After listening to this; you better realise why some tossers behave as they do and what corrective actions you need to take....

That we are all ultimately machines....

I got a lot of good information from this book. It gives really good details and understanding into your mind and how it operates. The narrator is great and examples are good.

You can tell him was into the book and enjoyed the reading. He spoke very clear and gave a great audible reading.

Anyone who is looking to improve there people skills and understand themselves better; I'd recommend this book.

David Rock uses a stage metaphor which proves to be useful in understanding the way your brain addresses inside and outside realities. The main points of this book can be a the basis for a lifelong development of your

Concrete suggestions for applying the lessons in the book.

The examples used to illustrate the concepts.

No. He presented this book very well.

No

I've already recommended this book both to friends and colleagues.

It gave me some good pointers but I doubt I'll listen to it again, it was far to long

I liked that it combined theory with real life examples

Learn your brain better

I've been reading (listening) to both self help and science books for many years, and I'll have to say that this is the best one yet. It can't be overstated how useful this book can be to anyone who works in corporate america, but the insights are equally useful to everyday living as well. Now granted, you probably need to be one who enjoys learning, and maybe scientific insight type of books to be as pumped as I am about the book, but the way the material is presented, any self help type can really enjoy this. I see myself listening to this book multiple times to make sure that I extract all the lessons, because I certainly intend to apply these insights into my everyday thinking. Great job.

I bought this book hoping that it would help me with my quest to be more productive at work. However this book really did not add anything or help me out in any way. It was like listening to a neuro psychology text book. There were some interesting points but they were lost in useless psychological dribble and the narrator is so painfully slow, I couldnt finish the entire book. Bottom line dont waste your money, there is nothing in here that will help you be more productive. I would suggest buying the "get it done guys" book on organization. It is delivered well and will give you direct tips to use in your day to day work.

After reading some reviews I was not completely sure it was what I was after. I'm very glad I downloaded it. I am only 3/4 way through and felt compelled to write a review. I disagree with the review saying the narration was off-putting. I found it quite good. I tend to focus on what good I can find in everything, not what isn't perfect. I couldn't care less if he sang the book. From my perspective the content is first class and the narration is good. I like the way David Rock also lends credit to his message by quoting from other research/books and giving book titles I can consider reading/listening to. Putting messages and teachings in story format gives a real-life way of understanding it.

There was so much detailed technical information in this audiobook that I listened to it twice, back to back, on a long car trip. This was a very informative and easy to follow explanation about how your brain works in certain situations, how to recognize trouble spots, and ways to improve productivity. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it would be, "Multi-tasking is inefficient and a bad idea." But it's really much more than that.

Other reviewers have complained about the narrator, but his voice and style didn't bother me at all. I guess it's a matter of taste, but he was better than many other readers.

The set-up is this: we follow a married professional couple through their day. A scene is played out once with the person being reactive to his environment without considering the state of his brain. Then there is some technical explanation about the brain and ways you can manage it. The scene is then played out again with the person now making different decisions because he is noticing his brain state and taking appropriate action.

There is a really good section about "reappraisal" of stressful incidents or situations, so that your brain automatically reduces the feelings of stress later, even when recalling a bad situation. That section could have been more detailed, but it is still valuable.

I originally rated this as a full five, but on further listening, the author's overly simplistic and reductionistic view of behaviorism then concerned me that perhaps he has done that in other areas I have less training in. Based on that concern i had to downgrade the review. nonetheless i do think it is a very good work, using somewhat simplified versions of the present state of neurobiological and neuro-psychological information to generate a more than reasonable user's brain manual. Attention, concentration, addiction etc all come under this exposition and i feel it is sufficiently well done to be quite useful to many at multiple levels of field specific information.

My red flag issues with his handling of "behaviorism": First of all Pavlov (of classical conditioning fame) is Ivan Pavlov, not Igor Pavlov. That being his first sentence I knew he did not have much knowledge about what he was about to present as fact. Far more importantly, the father of Behaviorism, is BF Skinner, and contrary to Mr. Rock's understanding, it is the study of the effects of intelligently applied, research based,consequences on past behavior as it impacts and alters future behavior (to wit... Las Vegas makes billions applying these principles, yet people can learn pro social and moral development, or the lack thereof through the same principles). For Mr. Rock to reduce behaviorism to the simplistic pairing of food powder and a bell, which is in fact what is knows as "classical conditioning" (largely physiological) is just flat out erroneous. To then say it has survived because it is stupidly simply, and people like stupid and simple, is in a word just plain stupid. Behaviorism is "operant conditioning" and the only connection to classical conditioning is simply that Pavlovian (classical) conditioning was a historical precedent (i.e., it came first therefore "classical') that led to later discoveries in the field of learning theory. My concern is that is if he made such egregious, presumptive and assumptive errors about something rather simple, has he done the same in the much more complicated fields of neurobiology and neuropsychology. This suggests faulty editorial review and undermines my faith in the ultimate accuracy of his conclusions. However, in his defense, at my level of general understanding, I did not find any other glaring errors. Perhaps someone in those fields can best address the veracity of his material. I have my doubts, though i still highly recommend the book for its functional utility.