If you are like me, a knowledge worker of the 21st century you must know about this part of your brain called the Pre Frontal Cortex (PFC). This is what determines how fat your pay check is. Your performance at work is dependent on your PFC. Your problem solving abilities springs from here. These complex cognitive functions make us who we are.
From an evolutionary perspective, this is the latest addition by mother nature. It takes about 18-20 years in developing a good PFC in a human being. Hence we can excuse our stupidities in our teen age. Blame it on your PFC 😜
Executive functions is our ability to consciously control our thoughts, emotions and actions in order achieve our goals. If you need to learn new things, break away from a habit, stop impulsive action, make conscious decisions, plan ahead, you need a well developed PFC.
As your pay check becomes fatter and your titles sound CXO you will spend a lot of time making decisions and prioritising every moment. As an executive you will use a lot of your executive functions at work.
No wonder you become totally drained at the end of the day (because you are using a lot of your executive functions of the brain). Have you noticed, when you are tired and drained you keep scrolling social media, driving aimlessly as if you are on auto pilot mode? We call these tendencies as absent mindedness but in reality it is a lapse in executive functions.
A multi billion dollar industry runs on this one aspect of the brain. It is called Personal Growth or Self Improvement. There are tons of apps and programs to develop your executive functions. These off context apps and programs is a narrow way to look at the executive functions. It doesn’t get you anywhere. A total BS sometimes.
One of the motivations for me to write this series was also the amount of BS and jargons floating around in our world on this topic.
Let us understand how to make the most of our executive functions in the coming days.
🥂to PFC!
Yo! Thanks for reading. Means a lot to me as attention is the hardest currency 🙏
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It is now super important to go from ‘bumper-sticker wisdom’ to ‘first-principles of socio-psychological growth’.
Interesting topic. Enjoyed reading this first article. Look forward to the remaining series.