The Organized Mind 

Daniel Levitin 

Book Overview: ​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 readers 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 twenty-first
century with the same neuroscientific perspective. 
 

KEY POINTS COVERED: 

1. Brain extenders ​- What brain extenders are and how they help keep 
the brain organized 
2. Organize your time: Handling complexity -​ Avoid constantly 
switching between the CEO mode and the employee mode 
3. Organize your time: Creative solutions ​- A mix of these 2 modes of 
thinking helps us come up with creative solutions and break through 
tough challenges 
4. Why do we procrastinate? 

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1)Brain Extenders - Keeping your brain clear 

A very powerful way to keep your brain organized and to keep your brain performing at its very 
best is this idea of using brain extenders. 
 
Most of us are storing too much information in our brain. We're storing too much useless 
information that does not need to be there. We fill up our brain with all sorts of stuff that could 
actually have been stored in ​an external brain.  
 
Using brain extenders may mean using a piece of paper or some external digital equipment to 
basically record information so that you can have a clear and calm mind. 
 
When your mind is clear, it has a very calming effect on your mind. And that's when your mind 
can actually think at its highest levels.  
 
Einstein’s story 
 
One time, one of Albert Einstein’s colleagues asked for his phone number, and Einstein did not 
know his own phone number. His colleague was baffled and at the same time he wanted to 
make fun of him, like, “Come on Einstein, you don't know your phone number? How's that even 
possible? What kind of a physicist are you?” 
 
And Einstein said, “Well, why should I keep any useless information in my brain if I could just go 
ahead and look it up in the phone directory and find the number for you?” 
 
Einstein then went ahead and looked up the phone directory and gave his phone number to his 
colleague.  
 
That’s the key. We have to understand that we need to build brain extenders.  
 
We need to keep information outside our brains so that we are clear and calm and we can 
think cleanly.  
 
Action Item - For your practice, every night clear your brain out by dumping all information from 
your brain onto a piece of paper or in a device. That way you have the space to think clearly. 

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2) How to Handle Complexity 
One of the key hallmarks of a complex task is that we tend to switch back and forth between 
DOING and EVALUATING. It looks something like this:  
 
Doing something ➜ evaluating if it was good enough ➜ going back to change something or to 
do something ➜ going back to evaluating and fixing ➜ back to doing something ➜ stepping 
back to look at the big picture ➜ going back to do or fix or change something...  
 
We can think of these 2 modes as:  
 
Employee mode  
● Doing the work 
● Making Changes 
● Fixing 
 
CEO mode 
● Looking at the big picture 
● Evaluating 
● Stepping back to look at the overall progress 
 
The back and forth between the employee mode and the CEO mode can be extremely 
taxing. 
 
This is one of the most taxing things for your brain. It also basically leaves you with very little 
resources to perform at your very best.  
 
The key: O
​ rganize your time so that you can handle the complexity.  
 
How to organize your time to handle complexity: 
 
● Avoid switching back and forth between ​employee mode​ and C​EO mode.  
○ Assign time for CEO mode and assign time for employee mode. In other words, 
assign time for very similar tasks  
○ Use chunks of time to do one mode of work, and then do the other mode of 
work, rather than switching back and forth constantly.  
○ It's almost like creating an assembly line. You're putting similar chores together 
and not going back, and then going into the next mode doing similar chores. 
 
This will maximize your productivity.  
● You will be able to handle complex tasks much better.  

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 ● You're now organizing your time perfectly.  
● Your brain can be at optimal performance. 

3) How to get creative solutions 

How do we get creative solutions? How do we break through tough challenges? We have to 
break down our thinking into 2 modes:  
 
2 modes of thinking: 
1. Task-positive mode  
a. You're completely focused on something. 
b. You're fully engaged. 
c. There's nothing else you’re thinking about. 
2. Task-negative mode  
a. The daydreaming mode. 
b. Nonlinear 
c. Take a break - But don’t take in NEW information   
i. Walk around 
ii. listen to some music 
iii. Play a musical instrument  
iv. Breathe deeply  
v. Meditate 
 
In order to have creative solutions, in order to break through our biggest mental challenges and 
barriers, the key is to be able to g​ o back and forth b
​ etween task-negative and task-positive 
modes.  
 
On the other hand, multitasking is one of the most dangerous things because all it does is it 
ends up just burning out your brain fuel, leading you to stress and anxiety and a lot of other 
challenges. 
 
Don’t multitask. Instead -> oscillate between task-positive and task-negative mode.  
 
This is similar to the basic idea of the book “​The Power of Full Engagement”​ by Tony Schwartz 
and Jim Loehr. The book says we need to go back and forth between working full-on and 
recovering full-on and then keep repeating that cycle. That's the way athletes perform and 
that's the way we need to operate as mental athletes to break through and get creative 
solutions. 
 

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