How to get the best from your brain

Using Cognitive Renewal to optimize your performance

One of the common questions from individuals so busy they feel as if they are simply running in place is “how do I work quicker and better in the face of ever-increasing demands and workload?” Most of us will say that work often takes up more time than we’d like, but how well we manage our workload is dependent on how effectively we manage our energy, not our time.

Here is the crux of the issue: the biology of attentional stamina and sustained cognition gives us a clear insight into how to keep on top and keep going. However, in contrast, our workplace environment –  both the physical and cultural – is so often structured to act contrary to the natural ebb and flow of our energy. Time to recharge for many employees is not only counter-intuitive when work pressures are mounting, but also often counter-cultural. Even when given the science behind the need for renewal breaks, the argument will still come that it is at least very difficult, or at worst, impossible to take time out – “it just doesn’t work that way here – you can’t just stop”.

The science says differently and, in fact, shows that only with time to refuel, are we able to sustain our thinking and learning capacity. We are designed to pulse with our cognitive energy through the day moving from periods of task focus to recharge and back again. The rational thinking area of our brain, responsible for among other things our executive decision making, is part of the new brain – the neocortex. Relative to the rest of our brain it is immature in its evolution. It gets tired quicker as we use its energy stores working through documents, facing complex decisions, writing a report, or learning a new concept. We’ve all experienced that time when we have read the same line on a page twice, or suddenly realize, as we try to pull our attention back, that we have drifted off to other thoughts about what’s for dinner. These are signals that we have depleted the energy tank for thinking. The cognitive fuel tank is running on low-to-empty.

By grabbing a sugary snack or coffee, we will only see diminishing returns on our cognitive capacity. We cannot trick our biology or bypass its wiring.

What does a practical, life preserver solution look like in a sea of mounting pressures? The good news is we can often renew this energy pretty quickly by taking our focus away from a particular task and allowing our mind to wander for as little as 5 minutes. This enables your mind to enter the default attention network, sometimes referred to as wakeful rest. It is in this state that we consolidate learning, think of the past, the future, others, and it is here where real creativity happens.

How you do this is up to you, and there is no perfect one-size-fits-all time between focus and recharge; we need to learn and understand our own ebb and flow of energy. Noticing when your mind drifts, when you start to fidget, or concentration feels hard are often signals to refuel. Whilst you will inevitably need to take longer breaks at times, micro-moments of refueling through the day can be very powerful. Just looking out of the window watching the clouds scud across the sky, listening to the kettle boil will do it, or you can go for a short walk to stretch and refresh. Whatever works for you, as long as it is not focusing on another cognitive task, which means stopping work and picking up your emails doesn’t count. And the more complex a task, the greater the emotional intensity involved. The new learning will consume your energy much faster than say routine tasks, which means the harder the work the more breaks you need to sustain your energy and quality of decision-making and learning.

When you are back with your work, notice your level of focus and concentration, your speed of thinking. And, as an added bonus those few minutes down-time, when your brain is allowed to rest, it will be able to make connections between the challenges you are facing, questions you are exploring, and your experience stored deep in your memory. The default network is where sudden insights and answers alight as if from nowhere, where learning is turned into wisdom. After all, how often do you have your best ideas sat at your desk, nose deep in paperwork? How many back-to-back meetings do you plough through never truly processing the information before heading to the next session? Your brain never stops working and I believe that as we learn the art of managing our energy we leverage our brain’s power potential and gain cognitive advantage.

If we push on through this natural renewal phase, perhaps grabbing a sugary snack or coffee, we will only see diminishing returns on our cognitive capacity. We cannot trick our biology or bypass its wiring. Cognitive fatigue is not only physiologically expensive, it represents organizational risk – all those people carrying out their work, making decisions on empty! Increased errors, reduced capacity to innovate, longer to do tasks and risks to health are the result.

No athlete or musician would ever dream of having a schedule without time for renewal, so why do we expect ourselves and our employees to be able to?  

Susanne & the Revelesco team.