How Do You Get There?

In this chapter, we’ve looked at features of your brain, including the L-mode and R-mode cognitive processes, and at rewiring your brain through practice. You should also begin to appreciate the underutilized power of R-mode.

So if this R-mode thing is so great—or at least so necessary at this particular point in time—what can you do to experience more R-mode processing yourself? What can you do to cultivate R-mode and better integrate L-mode and R-mode?

We’ll look at some specifics of how to achieve better cultivation and integration in the next chapter.

Next ActionNext Actions

  • Make a short list of your favorite software applications and a list of the ones you just despise. How much does aesthetics play a role in your choices?

  • Consider what aspects of your work and home life target L-mode. What aspects of your work and home life target R-mode? Do you feel they are in balance? If not, what will you do differently?

  • Keep a doodle pad on your desk (and in your car, with your laptop, by your bed), and use it.

  • In addition, keep something on your person for 24×7 note taking (which may or may not be paper/pen based).

Try This

  • Make a conscious effort to learn something new primarily by synthesis, instead of analysis.

  • Try creating your next software design away from your keyboard and monitor (and we’ll talk more about this in detail a bit later in the book).

Footnotes

[26]

A central source of movement variability [CAS06].

[27]

Let’s hope you have just the one.

[28]

See Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less [Cla00].

[29]

See Shufflebrain: The Quest for the Hologramic Mind [Pie81].

[30]

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/313/5790/1141

[31]

Verbal overshadowing of visual memories; some things are better left unsaid [SE90].

[32]

Technically, of course, there is no indexing going on, so it’s more like being at the end of a very long hash bucket with decreasing activation energy at each link. But metaphorically, just think of it as an index.

[33]

Folks also recommend the Zebra T3 series; see http://www.jetpens.com for both a pen and mechanical pencil version.

[34]

Remember to use your hands-free device per local laws :-).

[35]

If you doubt this, just ask any venture capitalist.

[36]

The cortex, which comes from the Latin word for tree bark, is the outer layer of folded gray matter and is key to conscious thinking.

[37]

As described in The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain [Edw01] et al.

[38]

They aren’t even measurable. HR can’t measure or reward most of these skills, at least not as easily as they can the L-mode traits.

[39]

That was in 2006. The automotive business remains tough, however.

[40]

Rumor has it that this parody was in fact created by a design group within Microsoft, possibly to complain about the constraints they were operating under.

[41]

Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things [Nor04].

[42]

Apparent Usability vs. Inherent Usability: Experimental Analysis on the Determinants of the Apparent Usability [KK95].

[43]

Aesthetics and Apparent Usability: Empirically Assessing Cultural and Methodological Issues [Tra97].

[44]

A Neuro-psychological Theory of Positive Affect and Its Influence on Cognition [AIT99].

[45]

Automatic effects of brand exposure on motivated behavior: how Apple makes you "Think Different" [FCF07].

[46]

Thanks to June Kim for this one.

[47]

Interhemispheric Interaction During Global/Local Processing in Mathematically Gifted Adolescents, Average Ability Youth and College Students [SO04].

[48]

Described in The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science [Doi07].

Copyright © 2015, The Pragmatic Bookshelf.
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