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Aknowledgments

Thanks to my late mother who tried to channel my many and diverse childhood interests and activities by endlessly repeating: “Do one thing, do your best, finish up and tidy up”.

Thanks to the TIASNIMBAS business school which allowed me to keep using their electronic scientific databases, to Pierre Vermeulen who helped me out with the statistical analysis of my survey, to the 1,500 people who answered my survey, to Anna Jenkinson who turned my personal English into excellent English, Huw Aaron who did the illustrations, and Suzan Beijer and Hans Bosch who did the layout.

Many paragraphs in this book are inspired by the challenging questions and the willingness to try out new behaviors of my executive coachees, especially in the group coaching sessions we pioneered at INSEAD. I am also thankful for the more than enthusiastic and inspiring participation of the managers in Sam Abadir’s great program “Leadership and Safety” that is organized six times a year at CEDEP. These Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) managers and plant managers are the quickest to realize the consequences for daily work of what they learn about the brain and BrainChains. They are also the most eager to collect the low hanging fruit in terms of productivity and safety.

Thanks also to David Strayer for permission to use his picture of the impact of using a phone on our vision while driving and to Shai Danziger for the graph of his research on decision fatigue.

Last but not least, thanks to Annemarie who has been there for me for more than 40 years and reminds me every day that there are more important things in life than writing a book, as fascinating as the subject may be.