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How your brain's executive function works -- and how to improve it - Sabine DoebelStrengthening cognitive abilities -
In this scenario, your adaptability is the defining factor between a successful and unsuccessful connection. Cognitive development begins in infancy and early childhood and continues throughout your life.
Your brain learns and grows as you age — a process called neuroplasticity. The more you train your mind through goal-setting and skill learning, the sharper your brain becomes. Research suggests the greater your cognitive ability, the better your performance.
Self-discipline and planning also play a strong role in your ability to access and improve these abilities. Although you may lean toward certain skills — perhaps your auditory processing is stronger than your visual learning — you can improve in any area with thoughtful practice and goal-setting.
Remember: your cognitive skills define your capacity for processing incoming information, building memories, and interpreting stimuli. The world is full of stimuli. At work, building your memory helps ensure that information doesn't go in one ear and out the other.
These are the two types of memories to polish:. Pings on your phone, numbers on a chart, and the inflection of a coworker's voice all signal different messages. Here are three ways your brain processes information:.
Ready to level up your performance? Here are nine examples of cognitive skills to work on to strengthen your professional development:. The ability to draw specific conclusions based on varied facts or data is your deductive reasoning. Even mundane tasks, like organizing your calendar, require strong logic and problem-solving skills.
Deductive reasoning also helps you gauge importance, estimate work times, and set realistic goals. Without these logical thinking skills, you would struggle to work productively. Language is divided into four skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
Every person is different — you may be an excellent writer but struggle with verbally expressing your ideas. However, clearly communicating your ideas is valuable in just about any role. Strong language skills can help you overcome miscommunications, resolve conflict, and encourage teamwork.
Critical thinking is a union of several soft skills , including attention to detail, intellectual curiosity , and open-mindedness. These traits are integral to problem-solving because they help you work through biases and arrive at independent, out-of-the-box solutions.
Your day-to-day is full of short-term tasks and long-term objectives. Without proper planning, you could become disorganized or miss important deadlines. Planning requires logic and memory recall — these skills allow you to estimate a task's relevance and how long it should take to complete.
Learning to organize and prioritize your tasks empowers you to be efficient, responsible, and proactive. An understanding of statistics and math helps you turn ideas into data and eliminate emotional biases from important decisions.
Data analysis is an increasingly important hard skill to have on your resume. And as artificial intelligence and big data can contribute to businesses project growth and calculate risk, learning quantitative tools might help you stay competitive in the job market.
Making the right first impression is a science. Practicing active listening trains your brain to sustain its focus and pick up on information that will lead to positive and productive professional interactions. In the digital age, we work with more emails, project management tools, and messenger apps than ever before.
And when someone understands a message immediately, it saves you and your colleagues time that you can dedicate to more important tasks.
Reading requires you to connect ideas, sustain your focus, and recall past experiences or know-how to de-code information. Similar to writing, analyzing and contextualizing information can help you avoid misunderstandings and improve your productivity.
Reading comprehension is important in any job, particularly remote jobs that depend heavily on written communication. While collaboration may sound more like a social skill than a cognitive function, efficient teamwork requires abstract thinking. Inspired to level up your cognitive capacities?
Here are four ways to take care of your brain:. Your physical and mental health are intimately connected to one another.
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Games to improve working memory. pdf Supartini, T. Stay on top of latest health news from Harvard Medical School. Recent Blog Articles. Flowers, chocolates, organ donation — are you in? What is a tongue-tie? What parents need to know. Which migraine medications are most helpful?
How well do you score on brain health? Shining light on night blindness. Can watching sports be bad for your health? Beyond the usual suspects for healthy resolutions. February 15, Practicing a new and challenging activity is a good bet for building and maintaining cognitive skills.
Prep your brain These tips can support your new brain training endeavor: Pick one new activity. Do the right activity No matter which new activity you choose, make sure it follows three guidelines in order to maximize brain training, according to Dr.
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