The Mind + Body Connection
The Extended Mind
When was the last time you truly felt your body while working? Not just sitting in it, but actually sensing it?
Most of us drift through our workdays severed at the neck – all brain, no body. We've convinced ourselves that "real work" happens hunched over keyboards in silent concentration. We wear our exhaustion like a badge of honor. Look how hard my brain is working. Look how productive I am.
But what if everything we've been taught about productivity is wrong?
The Magpie Mind
Annie Paul Murphy's "The Extended Mind" demolishes the fiction that thinking happens exclusively inside our skulls. The brain isn't a sealed chamber processing inputs like a CPU. It's more like a magpie – that bird that builds its nest from whatever shiny objects it finds nearby.
"The brain is assembling its thought processes from what's available in its environment," Murphy explains.
This means great thinking isn't about working your brain harder. It's about creating environments rich with better raw materials for your mental magpie to collect.
The Three Extensions
Murphy identifies three critical resources that extend our cognitive capabilities beyond the brain:
Your Body's Intelligence
Your physical state directly impacts your cognitive abilities. Tension, movement, posture, and breath all shape how you think. That breakthrough solution is as likely to arrive during a walk as it is during focused desk work.Your Physical Environment
Spaces aren't neutral containers for thinking – they actively shape it. Windows with natural views, the height of your ceiling, even the presence of plants can dramatically alter cognitive performance.Other Minds
Thinking is inherently social. Other people's perspectives create cognitive friction that sparks better ideas than you could generate alone.
The Default Mode Advantage
When you're grinding through focused work, you're operating in your brain's Task-Positive Network – useful for execution but terrible for insight. The real cognitive magic happens in your Default Mode Network – that associative, wandering mental state that activates when you stop trying so hard.
This is why solutions often "pop into your head" in the shower, during a walk, or while staring out a window. Your brain isn't taking a break – it's accessing its most powerful configuration.
Refilling Your Cognitive Cup
When you hit that wall where no new ideas come, when the presentation won't gel, when your attention scatters, you don't need more focus. You need replenishment.
Step outside. Look at trees. Move your body. Engage in what Murphy calls "soft fascination" – that state of relaxed attention that nature so effortlessly evokes. That's not avoiding work; that's doing the work your brain actually needs.
For me, and for those who already practice serendipity – seeking unexpected connections and novel stimuli – Murphy's research provides the neural foundation for why these practices work.
The question isn't whether to put your head down and grind OR to get up and refresh. The research is clear: the latter enables the former. Your body, environment, and social connections aren't distractions from thinking – they are your thinking, extended beyond the boundaries of your skull.
Treat your brain less like a machine that needs more fuel and more like an ecosystem that needs the right conditions to flourish.
References and Recommendations:
Annie Paul Murphy, a writer, lecturer at Yale University, and a senior advisor at the Yale University Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning
Book: The Extended Mind by Annie Paul Murphy
Podcast: The Ezra Klein Show, Our Workplaces Think We’re Computers. We’re Not with Annie Paul Murphy