WHY SHOULD WE TAME THE BRAIN?

A recent publication by Winston Medical Centre, Louisville, Mississippi shows that the human brain is capable of creating more ideas than the equivalent of the atoms of the universe. The publication says the human brain is the most powerful computer which has the processing speed of 3000+ Ghz (the fastest computer is about 4Ghz). In a lifetime, your brain’s long-term memory can hold as many as 1 quadrillion (1 million billion) separate bits of information. The human brain cell can hold trillions of bytes of information - 5 times as much information as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The human brain is an amazing machine for conceiving ideas and inventions that lead to wealth creation. In 1937, Napoleon Hill wrote “Think and Grow Rich” based on a 25-year research on some of the richest individuals at that time. Napoleon Hill concluded in his universally recognized personal development masterpiece that: “Whatever the mind of a man can conceive and believe, it can achieve’’. ?

Hill’s notion of conceive-believe-achieve surely makes it look as simple as ABC. My guess however is that in 1937 when Hill wrote, ideas were naturally caged by the limited access to information, so thoughts kept simple and linear may not even have been by choice. Today, the level of information available with tools like AI, the internet, algorithms, and recently ChatGPT rev up the capacity of our superhighway brains to conceive ‘’gazillions” of ideas on the go. Options and steps are no longer as simple as Hill depicts, rather they are as complicated as multiple A to Z’s. Could this mental ability also be a disability? ?Is there a downside to this unhinged access to knowledge?

Brain scientist Jeffrey Stibel, wrote a piece in Harvard Business Review (Why Wise Leaders Don’t Know Too Much) and he concluded that: ‘’To be frozen by information is perhaps the single biggest risk of knowledge’’ and he refers to people being victims of the “knowledge trap” or “analysis paralysis,”. In my experience working with entrepreneurs, I have seen start up’s never start up because ‘’inventors’’ juggle several ideas at the same time with same gusto. It gets even worse when it’s just one great idea and it gets stalled, stumped, or snuffed by a 100-step project plan – a plan that is more complicated than the idea itself. ?

I think we would all be rich if we had a genie pop out of a bottle and take each idea we conceive from brain to road. Perhaps that’s the next invention for AI and robotics?

Beyond the theories, my desktop research shows that many wealthy people prefer to keep it simple, keep their eyes on one ball at a time and tame the penchant for TMI (Too Much Information).

Let’s start with Elon Musk (second richest man in the world) who New York Times quoted as saying in 2018: “I don’t really have a business plan. I had a business plan way back in the Zip2 (his first company) days. But these things are always wrong, so I just didn’t bother with business plans after that.” There is also another example - Richard Branson (789th richest person, net worth is 3.6B USD) who said in a 2012 Forbes interview: ‘’I can’t speak for other people, but dyslexia ?shaped my communication style’’. He says some of the best ideas have come to him scribbled on the back of napkins and beer mats. Richard Branson tells the story of how Brett Godfrey made the initial pitch for Virgin Australia to Richard from the back of a beer mat. According to Richard Branson: “That beer mat resulted in a $10 million investment and a $3 billion company three years later”. ?The Richard Branson Test is that “If it can’t fit on the back of an envelope, it’s probably a bad idea,”. Another example is Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos (122B USD net worth) who insists that meetings should be kept nimble and came up with what is known as the Two-Pizza Rule: no meeting should be so large that two pizzas can't feed the whole group. The two-pizza rule is Jeff’s method for avoiding too many ideas that clog the wheel. Amazon has improved on the two-pizza rule with what is called the single-threaded leader (STL) model. STL in Amazon simply means each product lead and the team are only allowed to focus on one thing at a time. A single-threaded leader is 100% dedicated to a specific product until it is delivered. Amazon’s SVP of devices, David Limp said: "The best way to fail at inventing something is by making it somebody's part-time job". Yet another example is Mark Cuban (American billionaire entrepreneur, television personality, net worth US$4.8 billion. Forbes No. 177) who in an interview with IncAfrica, was asked how people can be more productive. His answer was: "I'll tell you exactly what I've done for the past 20 years" Cuban said. "I don't do meetings or phone calls. I'll do a meeting if you're going to write me a check. I'll do a meeting if there's a really good reason to help close a deal … other than that, it's email.". Bill Gates sums it up: “My success, part of it certainly, is that I have focused in on a few things.”

Many successful people talk and live concepts like - simplicity, bite sizes, one-at-a-time, avoid distractions and avoid the devil in the detail.?

In a nutshell, the question is how many eggs can you crack at once.

Ask Chef Yaz!

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