Head Start

Chapter 9

Think like an athlete

Taking the brain to the gym

We have already discovered that the 80-year-old discipline of interval training for track athletes is also applicable to the brain in the form of the Pomodoro Technique. How can we take this further? Is there an equivalent to taking our brain to the gym for a workout? Can our brain emerge pumped up and ripped with washboard abs?

Before we answer that, let’s recap on the theme that has run through much of this book so far, the relationship (often adversarial) between the primitive, negative, emotional part of our brain (the limbic system or Sofa-Man) and the more recently developed, rational, planning part (the prefrontal cortex or The Lodger).

In the interplay between our beliefs ...