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      The research on working memory also shows that the strength of a person’s working memory influences far more than grades. An abundance of new evidence, which we present in this book, shows that the strength of your working memory plays a pivotal role in how successful you will be in many areas of your life, including whether you’ll have the fortitude to work toward your long-term goals, whether you view the glass as half-full or half-empty, and even whether you’ll be able to lay off the junk food when dieting.

      How Working Memory Is Undermined

      Unfortunately, many things in our fast-paced 24/7 society are working against us to weaken our working memory. And when working memory isn’t operating at full speed, it puts us at a big disadvantage.

       Information Overload

      If your working memory isn’t up to snuff, you could drown in the overwhelming flood of data. Todd learned about the impact of information overload the hard way. As a serial entrepreneur, the thirty-five-year-old father of three was no stranger to the frenetic pace of a Silicon Valley high-tech start-up company. He spent every day sitting in front of four computer screens that beeped and pinged and flashed email alerts, instant messages, websites, and Twitter feeds. His clients constantly called his home office, his kids demanded attention, and he was inseparable from his iPhone as he toggled between his home and office life. For more than a year, Todd had been looking for a buyer for his company. But when a large company based on the East Coast emailed Todd saying that they were interested in acquiring his firm, the email got lost in the chaos of his life and he didn’t discover it in his email inbox for over a week. If he hadn’t finally stumbled across it when scanning back through his correspondence one evening at home, he might have lost what turned into a $2-million-dollar sale.

       The Lure of Instant Gratification

      In our I want it now society, we want immediate satisfaction. Our quest for the fleeting thrill we get from an impulsive purchase or from eating an entire bag of chips when we’re on a diet, relegates working memory to the sidelines of the decision-making process. This is why we so often opt for smaller, more immediate rewards rather than waiting for bigger and better things, like a fat bank account, or a slim waistline.

       Time Constraints

      Being squeezed for time burdens working memory and makes you more likely to give in to impulse—whether you’re confronted with a limited-time-offer purchase, for example, or trying to select the correct answers while taking a timed test, or even when faced with an ultimatum from a significant other to get engaged now or break up. In Chapter 2, we look at how this plays out on eBay, where the ticking clock can overwhelm your working memory, making it more likely you will give into impulse and pay more than you should.

       Stress

      When the pressure is on, it can overload your working memory and sabotage your performance at work, at school, or even on the pitch. Think of the angst that every team feels in a penalty shoot-out against Germany. Their reputation for flawless penalties transforms some of the world’s best players into tripping toddlers. Stuart Pearce, Chris Waddle, Gareth Southgate—all these England players stepped up to take penalties in shoot-outs against Germany—and stress caused them to miss. Goodbye, glory.

       Retirement

      Sorry to burst your bubble, but if you’ve been dreaming about the day you can say good-bye to the 9-to-5 grind and hello to retirement, we have to inform you that retirement makes you dumb. Retirement marks not just a reduction of work, but also a reduction in thinking and, consequently, a reduction in your working memory strength.

       Pain

      If you’ve ever slammed your hand in the car door or spilled boiling water on your lap, you know that it’s tough to think clearly when you’re in pain. Scientists have discovered that pain, including chronic aches like a sore back or knee, may disrupt working memory.

       Romance

      What does romance have to do with working memory? In a 2012 study, Jeffrey Cooper and colleagues at Trinity College Dublin discovered that the PFC plays a big role in the first flush of attraction. They scanned the brains of nineteen- to thirty-one-year-olds on the prowl and showed them photos of potential mates. Some photos caused a burst of activity in parts of their PFC. Participants then went to a speed-dating event, and the researchers discovered that the stronger the activation in the PFC, the more likely the participants were to pursue a second date. If you find your working memory working overtime when you first meet someone, there is a good chance that you’ll take a chance and ask them out.

      Some exciting new research by Johan Karremans at Rodboud University in the Netherlands offers insight into why men often become tongue-tied when meeting a woman whom they find attractive. He found that men’s scores on a working memory test were lower after they’d had a brief conversation with a beautiful woman. And intriguingly, he did not find this “attraction effect” in women after they’d had a conversation with a handsome man. His interpretation of his results is that because traditional gender roles require men to take the initiative in engaging in conversation with a potential mate, their working memories are more taxed by the process.

       Video Games, Smoking, and Overeating

      Whatever your guilty pleasure may be, it can take your working memory offline. A healthy working memory inhibits self-destructive habits, but engaging too often in highly addictive behaviors causes changes in the brain. Basically certain brain regions gang up and recruit your working memory into fulfilling the addictive desire, rather than stopping it.

      How Working Memory Can Be Improved

      As little as five years ago, people thought that working memory was fixed—that you were stuck with what you were born with. But research is showing otherwise. Think of working memory as like a rubber band. Some rubber bands are big, and some are small, but they can all be stretched. In the same way, we’re all born with a certain level of working memory. But regardless of our genetic predisposition for a strong or not-so-strong working memory, nearly every one of us can stretch it to get a bigger advantage in life.

      The lessons we’ve learned from our work with students to train their working memory with the Jungle Memory software Ross developed have confirmed that significant improvements are possible. Take the case of a young girl named Jasmine. She was often told that she needed to “try harder,” but despite doing her best, she couldn’t keep up at school or follow her mom’s instructions at home. After being diagnosed with a working memory deficit, Jasmine used the Jungle Memory program for eight weeks and saw dramatic results. She improved her working memory by over 800 percent (an amazing result!) and started winning achievement awards at school.

      Tracy has also seen significant improvements in clinical trials when she tested the working memory of students with reading and math difficulties. After they had trained regularly for eight weeks with Jungle Memory, they showed fantastic improvements in working memory; even more exciting was that their grades also improved—generally a whole grade point, such as from a C to B or a B to an A. Another study showed that they maintained all of these improvements eight months later.

      Throughout this book, we introduce you to a host of simple working-memory-training exercises, so that you can get started on getting your working memory in shape as you read. And at the end of the book, we provide a quick hits training manual that you can use on the go to help keep your working

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