The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin (+ Musings on Self-Reliance, Perfectionism, and Intense Pursuit)

Of course, I think a lot about how to make good art. About preserving your sense of self, about what defines permanence vs. loss, and what you hold onto. All that.

So what started as a musing on cleaning my room for mental clarity—what is aesthetic preference vs. decluttering my brain vs. the straight-up procrastination that led to me color-coding my shelves on the day I was supposed to turn in my latest book draft—turned into a musing on self-reliance, self-sufficiency, the need for "togetherness," Oliver Burkeman's "scrappy hospitality," and who you allow to see you at your most unpolished.

Do I mirror my main character? Yes. Especially in terms of how needing or asking for help chips away at your own security. How do you possibly unravel yourself from a standard of competency and impenetrability you've built your life around? When it's your very core, survivalist philosophy?

my favorite study of all time, probably

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What about when it's wrapped up to something you want so badly you can't see straight? What makes you think you deserve anything? As the costs and sacrifices get higher and more demanding, so do the stakes. To the extent that it feels almost impossible that you will get what you need. At a certain point, you can't detach. You can't want it less. And you can't convey that properly enough to anyone.

I'll update this spiel tomorrow with books referenced, as I do want to flesh it out with all the philosophy and Stoicism treatises and neuroscience and fabulous novels I've been reading lately as I've traveled throughout this rabbit hole, but I'm hoping to take a sleeping pill and knock out because my sleep's been so bad lately. (My literary agents very gently asked if I'd heard of Unisom. Oh, we are familiar!)

I am doing my best to stop equating my capability with my value, but of course, that's much easier to say than to do.

Overall though, this voice note will give you a relatively honest account of how the book revision process has affected me lately, what I'm considering as I prepare to let go of edits for good (for this stage at least), and how themes of hyperindependence and competency as a shield against the unpredictability of the future have snaked through my creative work.

As with my voice-note reviews of Sunrise on the Reaping and The Nature Fix, I recommend listening to about 1.5x speed. It's a roughly 25-minute long listen.

Less organized than my others, but I think it's a relatively clear portrait of these last years of work, devotion, fatigue, and identity—of course wrapped and delivered in a scaffolding of psych research, and both classic and modern writers.

And, of course, I'm still rather proud of myself for stretching a new creative muscle. More soon.

About the Book

New York Times bestselling author and neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin shifts his keen insights from your brain on music to your brain in a sea of details.

The information age is drowning us with an unprecedented deluge of data. At the same time, we’re expected to make more—and faster—decisions about our lives than ever before. No wonder, then, that the average American reports frequently losing car keys or reading glasses, missing appointments, and feeling worn out by the effort required just to keep up.

But somehow some people become quite accomplished at managing information flow. In 
The Organized Mind, Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, uses the latest brain science to demonstrate how those people excel—and how readers can use their methods to regain a sense of mastery over the way they organize their homes, workplaces, and time.

With lively, entertaining chapters on everything from the kitchen junk drawer to health care to executive office workflow, Levitin reveals how new research into the cognitive neuroscience of attention and memory can be applied to the challenges of our daily lives. 
This Is Your Brain on Music showed how to better play and appreciate music through an understanding of how the brain works. The Organized Mind shows how to navigate the churning flood of information in the twenty-first century with the same neuroscientific perspective.

Other Books Mentioned (or Considered)

• This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin, PhD
• Endure by Alex Hutchinson
• Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
• The Plague by Albert Camus
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton
• Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins