Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life. Harvard Publications Health
Headquartered in Amsterdam, ING is one of the world’s largest insurance and financial services corporations. Smith was CEO of the division that oversees workplace retirement plans in the United States. She managed a business that employs about 2,500 people and serves nearly 5.5 million consumers at more than 50,000 private, public and nonprofit employers throughout the country. (You may very well have your retirement money in the division of ING that Smith oversaw.) Their combined assets today: a staggering $300 billion, literally more than the gross national product of many countries. And it was her responsibility.
Smith was accustomed to traveling one out of every two working days. On a daily basis she made decisions that involved millions of dollars—many of them representing people’s life savings and retirement money. “ING is doing important things,” she acknowledged. But she had fun doing it. “I have a lot of passion and energy,” she says when asked how she managed to stay on top of everything she needed to do. (She has since taken this passion and energy to a brand new role—and one no less demanding—serving the state of Connecticut as Commissioner of Economic and Community Development, a position to which she was appointed by the state’s governor, Dannel P. Malloy.)
A former colleague who traveled with her on a daylong business trip in New England while at ING commented admiringly in an e-mail how effortlessly Smith seemed able to meet all of the demands and responsibilities hurled at her:
Early morning: in Quincy, MA, visited one of the company’s major sites
Late morning: in car on the way back to Hartford area—did a phone interview with major trade publication
Noon: arrived at golf course in Bloomfield to play in an LPGA tournament that ING sponsored. Won longest drive contest!!
Evening: after her gold round, came in and spoke to the crowd about ING’s commitment to community and its role as a good corporate citizen
Late evening: caught up on e-mails
In addition to her innate talents, she has a mind that is fully engaged, a mind that is organized.
In her new job, she adds, she’s putting it to good use.
“Organization is even more important in this role!” says Smith, whose job includes helping to create jobs and attract new business to the state. “It’s requiring me more than ever to utilize good time management skills.”
Interesting point: Smith doesn’t make to-do lists, a supposedly common trait among organized people. She does make the most of her greatest resource, which is between the ears. “I use my reflective time to consider what things I got done, what things I need to do,” she says. Smith has also learned how to put aside things and return to them at a more opportune time. These could be complex problems or problem people. Like we all do sometimes, she can get frustrated or angry. The difference is that she knows how to manage those emotions. “It’s better to wait until you can speak thoughtfully and calmly,” she says. “I’ll leave that part of my work alone for a day or two, to get perspective and calm down.”
This reveals another part of her cognitive make-up: a mental nimbleness that allows her to jump off of one task and onto another without losing balance. “It’s rare that I go through a full day without some interruptions and changed priorities,” she says. “You cannot ignore many of these issues and need to be flexible in addressing them.” Another thing about Smith: while many might hail her as a paradigm of “multitasking” or as a “juggler,” she rejects that very terminology. “I try very hard not to multitask,” she says. “Instead, if I can stay focused on the task at hand I find I’m much more effective in completing it. If I try to spread my energies among several things simultaneously, more often than not, I end up with several half-done things.” Again, as in the case with Dr. Shmerling, it is not necessarily a driven mind or a person so single-minded that he or she is an automaton, bereft of joy and focused only on work or success. Catherine Smith, too, enjoys what by any definition would be considered a well-rounded, balanced and satisfying life. She has been married to the same man for twenty-seven years, and they’ve raised two happy and healthy children. She is a passionate outdoorswoman, who enjoys biking and hiking, and also is active in various volunteer and environmental causes. She is on the board of directors of Outward Bound USA (which serves 70,000 students and teachers annually) as well as a former director of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment.
Balance. Flexibility. Poise. An ability to tamp down the emotions and to shift and set your attention on something else with grace and ease. As we shall see, these are all qualities of the well-ordered mind. That is, a mind that is organized and can focus and pay attention. A mind that can stay afloat and buoyant in a turbulent sea of change.
It’s a mind, or a mind-set, that can be yours as well. While you may not have the academic pedigree of Dr. Shmerling or the business resume of Catherine Smith, you do have the capacity to engage and enhance the same cognitive skills that can improve your life. Whether your goals are simply to better focus on your required reading for school or work, better manage your day in order to have more time for your spouse and children or make a quantum leap forward in your career, the ability is there in your mind and in the resources that exist in you, like unused features in your computer that you have but may simply not know how to use.
In the next chapter, Dr. Hammerness will explain the principles—or Rules of Order—and the science behind them by using some cases from his own practice.
In Chapter 2, Coach Meg will show you how to get ready to take the journey of change.
In subsequent chapters, they will examine each of the Rules of Order in depth, giving you both the science behind it—so you have a better appreciation of just how organized your brain is (although you might not feel that way at the moment)—and specific suggestions on how to integrate each of these organizing principles into your life.
Citizens of Distracted America! Men and women all over the disorganized world! Join us in becoming more focused and productive. You have nothing to lose but your car keys, which, by the way, you probably left on the kitchen table.
CHAPTER 1
The Rules of Order/Dr. Hammerness
IT WAS A THURSDAY, AROUND 6:00 PM, and I was sitting in my office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, located along a tree-lined stretch of Alewife Brook Parkway, a few miles outside of Harvard Square.
The four-story brick building, an annex of Massachusetts General Hospital’s psychiatry department, is where I see patients as part of my research and teaching responsibilities at Harvard Medical School. They span the age and occupation spectrum—elementary-school children, grandparents, lawyers, salesmen, housewives and house-husbands—but they have one thing in common: they are coming to see me and my colleagues with familiar complaints and concerns. “I know I could be doing better” is a common one; as is, “I can’t go on like this.”
While the complaints may vary slightly, the symptoms they describe are the same—and consistent with the condition we treat. You’ve probably heard of it: attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
One of those patients, we’ll call her Jill, is late for her appointment.
As I sit catching up on e-mails, the door bursts open and in she flies, out of breath from climbing the two flights of stairs to my second-floor office. She is flustered and clearly upset.
“Sorry I’m late!” Jill says, as she plops down on the chair facing my desk. “You wouldn’t believe my day.”
“Try me,” I say. “Take a deep breath and tell me what’s going on.”
Jill is in her late thirties and a highly educated research scientist, one of the many “knowledge workers” who labor in Cambridge, home of Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She takes a moment and launches into her story, which begins a few weeks earlier when she temporarily moved into a friend’s apartment while her own house was being renovated.
“Last night, when I came in,” she says, “I put my keys down somewhere, and this morning, I had not a clue where they could be.”
I