The marimba has always been such a soothing sound—cloth mallets against wood bars, perfect for making the sounds of raindrops in forest pools. Then the iPhone went and co-opted it for its default alarm. Now the sound of a marimba makes an entire train full of commuters check their jacket pockets.
Consider this book your marimba. It’s time to wake up, jump-start your brain, and rip back the veils of habit, misperception, and irrationality that your neurons create between you and reality. But waking up is just the start. From the second the marimba sounds until your eyes close for the evening (and beyond!), you evaluate the world outside, evaluate the world inside, make choices and decisions, plan how to reach little goals like getting to work on time, and keep your eyes on bigger goals like being a good parent or partner, all amid a landscape of distraction and temptation. Every second of every day, you have the opportunity to use your brain for better or for worse. You have the opportunity to nail it or totally screw up. And when you nail these things or screw them up, you have the opportunity to learn.
The thing is, someone somewhere has studied each one of these teeny-tiny chunks in the day of your brain. From multitasking over your morning coffee to milking the semiconscious state before you sleep for flashes of insight, there’s someone with a PhD in a white lab coat—or, more likely, jeans and a T-shirt—who knows how to do it better. This book collects science’s best understandings of how to maximize the use of your brain, generally organized by the situations in your day when you’re likely to use these skills. Some of the entries are fun facts that you can use to dazzle in conversation over a platter of crudités, some offer understanding or a new way to look at the things you do and why you do them, and some suggest little actions or exercises that can help you use your brain to manage the challenges of your day and your life better.
Here’s Your Daily Brain, a fun way to shine light into those dark corners of your mind usually penetrated only by cranial nerves, and a chance to explore how our evolving understanding of the brain can help you live a better life.