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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:
