitasking creates less work in less quality in our neurological setting, it's only appealing through dopamin habit loop (which social networks exploit for example). Unfortunately, my multitasking is a reason why is this review so scattered. Companies with best productivity culture allows for naps and leisure time in work time, not stressful control and pressure - learn from it!