(nonfiction book review)

“Mindfulness is a habit, it’s something the more one does, the more likely one is to be in that mode with less and less effort…it’s a skill that can be learned. It’s accessing something we already have. Mindfulness isn’t difficult. What’s difficult is to remember to be mindful.”
― David Rock, Your Brain at Work

The book ‘Your brain at work’ written by David Rock explains us how our brain works and how we could improve its power.

The main characters of the book is Emily and Paul. They are parents of two young children. Emily is a newly promoted executive in a large corporation, while Paul has his own business as a consultant. Their lives, like all of ours, are filled with a bewildering blizzard of emails, phone calls, yet more emails, meetings, projects, proposals, and plans. Just staying ahead of the storm has become a seemingly insurmountable task.

In this book, we travel inside Emily and Paul’s brains as they attempt to sort out the vast quantities of information they’re presented with, figure out how to prioritize it, organize it and act on it. Fortunately, for Emily and Paul, they’re in good hands: David Rock knows how the brain works — and more specifically, how it works in a work setting. David shows how it’s possible for Emily and Paul, and thus the reader, not only to survive in today’s overwhelming work environment but succeed in it — and still feel energized and accomplished at the end of the day.

The book really has a convenient structure. There are three acts (parts) of this book. The first act is ‘Problem and decision.’ Here author tells us difficulties Emily and Paul meet with at their work. And then we could see the ways to solve it, using lifehacks about our brain.

The second and third acts outline the unique and sticky idea with “SCRAF” – Status, Certainty, Relatedness, Autonomy and Fairness.

What about minuses of this book… Sometimes the author uses scientific words and does not explain their meaning. So you need to search it in Google or anywhere else. The book needs an editor, who could add some footnotes.

By the way, the book looks useful and even urgent. I learned so much lifehacks from it that help me organize my work better and spend less time doing useless things.

I recommend this book to everyone who wants to make their lives easier.

My rate is 9/10.