Brain Dancing: Work Smarter, Learn Faster and Manage Information More Effectively

Book by Magee, Patrick T.

"Meta" means above, so I use the phrase "going meta" to describe the process of rising above. There are two main ways of applying this distinction to knowledge work:

* Traversing the structure of information, facilitated by tools such as Mind Maps.
* Traversing the structure of your thoughts in order to optimize key mental processes.

The emphasis in this chapter is on training your mind to stand apart and examine its own "program." Specifically, this chapter is about fine tuning the mental software you use to learn and interact with information.

If you find yourself doing something repeatedly, it may be worthwhile to periodically examine the process you use. I once read a study that calculated the number of hours the average person spends tying their shoes over the course of their lifetime. The amount of time was so huge that I became determined to figure out how to reduce this number. I explored ways of tying my shoes faster, then eventually started wearing shoes that just slip on and off so I don't have to tie my shoes at all. In addition to optimizing a mental process, sometimes there are ways of organizing yourself so that certain activities are no longer necessary.

The amount of information that knowledge workers must interact with has increased significantly throughout my career and this trend is likely to continue. This chapter presents a number of distinctions you can use to optimize frequently performed processes while interacting with information in ways such as reading, remembering and learning.

These ideas, and indeed this entire book, were inspired by Tony Buzan's book, Use Both Sides of Your Brain. Buzan taught me that it is one thing to read a book about a specific topic such as science or math, and quite another to read a book that improves the way I read every book from that point forward. Buzan's ideas took me from reading fifty books every couple of years, to extracting useful information from fifty books every couple of months. This increase in my information metabolism led me to four other metalearning books:

* Accelerated Learning, by Colin Rose
* Mastering the Information Age, by Michael J. McCarthy
* Remember Everything You Read: The 7 Day Evelyn Wood Speed Reading Program, by Stanley D. Frank
* The Brain Book, by Peter Russell

This chapter explains just a few of their ideas that I've found valuable in my work.