Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life. Harvard Publications Health
always put your keys and maybe your ID and glasses, too. That way, you’ll know that’s the place they’re always going to be…and every morning, that’s where you’ll launch your day.”
Slowly, as if an unseen hand was drawing it methodically, a smile etches itself across her face.
“A launch pad,” Jill says, starry-eyed “Yes, a launch pad. What do I have to use? A box…a hook…a basket…a tray?”
I smile back. “It’s your launch pad. You can use whatever you like. You just need to make sure you know where it is and keep it in the same place…so that the moment you enter your friend’s house, you’ll leave your keys there and then every morning that’s where they’ll be. On the launch pad, ready to lift off.”
This seemed to really resonate with Jill. First of all, it was an action-oriented solution, something she could do right away and without great difficulty. But more importantly, and Jill appreciated this, the launch pad served as an image, a reminder of how one’s day can begin, not in confusion and distraction but with precision and predictability.
The next week, Jill arrived for her appointment on time. And she entered the room not in a huff but with a smile.
“Go ahead,” she says, “ask me about my forgetfulness this week. I’m ready to answer.”
“Okay,” I respond. “So tell me, did you forget any items, appointments, things like that this past week?”
“Nope,” she said triumphantly, “and here’s why.” She reached into her pocketbook and pulled out a small, uncovered trinket box, one, she explained, that she hadn’t used in years. “My launch pad,” she says, proudly. “I have a spot for it right by the kitchen door.” Moreover, Jill went on to tell me, she had not neglected the area around the launch pad. In fact, you could say that a major redevelopment project had been undertaken in the area: the table cleared and the space near the door rearranged so that her launch pad had its own…well, space. That wasn’t all, she reported. She built a launch pad at her office, too—but this one was project oriented for critical tasks to distribute to others. This, too, was accompanied by a cleaning and rearranging of her workspace.
That week, you might say, all systems were go for Jill. Is this an ADHD “cure”? No, but it’s a small success to build upon. And she has. You could see the impact on her organization and on her self-esteem; she began to regain confidence, as she could now trust herself that her mornings would be a little less frantic and a little more consistent. I’m happy to add that since she “launched” her launch pad, she has not missed a morning meeting again because of time spent looking for her keys.
My experience with Jill illustrates a few important points about organization. First, individual moments of forgetfulness and disorganization can have major consequences.
Second, just as one episode of forgetfulness triggered a series of negative events, so can one small step lead to giant leaps of improvement in the organization of one’s life. The launch pad is a simple solution, but it has effects that go far beyond knowing where your keys are. You begin to think about other things you can organize. You have more time. You are less stressed before you leave the house in the morning. You enter a new environment more relaxed and thinking more clearly. And so on and so on.
Third, and this might not be something readily apparent from hearing the conversation with Jill, the simple remedy that I suggested is rooted in an understanding of the workings of the most complex organ known: the human brain.
THE ORGANIZED BRAIN: TAKE A LOOK
You may have heard about how neuroimaging—our ability to look at the structures and functions of the working brain through advanced imaging technologies—is giving us incredible insights into our understanding of how the mind works. That’s true, and nowhere more so than in our ability to see how the brain is structured to help it function optimally—in other words, its organization.
So just how is the brain organized? Well, at first glance, its complexity seems almost beyond comprehension. The human brain is composed of neural cells—an estimated 100 billion neurons!—that are connected into groups or circuits, communicating with chemicals called neurotransmitters. These groups form larger macrocircuits. The scale of it all is mind-boggling. But here’s a good way to visualize it: Think about looking at your house on Google Earth. You can zoom in and see where you live and your neighbors’ houses—each of them like a single neuron. Toggle back on your computer, and you can see a whole block. Go back further, and the blocks form a neighborhood, a community. Even further, and you’re at jet-plane level, looking at clusters of communities forming a metropolitan area. The brain is structured in a similar way. Put all those individual “houses” (neurons) together, and you go from something relatively simple into something enormously large and complex.
Now imagine it’s a hot summer day in your neighborhood, and you and everybody on the block cranks up the air conditioning. Folks on the adjoining blocks are doing the same. If the whole community and the adjacent communities are doing it, too—responding to the hot weather—what do we have? An overload, maybe at the local level, but more likely—if enough blocks or neighborhoods are involved—a grid failure, a blackout, an entire community powerless.
What happened is that the system got overloaded. But it probably could have been avoided. Chances are, there were warnings signs: The lights dimmed at one point. Or the local power authority issued alerts throughout that day, warning customers to cut back on their power usage during peak hours.
A brain bombarded with too much stimulus, as many of us are these days, is similar to the community on the brink of a power outage on a hot summer’s day. Too much drain, too much strain. Losing those keys, forgetting a scheduled meeting, “blanking out” something you needed to do: each of these episodes are like a momentary dimming of your cognitive lights, a warning message from the brain. Indeed, you may have already experienced some of these signs, which is why you picked up this book.
That’s a great first step. But here’s where the electrical blackout analogy falters. There is only so much power available from the grid and when it goes down, it goes down. Fortunately, the brain is more adaptable, so we reach for a different metaphor:
You may get irked and frustrated by what goes on in Washington, D.C., but one thing that continually works and works well is the balance of power in our American system of government. The Executive Branch, Congress, the Supreme Court—sure, they may bicker and they may even work against each other at times, but the truth is that in the complex array of checks and balances that is the genius of the Constitution, none can ever get the “upper hand” over the long haul. The human brain, too, is in and of itself a remarkable system of checks and balances of “on” and “off” switches. What’s really remarkable is how, despite this delicately engineered balance, the entire structure stands strong and stable, even when being battered by the storms of stimuli that assail us in modern life.
A NEW APPROACH TO NEUROSCIENCE AND MENTAL HEALTH?
A provocative new way of thinking about neuroscience and mental health comes from the folks at the National Institute of Mental Health, who suggest that many cognitive, emotional and behavioral problems—e.g., ADHD, depression, anxiety disorders—can be thought of as problems in the brain’s circuitry, problems that may have existed and been ignored for years. If we can identify them early, we may be able to intervene in very specific ways to prevent and even reverse the problem; much the way a physician will prescribe a low-fat diet and exercise to a patient with slightly elevated cholesterol which, if left on its own, can lead to very serious heart and blood vessel problems or failure.
As neuroscience shows us the intricate details of these circuits, we see the brain’s checks and balances in action. One example of particular importance at the “macro” circuit level can be seen in the brain’s balance of emotions and cognitions. Remember the brain-imaging study that we mentioned in the introduction, the one where subjects viewed pleasant, unpleasant and neutral pictures while attempting to keep in check their emotional reactions? Through the use of imaging techniques, researchers at the University of Colorado were able to observe the “thinking”-brain regions of these