Hyperefficient
Optimize your brain to transform the way you work
How to think well in an age of relentless work and ambient technology — built on three principles drawn from peer-reviewed neuroscience.
The big idea
The way we work is breaking the way we think.
Most knowledge workers spend their days fighting their own brains. The 9-to-5 was designed for a kind of work that no longer exists — repeatable, paced, physical — and the cognitive demands of modern work sit awkwardly on top of it. The result is an entire class of workers who feel busier than ever and produce less of the thinking work they were hired for.
Hyperefficient is a tour through the neuroscience of how the brain actually performs, built around three principles for getting it to work at its best. Drawing on research from cognitive psychology, neurophysiology, and clinical medicine, it offers a practical framework for designing a day — and a working life — around how the mind was built to think.
Three principles
How the brain works at its best.
Get in gear
Cognitive momentum is built, not switched on. The brain operates in distinct gears — diffuse exploration, sharp execution, deep recovery — and the best work matches the task to the gear that produces it. Most days, we try to run every task in the same gear, and the quality of our thinking pays for it.
Run in rhythm
Sustained focus runs on cycles, not flat lines. The human attention system was built for pulses of effort followed by brief, deliberate decompression — and working with that rhythm rather than against it yields more output per hour and far less depletion. The industrial workday flattens the rhythm out, which is why so much knowledge work feels both exhausting and unproductive.
Find your flame
High-performance thinking depends on a state of motivated curiosity — the brain working at the edge of what it knows, by choice. Protecting that flame is more leverage than any productivity hack, and most modern work environments quietly extinguish it. The book is partly about how to keep it lit.
Press appearances
Selected coverage.
- Newsweek Forget super-intelligence, hyper-efficiency is the real quest Read →
- HBR On Leadership Redefining what efficiency means in the age of AI Read →
- TIME The hidden gift of uncertainty in an age of technology Read →
- Harvard Business Review IdeaCast Training your brain to work more effectively Read →
- Bloomberg Businessweek Training your brain to be more efficient at work Read →
- Financial Times How to work like a thinking person again Read →
- New Scientist Take control of your brain's master switch Read →
- The Times Power up: how to give your brain that extra boost it needs Read →
- Forbes Boost your personal efficiency: try these research-based tips Read →
- The Guardian Help! It turns out breaks make you more productive Read →
- Fortune How to hack your schedule for optimal mental state Read →
- Fast Company How to work more efficiently, according to a neuroscientist Read →
- Business Insider Three changes a neuroscientist made to take advantage of when her brain works best Read →
- Big Think Why hardwired 'power laws' hold the secret to better work Read →
- Inc. How to tell if you're born to be a leader, according to science
- Entrepreneur Three tips to make your brain more efficient Read →
Buy
Get the book.
Available wherever you prefer to buy.