# Quote — Daniel Levitin, The Organized Mind

> The most fundamental principle of the organized mind, the one most critical to keeping us from forgetting or losing things, is to shift the burden of organizing from our brains to the external world.

- Author: [Daniel Levitin](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin.md)
- Book: [The Organized Mind](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-organized-mind.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Daniel_Levitin#The_Organized_Mind_(2014)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-organized-mind/the-most-fundamental

## More from this book

> Recent research in social psychology has shown that happy people are not people who have more; rather, they are people who are happy with what they already have. Happy people engage in satisficing all of the time, even if they don’t know it.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-organized-mind/recent-research-in-social.md)

> You’d think people would realize they’re bad at multitasking and would quit. But a cognitive illusion sets in, fueled in part by a dopamine-adrenaline feedback loop, in which multitaskers think they are doing great.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-organized-mind/youd-think-people.md)

> In 1976, the average supermarket stocked 9,000 unique products; today that number has ballooned to 40,000 of them, yet the average person gets 80%–85% of their needs in only 150 different supermarket items. That means that we need to ignore 39,850 items in the store.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/daniel-levitin/the-organized-mind/in-1976-the.md)