How cognitive flexibility enhance your work efficiency

[kawser.cdc]

Cognitive skills are the abilities that help your brain how to recall, compare, hold attention, think, read and learn. It helps you process new information by taking the information and distributing it into the appropriate areas in your brain. When you need it later, your brain also uses cognitive skills to retrieve and use that information. By developing cognitive skills, you help your brain complete this process more quickly and efficiently, and you ensure that you understand and effectively process that new information.

In the workplace, cognitive skills help you interpret data, remember team goals, pay attention during an important meeting and more. These skills help you recall previous information that may relate to your organization's goals and help you make important connections between old and new information so you work more effectively.

Here's a brief description of each of your cognitive skills, as well as struggles you may be experiencing if that skill is weak:

ATTENTION/SUSTAINED
How it helps: Enables you to stay focused and on task for a sustained period of time.
Consequences if it lacks: Lots of unfinished projects, jumping from task to task.

ATTENTION/SELECTIVE
How it helps: Enables you to stay focused and on a task despite distractions.
Consequences if it lacks: Easily distracted.

ATTENTION/DIVIDED
How it helps: Enables you to remember information while doing two things at once.
Consequences if it lacks: Difficulty multitasking, frequent mistakes.

MEMORY/LONG-TERM
How it helps: Enables you to recall information stored in the past.
Consequences if it lacks: Forgetting names, doing poorly on tests, forgetting things you used to know.

MEMORY/WORKING (OR SHORT-TERM)
How it helps: Enables you to hang on to information while in the process of using it.
Consequences if it lacks: Having to read the directions again in the middle of a project, difficulty following multi-step directions, forgetting what was just said in a conversation.

LOGIC & REASONING
How it helps: Enables you to reason, form ideas, and solve problems.
Consequences if it lacks: Frequently asking, "What do I do next?" or saying, "I don't get this," struggling with math, feeling stuck or overwhelmed.

AUDITORY PROCESSING
How it helps: Enables you to analyze, blend, and segment sounds.
Consequences if it lacks: Struggling with learning to read, reading fluency, or reading comprehension.

VISUAL PROCESSING
How it helps: Enables you to think in visual images.
Consequences if it lacks: Difficulties understanding what you've just read, remembering what you've read, following directions, reading maps, doing word math problems.

PROCESSING SPEED
How it helps: Enables you to perform tasks quickly and accurately.
Consequences if it lacks: Most tasks are more difficult. Taking a long time to complete tasks for school or work, frequently being the last one in a group to finish something.

Source: Cognitive Skills: Definitions, Examples and How to Improve Them