Your Brain At Work (Book Review)

[amazon-product align=”right”]0061771295[/amazon-product]

Let me tell you a story about my friends Emily and Paul.

Emily and Paul were struggling in their demanding jobs and in managing their busy family life raising young children at home.

Emily, a marketing manager at a company, had recently earned a promotion to VP and was finding it challenging to supervise the team comprised of people who were her peers until recently. Paul, an independent software engineer and project manager, was running into problems completing the proposal for a software development project for his client, managing his subcontractors, and determining the best way to architect and implement the software product.

Their workdays were burdened with email overload, filled with meetings, and interrupted by phone calls at the most inopportune moments. They multitasked during meetings, responding to emails on their smartphones¹ while missing important discussions and failing to pick on subtle (and some not so subtle) human interactions.

Life at home was no child’s play either. Their son, Josh, and daughter, Michelle, didn’t feel their parents understood them. The parents and children didn’t communicate on the same wavelength. This led to the parents and children talking over each other and having angry arguments.

So Emily and Paul turned to a consultant called D’Rock for help. By following his evidence-based, proven, scientific advice, Emily and Paul began to get increasingly better in their jobs, with family and in social settings.  They didn’t become perfect: They still made occasional mistakes, but fewer and smaller ones, and when they did, they recovered well.²

The improvements in their lives were measurable, major and memorable. Emily and Paul became highly successful in their jobs, solved the problems with their children at home and even developed a more enjoyable sex life!

How?

All this was possible because D’Rock was no ordinary consultant, but a neuromagician (stay with me here) — a superhero with who had the ability to give other people the power to change themselves for the better.

Here is the surprising twist to this story: D’Rock, the neurosuperhero character in this story is a real person called David Rock. He has even written a book that can help you overcome major challenges like Emily and Paul did.

Following David Rock’s advice will make you more successful in your professional, personal and social life. It is highly likely to make you a better computer programmer, a better project manager, a better people leader — better at pretty much every aspect of your job. It will make you smarter, more effective and happier. It will even enable you to fly. Ok. I’m joking about the flying part. Unless you are a pilot.

Before you ask me what drugs am I taking that have caused this flooding of dopamine into the synapses in my brain and is causing me these delusions, read the book Your Brain At Work and see if it changes your mind.

The book is enjoyable, educational and easy to learn from since it is written in the form of stories. That’s one of the best ways the human brain learns.

I highly recommend reading this book. Once every six months.

My rating of this book: 5/5 stars.

1. Doing emails on smartphone during a meeting, by the way, is a not-so-smart habit. [↩]
2. The path of steady progress is preferable to the pursuit of unattainable perfection. I call this the P5 principle. [↩]