PDF Summary:The Organized Mind, by Daniel J. Levitin

How can we live less stressfully in the modern world, where we have more demands on our attention than ever before? In his bestseller The Organized Mind, author and neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin suggests that the key lies in sorting and externally storing your thoughts and organizing the things around you, which means writing down your thoughts and arranging your physical environment so your brain has less information to manage. Levitin argues that doing so allows you to use your brain power more efficiently and make better decisions.

In this guide, we’ll explore how the modern world overwhelms us, why our current approach to dealing with it doesn’t work, and why you should sort and externalize your thoughts and things instead. Then, we’ll discuss strategies for sorting and externalizing your thoughts, things, and relationships—like how carrying a pack of notecards can help you focus. We’ll discuss other experts’ recommendations for dealing with overwhelm and their tips for sorting and externalizing information.

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Sorting and Storing Increases Creativity

Levitin asserts that, in addition to helping you keep track of your life, sorting and externalizing information can also improve your creativity for two reasons. First, when you work in a well-organized environment, you know exactly where everything is. As a result, you don’t spend time on the stressful task of searching for things you need and are thus able to reduce your stress levels and save your brain power for creative thinking.

(Shortform note: Contrary to Levitin’s assertion that clutter harms creativity, studies suggest that clutter may improve creativity. One theory posits that messy places signal your brain that it’s OK to generate more unique, out-of-the-box ideas.)

Second, sorting and externalization improve your creativity by allowing you more opportunities to browse. When you look through a collection of some type (such as a group of files), your brain reverts to MW mode. Often, this mind-wandering leads to a creative insight—which might help you solve an issue you’ve been facing.

Why Browsing Leads to a Creative Insight

In Hyperfocus, Chris Bailey elaborates on why browsing might lead to a creative insight. We naturally remember things we haven’t yet completed much better than the things we’ve completed—so when you’re mind-wandering, your brain subconsciously works on problems it hasn’t solved by connecting all the stimuli it encounters to your problem. Sometimes, the stimulus your brain encounters reminds it of something else it already knows. It connects this old information (or the new stimulus, which may itself be the information you were missing) to your problem—and solves it.

For example, Greek mathematician Archimedes reaped the benefits of browsing while he was in the bath. He was tasked with determining whether the king's crown was made of gold, but he didn't know how to solve this problem—until he switched from focusing on the problem to taking a bath and noticed that water splashed out of his tub when he got in. He realized that immersing the crown in water to see how much water it displaced would help him determine its mass and therefore whether it was solid gold (he discovered that it was not).

Browsing may maximize the possibility of encountering the stimulus you need for a creative insight: The more you browse, the more stimuli you encounter, and the greater the likelihood you will encounter the stimulus you need to gain your creative insight.

How to Organize Your Thinking

Now that you understand the importance of sorting and externalizing information, how do you actually do it? In this section, we’ll first discuss how to sort and externalize your thoughts so that they don’t distract you. Then, we’ll discuss how to sort and externalize your information in specific circumstances, such as when making difficult medical decisions. Finally, we’ll review a potential pitfall of externalizing information—and how to ensure it doesn’t lead you to make bad decisions.

How to Externalize and Sort Distracting Thoughts

As mentioned previously, our brains naturally want to wander—which often leads us to think of random but important thoughts at inopportune times. Sometimes, these thoughts distract you from a more important task; other times, they merely arise when you can’t do anything about them. For example, you might remember that you need to call the dentist on the weekend when the dentist’s office is closed.

To deal with intrusive thoughts, Levitin recommends using a notecard system to externalize and sort your thoughts to ensure you get to them eventually. To do so, carry a pack of 3 x 5 notecards. Every time you think of something unrelated to your current task, write it down. For even more dramatic results, spend a few minutes before difficult tasks writing down other things that might grab your attention. Doing so will clear your mind of internal distractions and improve your ability to concentrate. Crucially, only put one thought on each card so that you can sort them more easily in the second step. For example, if you need to find recipes and go grocery shopping, write each task on separate cards.

Second, Levitin suggests that you sort these cards daily. If you only have a few cards, you can sort them by priority. But if you have many, sort the cards into categories, then order them by priority within each category. These categories can be anything you like; some people divide their cards by urgency, while others divide them by topic. For best results, Levitin recommends you keep these cards relatively loose (for example, not in a binder) so that you can reorganize them easily as your priorities change. If you struggle to find a particular category within your pile of loose cards, add one colored title card per category so you can find them easily.

How a Notecard System Improves the Quality of Your Ideas

In How to Take Smart Notes, Sonke Ahrens describes a similar notecard-based system, or “slip-box system.” This system is also designed to make you more productive—not by helping you stay on track and keep up with your tasks, but by helping you keep track of your ideas so you can more easily have original insights.

Ahrens recommends that you use 3 x 5 notecards to record any random, potentially useful ideas (but not to-dos or potential distractions, as Levitin suggests) that occur to you throughout your day; he calls these “fleeting notes.” Store each day’s cards in one place, or an inbox.

Each day, review your inbox and ask yourself: How might these ideas connect to each other? Once you hit upon an original thought, create an “evergreen note,” which is a loose index card containing one fleshed-out, original idea. Regularly discard your fleeting notes, and place each evergreen note in a slip-box (a cabinet). Rather than dividing them by category or priority, file your evergreen note behind a) a note it connects strongly to (for instance, an argument it supports) or b) your most recent note. Then, go through your slip-box to see if this note is connected to any other notes, and write that down (for example, if Note #1 and Note #3 are connected, write on each note that they’re connected to the other).

The loosely connected nature of the slip-box facilitates original ideas: The process of browsing through the slip-box increases the likelihood you’ll have a creative insight, and since each evergreen note contains only one idea, it’s easier to connect these notes to other potential ideas.

How to Organize Medical Information Effectively

According to Levitin, one area in which externalizing information is particularly helpful is when making difficult medical decisions. Although your doctors can advise you on what to do, you are ultimately responsible for your own health. Oftentimes, this requires you to make decisions based on probability—like whether to take a particular medication that has some risk of harming you.

Levitin warns against trying to intuit this decision, as many of us do, because we are notoriously bad at intuiting probabilities. There are several reasons for this. First, our brains often ignore the general likelihood, or “base rate,” of something. Second, we focus too much on the worst-case scenario because similar disasters stick out in our memories, even if they’re statistically unlikely. Third, the way an issue is presented dramatically affects our judgment of it. All these phenomena can lead us to judge the probability of something incorrectly—and thus lead us to make poor medical decisions.

For example, some women decided to get tested for BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations after actress Angelina Jolie’s viral 2013 op-ed on how her own test results prompted her to have a preventative mastectomy. They likely did so despite the generally low base rate of having these mutations (which can lead to cancer), because they wanted to prevent the worst-case scenario of having breast cancer and because journalists focused on the benefits of Jolie’s surgery and not her statement that most people don’t have the mutation. But this wasn’t necessarily a good thing: Most of these women didn’t need the test, which led to millions of dollars in unnecessary health care spending.

(Shortform note: Other experts recommend several strategies for improving your ability to judge probabilities. First, the more you learn about statistics and probability, the better you get at not ignoring something’s general likelihood. Second, the authors of Thinking, Fast and Slow imply that vividly imagining both the worst-case and the best-case scenarios will decrease the likelihood that you’ll focus too much on the worst-case scenario because both the good and bad will stick out in your memory. Third, the more you know about a particular topic, the less your judgment of it will be affected by how something is presented.)

Externalize Probability

To make better medical decisions, Levitin recommends that you stop intuiting probabilities. Instead, externalize them using a “fourfold table” for statistically analyzing data, also known as a 2 x 2 contingency table. This allows you to calculate the likelihood of several possible specific outcomes given their base rate. When you write down the relevant numbers, you’re able to see the probabilities, which allows you to rely on calculations rather than incorrect hunches when making medical decisions—and thus allows you to make better decisions.

(Shortform note: Several reviewers criticized Levitin’s detailed description of how to calculate probabilities and make better decisions, arguing that his methods were too technical and required too much math for the average reader. Other experts recommend more accessible techniques for making better medical decisions. Notably, take your time: Oftentimes, you feel pressured to make a decision quickly since you have limited time with your doctor, not because you need the medical decision right away. The more time you can give yourself to make the decision, the better you’re able to rationally evaluate the pros and cons and the less likely you’ll give into impulse.)

However, Levitin clarifies that you should not rely exclusively on your own calculations when making medical decisions. An experienced doctor is often able to seemingly intuit accurate diagnoses and offer good treatment—not because she’s guessing but because she’s recognizing something with which she’s familiar. She’s spent years looking at similar cases, so she has far more experiential data regarding how likely a particular outcome is, and she’s intuitively able to compare your symptoms to her experience to generate a diagnosis and treatment. For example, if she’s seen 2,000 cases of cancer, and 80% of people with a medical history like yours responded well to a particular treatment, she’ll likely recommend that treatment to you, too.

(Shortform note: How can you ensure that your doctor has enough experience in your medical condition to be able to pattern match effectively? Experts recommend that you ignore their official credentials (like what school they attended) and simply ask them how many similar cases they’ve seen or ask other hospital staff about the doctor: If other staff don’t like your doctor, you should switch. If you need a different person to treat you, look for doctors who teach other doctors (known as fellowship directors); you’ll find several at a teaching hospital.)

How to Avoid the Pitfalls of Externalized Information

Although Levitin focuses primarily on the benefits of externalizing information, he warns that externalized information can also have pitfalls. Levitin considers the internet to be a mostly useful external depository of information. However, he warns that the existence of a source doesn’t guarantee its accuracy. Therefore, to ensure that externalizing information helps rather than harms you, develop the ability to evaluate that information well.

First, Levitin suggests that you learn to critically evaluate your sources. Pay attention to the legitimacy of the source and whether they might have an ulterior motive; for example, a water filtration company’s article about the dangers of unfiltered water may not be totally reliable. And remember that even legitimate sources—like major newspapers—still tend to have some bias; for example, a journalist may choose not to report on a story that would damage the newspaper’s owner. Be especially careful during breaking news events: During such events, we often rely on the word of citizen journalists, who usually aren’t as careful about verifying information before sharing it.

(Shortform note: If you’re struggling to find good sources about a particular topic on the internet, consider visiting your local library and speaking to the reference librarian. A good reference librarian can point you to both internet and non-internet sources you may not otherwise have access to, whether that’s a book in the library catalog or a paid academic database. She is professionally trained to evaluate a source’s legitimacy. If she’s familiar with a particular source, she may even be able to tell you what biases this source may have. And while you should be wary of the accuracy of citizen journalists, don’t totally discount them: If you’re interested in hyperlocal breaking news, they may be the only people covering it online.)

Second, Levitin suggests that you learn to critically evaluate data. In particular, Levitin warns against confusing causation and correlation. When A and B happen together, we tend to believe that A caused B, but they may simply be related by chance. Alternatively, there may be some other factor C that caused both A and B (or is correlated with A and caused B). For example, if trees live longer in neighborhoods with worse roads, you may suspect that something about damaging paved roads improves tree health. But in reality, it may be that these neighborhoods simply can’t afford to do any maintenance—so they don’t fix their roads and don’t alter the trees.

Understanding the Relationship Between Two Variables

How can you tell whether two variables are merely correlated or may have a causal relationship? This usually requires further research. In Naked Statistics, Charles Wheelan explains that statisticians often decide their next step based on a value called the correlation coefficient, which communicates the strength of the relationship between two variables: A coefficient of one means a “perfect correlation” while a coefficient of zero means “no meaningful relationship.” For example, if researchers investigating lead poisoning find a correlation coefficient of 0.8 between the amount of city water people drank and lead levels in their blood, these findings wouldn’t prove that city water is causing lead poisoning—but it would warrant investigating the city’s water quality.

How to Organize Your Things

In the previous section, we discussed how to externalize and sort information to make various mental processes easier. Similarly, Levitin suggests that you use the power of externalization and sorting to track your things—and thus free up more mental energy to focus on other tasks and make better decisions. In this section, we’ll first discuss how your brain keeps track of your stuff. Then, we’ll discuss how to work with your biology to better organize your things—and how to plan against potential issues.

Levitin suggests that, when thinking about how to keep track of your stuff, there is a neurological trait—in addition to your brain’s tendency to sort—that you should keep in mind: You are great at remembering where things are. This is because you have an entire brain region devoted to doing so: your hippocampus, which evolved to remember where important things (like the nearest source of fresh water) were in a pre-map era.

(Shortform note: In Moonwalking with Einstein, Joshua Foer argues that your brain is also good at remembering images due to ancient evolutionary needs: Back when our memory evolved, the most important things to remember were the routes between food and home (which your hippocampus takes care of) and which vegetation was edible (which depended on your ability to remember what it looked like). So if you need to remember an abstract concept, you should turn it into a creative image—ideally something you’ve never seen before since you’re less likely to remember a specific instance of something you’ve already seen. For example, if you need to remember to charge your phone, imagine your phone and charger having a silly conversation.)

So how can you work with your biology to organize your physical objects? Levitin names two strategies.

1) Designate a place for everything. Thanks to your fantastic spatial memory, you’re more likely to lose things that move rather than things that don’t; for example, you likely often lose your phone but never the clock on your bedside table. When designating these spaces, take advantage of categories: You don’t need to know where every fork you own is as long as you know where all the silverware is. And if you own things that move regularly, either buy duplicates (if that’s feasible) or assign them a place to live. For example, if you regularly carry your laptop around your house, always return it to your desk when you stop using it.

(Shortform note: Designating a place for everything is particularly important if you have ADHD, as you may be especially prone to putting down items without paying attention—which makes you more likely to lose them. Experts recommend establishing a habit of walking through your home each evening to pick up stray items and return them to where they officially live. You might also consider using gadgets to keep track of things that move regularly; for example, if you put a Tile on your keys, you can make it ring using an app to help you find your keys if you lose them.)

If you have no idea where to put something, or you’re just not sure where it goes yet, Levitin suggests having a junk drawer or a miscellaneous file. You’ll inevitably encounter things you don’t know what to do with and that don’t warrant a single place; for example, you probably don’t want to designate an entire drawer just for matches. Placing these items in a junk drawer will save you time and energy as you build your organized system.

(Shortform note: Remember that your junk drawer still needs to be somewhat organized. It should be a last resort for small items you’re not sure what to do with, not a chaotic mess of trash (like old take-out menus) and things that actually belong somewhere else (like pens). Organization experts recommend purchasing drawer dividers so that you can easily see what’s in your junk drawer.)

2) Adjust the environment so that it reminds you what to do. This can be built into the organization system you select; for example, you might purchase a silverware organizer that’s labeled with a picture on each slot that denotes which utensils go there.

Alternatively, you can temporarily change the environment based on your needs—which will help you remember where something is because your attentional filter will pick up on it. For example, if you want to remember to send a letter, put it in front of the coffeemaker so that you’ll see it in the morning. However, remember that this only works because it’s unusual; if your mail usually lives by the coffeemaker, or if you forget to take the mail out and leave it there for a week, you’ll stop noticing it because your attentional filter will get used to it and thus ignore it.

(Shortform note: Changing the environment so that it reminds you what to do is a type of "signifier." In The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman explains that a signifier is a product feature that advertises how to use a product—like the "push" sign on a door. If you don’t want to change the environment, you can also use technology to remind you what to do, and your attentional filter will pick up on the notification. For example, if you keep forgetting to send the letter in your car, you might set a location-based reminder so your phone reminds you to send the letter the next time you’re near the post office.)

How to Organize Your Digital Information

You’ve learned how to organize your physical objects—but how should you deal with the digital spaces in your life?

Just as with the real-life spaces, Levitin suggests that you take advantage of your spatial memory when organizing digital information by designating different virtual spaces for specific tasks. You can do so either by purchasing separate devices or by visually altering the same device to trick your brain. For example, you could purchase one computer for work and another for personal tasks, or you could create two separate users on the same computer for your “work self” and “personal self,” and place different desktop backgrounds on each account. Then, when you need to find something (like a receipt), you’ll know where to look based on whether it was for business or pleasure.

(Shortform note: If you work from home, it’s especially important to designate different virtual spaces for your personal and business tasks—whether that’s by having separate devices or separate user accounts—and not just because doing so will help your brain know in what mode to operate. Notably, if your company owns the hardware you’re working on, they may be able to monitor (and can potentially leak) your personal activity. And even if you’re working on your personal computer, if you ever change jobs, trying to decide what work information you need to delete in a timely manner can increase your stress in an already stressful time.)

Levitin adds that if you’re using your computer to track important files, you should sort them by type. This allows you to easily find your file in the computer even if you don’t remember the exact file name. To sort your files, consider what higher-order group each file might fall into, then separate them into folders accordingly. Levitin recommends that you have no more than 30 files in each folder. And when creating these files and folders, think about how you’ll eventually look for them to make these classifications easier. For example, if you tend to remember when you did something, subdivide your “Business Receipts” folder by date; if you tend to remember what you paid for, sort them by task (like “lunch receipts” or “utilities receipts”).

How Other Experts Recommend Sorting Your Digital Files

Other experts agree that sorting your digital files can make your life easier, and they have several recommendations for doing so. Consider mapping out your folder structure on paper before you start separating your files; that way, you won’t waste time moving files only to discover later that a different file structure works better. Decide on a naming convention to make it easier to look for these files later, like whether you’ll name your folder “lunch receipts” or “receipts - lunch.”

Although they don’t specify how many files you should have in each folder, they do recommend that you sort them in a way that minimizes overwhelm. For example, if you need to keep several years’ worth of receipts, consider storing older files in a folder labeled “Receipts Archive.”

Levitin warns that keeping digital files has one major drawback: They’re not as permanent as paper. Unless it burns or you lose it, paper lasts forever. In contrast, you might lose your digital file either because your computer breaks or because the format becomes outdated. To avoid losing these files, Levitin suggests that you regularly back up your data to two separate drives: While one might break, it’s unlikely that both will. Be wary of using cloud storage; if the service goes out of business, you’ll lose all your files. Additionally, track your file types. Prior to updating your software, test your files to make sure they still work well on the new system. If they don’t, convert them into a format that does before updating.

How to Save Your Files

If you’re doing work you want to last for several years, paper may be a better choice. Biographer Walter Isaacson was able to chronicle Leonardo da Vinci’s life relatively easily due to the artist’s extensive diaries, but Isaacson struggled to reconstruct Steve Jobs’s early process because many of his digital notes had been destroyed when the operating system of the computer they were stored in became obsolete.

If you prefer digital files, consider backing up your data on both the cloud and external hard drives for maximum protection and convenience: The cloud allows you to access your data from practically anywhere, while the hard drive gives you access even if you don’t have access to the internet. Don’t try to save your access to old files by not updating your software: Many software updates fix bugs that hackers exploit to gain access to your personal data.

How to Organize Your Relationships

We’ve now discussed how to externalize and sort your things, but how can you use the power of externalization to improve your relationships? In this section, we’ll explore why modern relationships can overwhelm us and how to externalize them to make them better and improve your decisions.

Levitin suggests that we struggle to keep track of and maintain fulfilling relationships with the people who matter because we know so many people. In past eras, we spent time with a limited number of people—and when our connections changed, they did so slowly and because they were no longer relevant to our lives. But in the modern world, we know way more people: Many of us live in cities where we encounter far more people than our ancestors did. We regularly change jobs and move, so our connections change at far greater speeds, which only increases the number of people we have to keep track of at any given moment. And thanks to social media, we’re able to keep track of people with whom we might otherwise have fallen out of touch.

(Shortform note: It’s possible that we're cognitively incapable of maintaining the many and ever-changing relationships we have in the modern era. Based on his examination of hunter-gatherer societies and several modern artifacts (including companies and address books), anthropologist Robin Dunbar posited that we can only have meaningful relationships with 150 people—a figure known as Dunbar’s number. Moreover, he also suggested that we can have up to 500 acquaintances and can recognize a maximum of 1,500 people. Dunbar argued that this limit is biological: The number of people we can know depends on the size of our neocortex (a brain region related to language) relative to our physical size.)

Levitin suggests dealing with the increase in social connections in two ways. First, create a database of your connections that includes information you’d like to remember about them—like where you met them or their spouse’s name. You might create your own database; alternatively, if you already have an external depository where you store your contacts (like your computer’s address book), just add relevant information in each entry. Second, set an external reminder to contact important people in your life, such as by creating a recurring weekly event to “Call Mom.”

Levitin contends that these two methods help you make better relationship-related decisions for two reasons. First, you’ll remember more information about your connections, so you’ll make better decisions about what to talk about with them. For example, if you remember that your friend’s birthday is in January, you can ask her about that when you talk to her that month. Second, you’ll contact them more regularly—which is in itself a good relationship-related decision as you’re choosing to spend more time connecting with people you care about.

(Shortform note: Like Levitin, other experts agree that noting information about your contacts and remembering more information about them can improve your relationships. Ensure that you note down this information while you still remember it; if it’s a new contact, asking how to spell their name will buy you the time you need to write down notes about them. Unlike Levitin, experts warn that even if using an external reminder increases the frequency with which you contact your loved ones, this may not necessarily improve your relationships since not everybody prioritizes frequency of contact. For example, if your long-distance friend hates talking on the phone, she may prefer that you catch up more rarely but in person.)