Welcome to The Apt Brain:

Neuroscience for Business Professionals

More than half of all Americans are unhappy in their work and, among those twenty-five years and younger, almost two-thirds feel real distress.  No age or income group is immune and the Great Recession is not to blame.  Dissatisfaction with work has continued to rise over the last two decades.  

When did corporations become responsible for your happiness?

There is something terribly wrong in business and The Apt Brain is here to explain.  We describe the problem and what you can do to solve it. 

The problem is easy to understand.  The human brain did not evolve over millions of years to work in a cubicle: a space just larger than a restroom stall but small than a prison cell.  It wasn’t designed for repetitive work: first time you’re a novice, second time proficient, and third time an expert.  It can’t
survive in a job in which you hone, habituate, and routinize until one day
looks like the last in an endless series of Mondays. 

The solution is to gain an understanding of how your brain works and what it needs to survive.  We explain what happens to your brain as you go through a work day and how you can use your brain to live a better life. The Problem with Work “When today fails to offer justification for hope, tomorrow becomes the only grail worth pursuing.” Christopher Bigsby “The same pattern repeating and over again, you are not alive anymore.” Paulo Coelho Synopsis: The Conference Board says more than half of all Americans are unhappy in their work and, among those twenty five years or younger, almost two-thirds feel distressed.  “Hell, I knew that,” says the voice in your head.  “Corporate America lied to us.  They conned me into believing my success was assured.  I would rise through the ranks of business and enjoy fame and fortune.”  The idea seems absurd now, a folly of youth.  You remain an anonymous face among millions of business professionals fighting to sustain yourself in a job that offers little space for the individual.  No room to deviate, no room to shine.  But you must not give up hope.  To accept is to say, “This is all there is.  This is all I can become.”  Monuments to industry and finance soar above crowded city streets, august monoliths of stone and slender needles of steel reaching to the sky.  Behind each imposing façade, offices swell with endless rows of indistinguishable, antiseptic cubicles, tuna cans for desk jockeys.  Dilbert fodder.  Bigger than a restroom stall, smaller than a prison cell.  Many a career has died in these trenches of corporate warfare, the place where you draw up work orders, sort and clean data, write computer code, format spreadsheets, and draft reports until partitions pulse in rhythm with the pounding in your temples. You escape the boredom of the office to clear your head and orient yourself to the world.  Open a door and the sterile, air-conditioned bubble gives way to the ferment of the street.  You feel mugged by heat, fumes, and street noise.  A confusing mélange of people of every possible color and station jostle and jibe for their place in the world.  Street vendors, performers, homeless, aimless, mindless, and Brooks Bothers businessmen.  For some, it’s a quick cigarette and coffee lunch.  Others pace with animated gestures or vacuously shuffle down crowded sidewalks embroiled in agitated internal dialogues about job insecurities or other frustrations. You pass markets, cafés, galleries, and a newsstand.  Barons says the stock market’s moving sideways again; and China’s economy looks like a fire-breathing dragon ready to raise the heat index even higher.  It takes a billion dollars to make the Forbes richest 400 Americans list—millionaires need not apply.  Page and Brin of Google fame made the list and bought a Boeing 767 jumbo jet for their personal use.  And the bankers got their cut off the backs of working Americans.  You swirl the distasteful thought behind clenched teeth.  “Damn Goldman Sachs.” You react to success stories with admiration mixed with envy: “Why can’t I live the American dream?  When do I get the keys to the mansion on the hill?”  Maybe it’s the money; of course it’s the money.  But a part of you yearns for the feeling of accomplishment, recognition, and purpose.  You want your lives to mean something.  The storyteller inside reminds you that you’re the protagonist, hero, or heroine in the tale that’s your life.  You want the story to play out as an interesting adventure with plot twists, daring exploits, triumphs, fireworks, happy ending––and if it’s not too much to ask, a legacy. “I’m more than just another ant on the hill waiting to be stepped on; more than a worker bee in tireless service to the queen; more than another meal for corporate predators.”  You’re more than William Whyte’s organization man (woman).  Not just another part of a middleclass that left home, spiritually as well as physically, to take the vow of organization life––not just the mind and soul of a self-perpetuating institution––not destined to live poised in a undefined middle––not absorbed by banal problems of the treadmill, rat race, and an inability to control your own direction––and not resolved to your plight nor lulled by a sense of harmony with the organization. The feeling lingers.  An ember of self-confidence drives you to succeed and a burr of indignation tells you to not settle for a bland corporate existence.  “My life is not grist for the funny papers.”  You believe the Horatio Alger story that hard work and determination pay off.  “I can make it big, do something great, given half a chance.” »»Read more                       apt | ‘apt | adjective (meaning)         1. unusually intelligent; able to learn quickly and easily.         2. suited to the purpose or occasion; appropriate.         3. prepared; ready; willing.         4. adaptable.     Narrative Self  Memory gives us a coherent picture of the past that puts current experiences in perspective.  Without its binding force, experience would be splintered into as many fragments as there are moments in life.  We would have no awareness of our personal history, no way to remember the luminous milestones of our life.  We are who we are because of what we learn and what we remember.” Eric Kandel, Nobel Laureate Synopsis: Each of us recalls events and experiences that shaped our lives and made us individuals.  We assemble these memories into a story that extends back to childhood and forward to the person we may become.  It’s called our narrative self, a fundamental concept of neuroscience.  Unfortunately, neuroscientists have not developed this concept to tell us how to author a great story.  Left on our own, we fumble the pen and feel disappointed.  “Expected more.”  We author a story that resembles Sloan Wilson’s “Man in the Grey Flannel Suit,”  Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” or Sinclair Lewis’s “The Jungle.” Remember the time you reared back with a clenched fist, grabbed a bully by the collar and forced him to back off.  You played catcher in baseball and got a concussion in a pickup football game.  One summer in graduate school you rode a bike twelve hundred miles.  How about the time you took a five-mile, five-hour hike along rhododendron lined creeks and over hill tops strewn with wild blueberries—with Indian rock houses, ladders enclosed in cages, exposed cliffs, and a “fat-man’s squeeze” along the way.  Once you slipped under your little boy’s bed and grabbed him by the leg as he stepped down.  Bad daddy.  You built a great tree house in Lincoln Log colors, with a brass ship’s bell and stainless steel fire pole.  The years have been filled with whitewater rafting, encounters between dogs and porcupines, glacier-fed lakes, sports cars, camping in the Rockies, ski trips with friends, mini marathons, and countless other adventures. Remember Me? Events such as these inform us about who we are as people.  Maybe you point to milestones in education, work, and family life—the birth of a son or daughter.  You cherish the time you physically pushed yourself harder than imaginable or overcame an obstacle at work to succeed where others failed.  You stayed the course though the hard times of starting a business and came to believe, “It’s how you behave in tough times that best shows your character.” We string together memories like footsteps in shifting sand.  Most quickly vanish, swept away in the commotion of the moment.  Those that remain plot our trail through life and afford us a glimpse of who we think we were in high school, college, or first job.  Memories rush together and collide in the complex, multifaceted person we are today and crowd our dreams for tomorrow.  Our lives wouldn’t make sense without memories, like stickers on an old steamer trunk, reminding us of where we’ve traveled and who we’ve loved along the way. Life’s experiences etch the lines on our faces.  They sculpt a coherent self-concept complete with scars, thick skin, and mental toughness to stay the course.  Maybe you remember riding a bike to your first job, too young to drive.  The owner of an ice cream parlor or fast food restaurant taught you to make change.  You mowed yards or painted houses on a summer job in college.  Each experience made you a stronger person able to work hard and manage responsibility. Now you say, “Hey, it’s me.  I’m a serious and important person—mother, father, executive, craftsman, business owner, or professional.  I vote and pay taxes, a respected member of the community.”  You feel intense and driven, or maybe just laid back and unruffled by life’s twists and turns.  You hold the careers of others in your hand or maybe not.  You’re haunted by a mistake that hurt someone, regret a missed opportunity, and lament over losing track of old friends.  These memories keep us company, goad us to do better, and bind us to family and friends. Life made you this person, a distinct individual.  You took one path while others went their own way with different experiences.  Life endowed you with a set of convictions and the ability to know your mind.  You distinguish between those things for which you’re willing to take a stand, and those not worth dying in a ditch over.  You hold strong opinions and beliefs, and pressed hard enough you’ll fight for what you believe. »»Read more        Copyright 2010, The Apt Brain, all rights reserved.