If you were to guess, how much of your day is your brain feeling urgent vs. curious? Most people go through their days in a constant state of urgency.

• The pressure to perform.
• The need to get things done.
• The worry about what might happen next.

But here’s the thing: That urgency might just be affecting your memory. A new study out of Duke University that analyzed people’s memory of a video game after setting them up to feel either urgent or curious found that people in a curious state of mind remembered things better the next day than those in an urgent state of mind. This is amazing because we have the power to shift our mindset!

What if next time you sat down (or showed up) to work, you first took a few minutes to:

• Take a deep breath.
• Set a positive intention.
• Wonder.

Try it and see if your memory retention confirms the Duke study.