Train Your Brain To Boost Your Income

July 9th, 2009

ENIAC, the first computer capable of general problem solving, consisted of 70,000 resistors, 17,468 vacuum tubes, 10,000 capacitors, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. At 27 tons, it filled an entire room, consumed 150 kW of power and required six people to program its routines. Today, a chip of silicon the size of a grain of sand has the same computing power as ENIAC. ENIAC went into operation in 1946. In the past sixty years more and more jobs have been transformed until now almost every mode of employment involves complex information processing in some way shape or form.

Today many of us work extensively with data and information. On a daily basis we use creative problem-solving skills and exert focused mental energy to move the economic wheel with our minds rather than our hands, making brain-power the most valuable commodity in the modern workplace. Ironically, meetings and conference calls, e-mails and instant messages divert and dilute our focus and attention, disrupting the brain’s ability to form memories and stimulate learning. Our jobs may actually prevent us from developing and deepening the skills we need to succeed.

As ever, it seems that science will provide the escape route for its own maze. Researchers have shown that even adult brains can grow and change under the right conditions, demonstrating that we can improve our ability to solve problems by employing the right kind of brain training.

In April of 2008, a group of scientists from the Universities of Michigan and Bern proposed that a training method which strengthened visual and aural working-memory with a single exercise could bring about a transfer gain in a person’s fluid intelligence. Training for just thirty minutes per day for nineteen days the subjects in the study increased their working-memory and fluid intelligence by at least forty percent more than those in a control group. This kind of jump in our thinking power can do wonders for our job performance.

Rather than working longer hours or buttering up the boss, we can make ourselves more valuable or more marketable by making ourselves smarter. Generally speaking, jobs that require more intellectual heft provide greater economic reward.

But before you go looking to snap up a brain training program, make sure that you purchase a product that will work. The scientists developed an extremely efficient and effective training protocol called “dual n-back.” No other brain training method has produced results even remotely as dramatic. (In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I was so convinced of the broad benefits of this training that I use the same training method in my company’s brain training program, Mind Sparke Brain Fitness Pro.)

With the country in a recession, unemployment rising, and the job market tightening, it makes sense to invest in your most valuable asset. With brain training we can now do just that.

Entry Filed under: Career