biology

The Organized Mind

The Organized Mind is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Organized Mind rather than just read about it. In short: The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload is a bestselling popular science book written by the McGill University neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, and first published by Dutton Penguin in the United States and Canada in 2014.

Key takeaways

The Organized Mind belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Organized Mind to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Organized Mind from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload is a bestselling popular science book written by the McGill University neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, and first published by Dutton Penguin in the United States and Canada in 2014. It is Levitin's 3rd consecutive best-seller, debuting at #2 on the New York Times Best Seller List, #1 on the Canadian best-seller lists, #1 on Amazon, and #5 on The London Times bestseller list. In The Organized Mind, Levitin demonstrates how the Information Age is drowning us with an unprecedented deluge of data, and uses the latest brain science to explain how the brain can organize this flood of information. The book is divided in three parts. The first part focuses on attention. Levitin argues that attention is the most essential mental resource for any organism and describes how the brain's attentional system works: it determines which aspects of the environment an individual will deal with, and what gets passed through to that individual's conscious awareness. The attentional awareness system is the reason one can safely drive or walk to work without noticing most of the buildings or cars one passes by. Additionally, Levitin states that the phrase "paying attention" is scientifically true. Multitasking comes at an actual metabolic cost: switching back and forth between tasks burns a lot more oxygenated glucose (the fuel the brain runs on) than focusing on one task does, and can lead quickly to mental exhaustion. The second and third parts of the book show how readers can use their attentional and memory systems for better organization, from the classroom to the boardroom, from home lives to interactions with friends, doctors, and business associates.

References

External links The distracted mind - All In The Mind - ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (Sunday, August 30, 2015)

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Organized Mind

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Organized Mind claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Organized Mind before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Organized Mind ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Organized Mind

In research: The Organized Mind appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Organized Mind in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Organized Mind is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2014 non-fiction books, Books about cognition, Books about creativity, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Organized Mind outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Organized Mind in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Organized Mind means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Organized Mind out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Organized Mind in simple terms?

Why does The Organized Mind matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Organized Mind?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Organized Mind.