Did you know that if you're aware you have an unopened email waiting in your inbox while you're doing a project, that awareness is costing your effective IQ ten points?

Or that prostate cancer can successfully be left untreated in 47 out of 48 men?

Or that Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, uses a pen and notebook - not a Smartphone - to keep track of her to-do lists and on-the-fly thoughts?

Disparate statements, to be sure, but it's through the use of such dissimilar facts in The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, that Daniel J. Levitin, brilliant author and Psychology and Behavioural Neuroscience Professor at McGill University, illustrates the way the brain perceives, organizes, and retains information. And the ways we can externally fine-tune and organize that information so we don't get overwhelmed.

You can dive into any of its nine chapters and come away with a deeper understanding of how we can help the brain work for rather than against us (the parts of the book are on par with the sum of it). So, we think this 2014 Penguin book will prove to be one you'll pick up again and again.  Read our book review.