Fun Brain Facts

A little neuroscience savvy gives us all power to understand ourselves, manage ourselves and adapt behaviours to work with our brain, not against it. Let's face it, times are indeed "crazy busy" for many of us so learning how to keep ourselves sharp, hearty, resilient and effective with some brain savvy can't hurt.

I'd like to pay a tribute to the brain with: "10 Things I Learned About the Brain and Why You Should Too Learn Them Too."

*Please note that in this list, I use the term "brain" very loosely, recognizing that the brain is a highly complex organ with many different parts, functions and relationships in our bodies.

1) Too much stress compromises our higher thinking brain's capacity. The pre-frontal cortex (PFC) is the part of the brain that drives much of our higher-thinking brain functions such as problem solving, analyzing, prioritizing, distinguishing and reflecting. When we feel overly stressed, this part of the brain "gears down" and lets the stress brain (amygdala) take precedence. No time for reflective thought; it's time for flight or fight!

Just when we need it most we lose our "thinking ability"! So learn to manage that stress response so you can properly think your way through those "crazy busy" times.

2) Our brains love it when we get organized and make plans. When I'm totally stressed out I take a moment to pause, park and reflect. I write out a list, prioritize and make plans. Turns out thinking activities such as reflecting, prioritizing, planning, not only use the prefrontal cortex, they also stimulate it and bring it back online. So taking just a few moments to get a bit more organized will not only bring our higher thinking brain back online, you will also be rewarded with a dose of GABA, the hormone that brings a feeling of calm. Two orders of that, please!

3) Our brains have a sweet spot of optimal stress for their best functioning. Goldilocks was so finicky. She needed everything just right. Well our brains do too. While too much stress can compromise the prefrontal cortex and "shut down" our brain's capacity for higher functioning, too little stress can do the same. Neuroscientist Amy Arnsten, a professor of neurobiology and psychology at Yale University, says the prefrontal cortex is the "Goldilocks" part of the brain - it needs everything to be "just right" for optimal performance.

So become aware of your sweet spot. Learn to ramp it up when under-stressed and how to tame the stress when overloaded.

4) Our higher thinking brains are not meant to store large loads of information. Our PFC is meant to perform critical thinking activity, but isn't meant to be a storage bin for all of our "to-do's." Yet, all too often, we try to load up our "to-do's" in our head which is a first class ticket to "Mind Full" syndrome.

I've learned that it is important to get much of my "stuff" out of my head, but keep it appropriately top of mind. So "yay" to structures like lists, plans, etc. Those loads in your brain can be major distractions and prevent you from focusing. Speaking of which, see next point.

5) Focus is "candy for the brain" - and the body too.

Our higher thinking brains love to focus. When we focus, we are rewarded with better thinking, more clarity, a feeling of engagement and sometimes, even a dose of GABA (hormone) which is like antacid for the brain and brings a feeling of calm.

Unfortunately, we tend not to give ourselves much focus time. Instead we juggle, multitask and exhaust our brains, which are not built for multitasking attention. This can be a major energy drain and compromises productivity, creativity and efficiency. So ditch the multitasking habit. Chunk down your priorities and bring more focus into your day -- even if for only minutes at a time, start small and build up from there. See book excerpt for more on multitasking.

6) Our brains tend to hold on to "unfinished business." Long ago (1927), Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik discovered that people tend to remember incomplete or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. Known as the Zeigarnik effect, this can be a good thing - if you are a waiter and remembering food and drink orders. But not so much if you are dealing with a heavy workload when tasks are never quite finished. The weight of unfinished business can burden us and contribute to the feeling of overwhelm.

So more proof for the merit of making plans for your unfinished business - e.g., schedule it or put it into a "to-do" list. This will give your brain a feeling of completion for the moment vs. letting it swirl around in your brain with menace - distracting and taunting you as you try to get through it all. This strategy will also help you sleep better at night, another essential for maximizing your "brain-ability."

7) Positivity broadens and builds your brain (and life) capacity. Positivity is not just a "nice-to-have" attribute. It is truly an essential ingredient for success and well-being. Positivity scientist Barbara Fredrickson coined the term "broaden and build" to capture this notion and years of hard scientific evidence that links positive emotions with better health, improved brain and cognitive function, greater personal efficacy, a heightened ability to connect and an overall boost to one's potential to thrive with more fulfillment and success.

Learn to rein in the negativity and to boost your positivity. You don't have to be permanently positive (that would not be real), but do aim for a minimum of 3:1 ratio of positive thoughts to negative. Go for the micro moments and get plenty into your daily diet. See here for an article on the positivity advantage.

8) Connecting with others is good for the brain, body and spirit. Interacting with people positively can boost levels of the hormone oxytocin, which can have a calming effect. It's also one of the best ways to boost your positivity ratio. Don't go it alone! Seek out positive connections. Even moments at a time will give you and your brain boost.

9) A picture is worth a thousand words. While our left brain hemispheres may like to organize and create lists, our right brains love metaphors and visuals. Sometimes focusing on an image or a mantra can bring the calm and open our minds more than using our rational brains. There is no such thing as being a left brain or right brain person. For maximum success, we all need to integrate and tap into both sides of our brains. So go ahead and give it a try: Create a picture, image or saying that will help you tap into a more positive, calmer state at a moment's notice.

10) You can teach an "old dog new tricks"! Our brains may be the same model we inherited from our ancestors from early days, but they are neuroplastic which means that with repetition and practice, we can create new neural paths and connections. That means we can create new habits, new ways of thinking and new ways of reacting and experiencing the ups and downs of work and life. We have the power to choose. You can indeed change. Practice, rinse, repeat. Then see what happens.

Brain Multitasking

Work warriors wear their multitasking badges proudly. Then we take this skill home and multitask some more.

Multitasking is similar to how we felt about eating a lot of carbs in the early ’90s. The more, the better, right?

Wrong! Flying in the face of old notions, we’re now learning that multitasking is, in fact, not the shiny attribute it’s been touted to be all these years. While we do need skills to handle diverse demands in work and life, too much multitasking costs us precious energy, productivity, and even critical-thinking capacity.

Our brains aren’t built for certain kinds of multitasking. Sure, we can walk and talk and eat and listen at the same time. But when we ask our brain to process unrelated information with multiple critical-thinking tasks at once, we actually compromise our short-term memory and cognitive-processing capacity.

In fact, what our brains do is switch from task to task – back and forth, back and forth. The faster we ask it to do so, the faster it switches. All this switching takes energy and amounts to wasted brain energy. This precious energy is not focused on thinking but, rather, is lost on switching.

Think of it like a driving a car. If you drive 20 kilometres on the highway and then drive the same distance in the city, you will use more gas during the city drive. The constant stopping, turning, and shifting gears consumes more gas. The distance is the same, but the switching takes more energy.

Now put this analogy into the context of your day. If your entire day is filled with juggling tasks and little focused time, you will likely spend much more energy and feel more depleted than if you put the same amount of hours into your work with more focused time. And you might not be as sharp and effective, because you might compromise your brain’s capacity to give you its best.

The Story at a Glance

Here’s an embarrassing yet true story. I had just written part of a first draft of this chapter (without this story that I’m about to tell you). It was a Sunday, and I was getting ready to go to the gym but wanted to call a friend before I left so that I could share some news with her. I phoned her and, while chatting, decided to simultaneously pack my gym bag, change my clothes, and feed the cat. I must have come across like a moron, because she called me on it. As I was trying to relay a story to her, my focus was completely scattered, and I couldn’t get a proper sentence out. I kept losing my train of thought.

Not only did I forget key items to put in my gym bag, but I also couldn’t communicate for the life of me. I was all over the place! Realizing what I had just done gave me a great laugh, especially because I had just finished writing about the perils of multitasking. But the episode reinforced for me how much we have become ingrained in our multitasking habit; we are always trying to jam in too many activities at once. This example was benign. But where else in our lives do we compromise our attention by attempting to do too many things at once?

I know, thankfully, in my coaching calls, I create a space and environment where I can completely focus my attention on the client. But at other times, when I’m doing other work, maybe I could do better.

How about you? Are you over-expressing that juggler tendency? Do you build in enough focus time? Are your thoughts fuzzy at times? Are you depleted at the end of the day?

Flow: The sweetness of focused time

Our brains actually love to focus, and one of the rewards of focus can be an experience of flow. This is when you are in a zone where you lose yourself in an activity, and everything feels effortless and right. You feel completely on, and it is easy to lose your sense of time. Not only does this flow feel good in the moment, but it also provides a longer-lasting sense of gratification. Experts, such as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, say flow is an essential ingredient to finding engagement and more joy and even success in our everyday work and lives. Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced ‘chick-sent-me-high’), a renowned psychologist and educator, has written extensively on the topic, including the book Finding Flow.

The idea isn’t to do less work per se but, rather, to find ways to focus our attention and build in more time for focused activity. And while our work might not offer the luxury of focusing for hours on end, there might be pockets of time we can carve out with intention.

The Advice

Take a timeout from your love affair with multitasking. Learn to tame the juggler in you and create more opportunities for focus time. Notice what happens to your productivity, energy, and overall sense of well-being. If you can’t get enough flow time in your workday, try to include some in your after-work time.

Start small. Don’t expect to tame the multitasking habit overnight. Start small, and set aside short periods of time – even as little as 20 minutes – every day for a week for focused activity. Commit to putting your attention on one thing at a time – perhaps working on a particular project or completing a portion of it before moving on to another. Then observe the impact that this focused time had on you. Were you more productive? Sharper and more creative? Did the time fly by? Was your energy increased or depleted?

You can then build up to longer periods as you see fit or are able to accommodate in your day.

Support your intention with the right environment. Turn off your phone, close your door, clear your desk – do anything that will give you the space and time to focus.

Schedule it. Earlier, we talked about putting yourself into your own schedule for thinking time. Use this strategy to ensure you have focused time for important thinking activities. If you have a report to write or a plan to develop, block off time without other competing priorities and see how much more productive you will be. Beware of distractions that will impede your focus time.

Coach others to do the same. If you are a leader, try to encourage others to set apart time to focus on a particular task. It sounds simple, but in our frenzied world of continuous rushing, focused time seems to be lost in the shuffle. You might notice a marked improvement in your own productivity as well as in that of your team.

The Pay-Off

Focused time will give you more energy and sharper thinking and will result in more productivity for your efforts.

You will become more energy efficient with your time.

You will experience more clarity in your thinking.

You will enjoy a longer-lasting feeling of engagement that often results from flow and focused activities.

You will experience more productivity and satisfaction in your day.