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3ScientificallyProvenWaystoStrengthenYourBrain|Inc.com

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THE INC. LIFE

3 Scientifically Proven Ways to Strengthen

Your Brain
We must cherish our brains, enrich them, and make sure they know how important they
are to us.
BYPETER ECONOMY

@bizzwriter

IMAGE: Getty Images

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It's no secret that our brains contain the motivating energy that drives our everyday
lives forward to the success and happiness each one of us seeks. We must cherish them,
enrich them, and make sure they know how important they are to us by trying our best
to boost them every possible opportunity we can. Here are 3 scientifically proven ways
to do just that.
1. Try new things
It's definitely not a secret that the geniuses we are most familiar with have always made
a habit of trying new things. People like Einstein and Leonardo Da Vinci were polymaths,
good at many subjects, never just focusing on one. Could there be a reason for their
diversity in skill?
Turns out, every time you try something new, you form more synaptic connections and
generate greater neural plasticity. Plasticity is related to the number of connections
between neurons, how it affects connections following formation, and the longevity of
those connections. Shortly put, plasticity determines the amount of information your
brain can take in, how well you can apply it, and finally, how long you retain it for.
2. Practice your creativity
It is a commonly held myth that creativity only requires the right side of the brain. In
reality, creativity takes an enormously large range of brain activity--on both the left and
right sides. When thinking creatively, you make associations between remote topics and
switch between conventional and unconventional thoughts in order to form novel ideas
from which you can draw your conclusions.
So, it turns out that creative thought actually promotes cross-hemisphere activity in the
brain. Keep in mind, however, that creativity is mistakenly defined as artsy activities.
Creative cognition and thought is actually much more than painting or dancing. It can
be a way to work smarter at your job, or an idea for improvement that saves your
company millions of dollars.
3. Challenge yourself, constantly
Take every chance to think deeply about something. When people write and/or talk
about things like "training your brain," many us call to mind games like Sudoku or
Tetris. While playing these games and completing crosswords is certainly a good way to
keep from falling too idle--they actually aren't good for much else.
The benefit of constantly challenging yourself is similar to trying new things: You are
forced out of your comfort zone and must learn new modes of action in order to
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overcome an obstacle when your first (or comfortable) approach does not work.
Allowing yourself to be constantly challenged creates much more space in the mind for
new connections to be made.
So, take a leap of faith, try something new, and push yourself. Your brain will thank you
for it.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
PUBLISHED ON: OCT 28, 2015

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ARTICLE

INSPIRATION CHRONICLES

How a Botched Surgery Led This Founder to

Create a Doctor Rating System
Serial entrepreneur David Norris almost died from a staph infection. The experience
inspired him to launch a big data startup providing physician performance
transparency.
BYILAN MOCHARI

@IlanMochari

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IMAGE: Getty Images

Fifteen years ago, when he was 36 and living in the Dallas area, a doctor told David
Norris heneeded a routine surgery to repair a torn meniscus, a piece of cartilage in the
knee. Norris was in and out the same day.
Over the next three days, the knee swelled to "twice its normal size," Norris recalls. He
returned to the doctor, who removed the fluid with a large needle--and then discovered
that Norris had a potentially fatal staph infection. He was immediately hospitalized. He
stayed for three weeks, treated with aggressive antibiotics.
Those three weeks are why Norris is on a mission to
change how patients choose doctors. He's the CEO
of Santa Monica, California-basedMD Insider, a
startup that has raised $13 million from investors
including Tim Ferriss and Bill Ackman. The big idea
is to arm patients with more useful data to compare
physicians. So far, the startup has some big-name
believers: Customers includeDirecTV, Oracle,
David Norris
Starwood Hotels, and Expedia. MD Insider also sells
its software-as-a-service to hospitals such as the Cleveland Clinic, Northwestern
Medicine, and Mount Sinai. Here's how it got started.

A FICO for MDs.

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A FICO for MDs.

MD Insider has created what Norris calls a "FICO score for doctors." Using analytics, MD
Insider has crunched--and keeps crunching--the performance track record of every
doctor in the U.S. Based on those track records--and factors like a doctor's network,
education, experience, and location--the startup's algorithms produce an "MD Insider
Provider Score," grading doctors on a scale from 1 to 100.
For large self-insured companies, the data helps employees find a better doctor.
Employees can see, for example, if a doctor has experience with shoulder surgeries--but
precious little with knees. (Which, as it turned out, was the case with Norris's
doctor.)For hospitals, the data can help patients research and book appointments with
the doctors, thereby relieving hospitals of high call volumes, a major administrative
headache.
The hospitals can also use the data as a metric in recruiting and retention. Hospitals can
evaluate if there are specific surgical procedures for which the staff does (or does not)
have high levels of experience. That knowledge can help hospitals market their
specialties, compare their staff to that of other hospitals, fill voids on the staff, or refer
patients to different hospitals.

A Man of Many Startups--and Setbacks.

When Norris was home again after his hospitalization, he stored antibiotic vials in
hisrefrigerator. He can still recall the pungent ammonia-like aroma of the fluid, which
twice a day he injected into his arm. After one month, the infection was gone. What
remained was outrage. The more he spoke to doctors, the more he learned staph
infections weren't always accidents. "Often it's a result of bad preparation for the
procedure," he says.
At the time, Norris was leading ObjectSpace, a Dallas-based, business-to-business
software provider. The 400-employee company was prepping for its IPO on the Nasdaq.
As is so often the case in life, lousy news came in double doses. The timing of the IPO
couldn't have been worse. "We filed for a public offering right before the market tanked
in 2000, so the IPO never happened," he recalls.
Norris had to retrench. He sold part of ObjectSpaceto another tech company, then
liquidated the rest after a few years. He learned two key lessons, which he describes in
an interview on Mixergy. First, every penny counts. You'll need them, if the economy
goes south. Second, speed is vital. Had ObjectSpace IPO'd one month earlier, it might
have had enough cash to survive.
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Over the next decade, Norris would launch two successful startups: SeattlebasedOnRequest Images, which sold custom photographs to large companies at stockphoto prices, and Los Angeles-basedBlueCava, which offers technology to
helpcompanies target mobile and online ads. Buthe did not yet know how he'd connect
the dots of health care, patient research, and his serial entrepreneurship.

The Right Idea, the Right Time.

In 2012,Norris met Dr. Jay Calvert, who through mutual acquaintances sought out
Norris to discuss a business idea: that data could help patients make better choices than
they could if they relied only on subjective reviews on sites like Yelp.
Norris spent six months researching it. Was the data out there? Could you acquire it?The
answer to both questions was yes. That persuaded Norris to leave BlueCava and cofound MD Insider with Calvert. The next step was raising capital, so the company could
acquire the data it needed. Norris says the company spent $6 million obtaining doctor
data from "hundreds" of different billing providers, going back 10 years.
Fortunately, Norris had plenty of fundraising experience. BlueCava had raised $35
million, including $4 million from Mark Cuban. For MD Insider, Norris raised an initial $2
million from angels, then another $1.5 million on the equity crowdfunding platform
AngelList. That was enough to cover the beginning of the data-buying process. (Earlier
this year, the company raised an additional $9.5 million in Series A funding.)
Now, Norris is focused on growth, selling to more health systems, and continuing to
expand what he believes is the company's early competitive advantage: its massive,
integrated, digitized, vetted, usable set of data. (However, he declined to share the
company's first year sales totals.)The company has more than 50 employees, a number
Norris believes will double by the end of 2015.
Meanwhile, he's enjoying a new level of satisfaction from this particular startup. Never
before has he heard such "heartwarming" stories about customers using a software tool
he's helped to create. He says: "There's asatisfaction at a human level that's really,
really great."
PUBLISHED ON: OCT 28, 2015

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