Companies have been investing in machinery, computer systems, and well-designed offices for decades. Every few years, technology is updated, software is upgraded, and workspaces are redesigned to enhance ergonomics and productivity. What rarely makes it into that budget, and almost never in a systematic way, is the organ that truly supports the entire organization: the brains of the people who decide, negotiate, and execute.
Marta Romo hits the nail on the head in Train Your Brain: the brain does not irreparably deteriorate with age. Thanks to neuroplasticity, it continues to generate new neurons and connections throughout life, even at 50, 60, or 70 years old. If it deteriorates, the cause is almost never simply the passage of time, but rather the way we use it day by day. Poor sleep, back-to-back meetings, or constantly checking notifications come at a measurable cost to our ability to think clearly—and that cost does not appear in any financial report, even though it affects all the others.
In the business landscape of Spain and Latin America, where the accumulated experience of executives and middle managers carries significant weight, this idea shifts from being a curiosity of scientific dissemination to a matter of management. A brain under sustained stress, deprived of sleep and bombarded by constant digital interruptions loses its agility in detecting complex patterns, generating alternatives beyond the obvious, and maintaining the emotional distance necessary when a negotiation gets complicated, or a project goes awry. This is not just a personal issue: it translates into slower or erratic decision-making, reduced capacity for innovation, and over time, a team atmosphere that suffers without anyone quite knowing why.
The book organizes much of its recommendations around what Romo calls the Rainbow Agenda, a framework of seven interdependent elements: quality rest, sustained concentration capacity, moments of silence without external stimuli, play, physical activity, meaningful social connections, and emotional management that does not rely on constantly putting out fires. None of these elements are new in themselves—all of us have heard about the importance of good sleep or exercising. What Romo emphasizes is that they function as a system, not as a list of isolated tasks: it’s of little use to sleep eight hours if the rest of the day is lived in a state of perpetual alert, just as it is of little use to exercise if there is never a real moment of silence for the mind to process what it has accumulated.
This last point—the silence, the time without stimuli—often clashes the most in a leadership environment accustomed to measuring value by occupied hours. Romo argues precisely the opposite: moments of apparent inactivity are when the brain consolidates complex information and connects ideas that constant activity does not allow it to process. This is not lost time; it is where much of what later appears as intuition or good judgment is brewed.
Moreover, there is a specific argument for the Ibero-American context, where senior talent remains a central asset due to its accumulated experience. Maintaining mental sharpness beyond the age of 50 depends, according to Romo, much less on genetics than we often assume and much more on these sustained habits over time.
In the end, the underlying idea is simple to state and significantly more challenging to apply consistently: protecting the brain is not a corporate wellness whim that stays confined to a one-off workshop. It is, quite literally, the way to continue making good decisions when it matters most.
