Use Your Time Out Wisely
Towards the end of this month we will take time off from work to relax, go on holiday, catch up with household projects and simply be with our close family and friends. After all ’tis the season…
And yet many of us will feel guilty for doing so. We will worry about clients and emails that will lead us to compulsively check our smart phones during this precious time off.
So this year start a new trend. BEWARE the false break. Make sure you have a real and proper one. Christmas is more than simply a quaint tradition. Along with all the family time, eating, drinking and making merry; it is a vital time for us to rest our important and beautiful brains.
Every day we’re bombarded by facts, pseudo-facts, news feeds and general tittle-tattle that hits us from every direction. According to a 2011 study, on a typical day, we take in the equivalent of about 174 newspapers’ worth of information - five times as much as we did in 1986. In 2003, we reportedly watched an average of five hours television per day. For every hour of YouTube video you watch, there are 6,000 hours of new video just posted. Information overload is truly here!
The Two-Part Attentional System
So, if you’re ever feeling overwhelmed, there’s a reason: the processing capacity of our conscious mind is limited. Our brains have two dominant modes of attention:-
Task-Positive and Task-Negative.
The task-positive mode is active when you are fully engaged, focused and undistracted. The task- negative mode is active when your mind is relaxed and wandering. These two attentional modes act like a seesaw in the brain - when one is active the other is not.
A third component of the attentional system - the attentional filter - helps orient us. It tells us what to pay attention to and what we can safely ignore. The constant flow of information via Email, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, Vine, Instagram etc. engages this part of the system and we suddenly find ourselves not sustaining attention on any one thing for very long - the curse of the information age.
Every status update you read on Facebook and every tweet or text message you receive is competing for resources in your brain with important things like how best to present a pitch, what time do I need to be at my child’s play or how do I reconcile a disagreement with a colleague.
Focus + Planning = Less Stress
If you want to be more productive and have more energy then neuroscience dictates you should partition your day into project periods. Social networking should be done during a designated time, not as constant interruptions to your day.
Email, too, should be done at specific times of the day. An email sitting there, unread, may sap your attentional resources as your brain keeps thinking about it, distracting you from what you are actually doing. Who’s it from? What’s it about? Is it important? Is it good news or bad news? And so on. So, leave your email program off until the designated times you set. That way you won’t hear that constantly annoying ‘ping’ and be distracted!
Our days will become easier if we tame our multitasking and immerse ourselves in a single task for a sustained period of say 30 to 60 minutes.
Daydreaming + Contemplation = Better Environment
Studies have shown that a simple walk or listening to music can trigger the mind-wandering mode. This, in turn, acts as a neural reset button and provides us with much needed perspective on what we’re actually doing.
Daydreaming leads to creativity and creative activities allow us to see the opportunity for change, to mould it to our liking and have a positive effect on our environment. Music, for example, turns out to be a very effective method for improving attention, building self-confidence, improving social skills and creating a sense of engagement.
A Game Changer Says…
Zoning out is not always bad. Our mind needs time to reset. Studies have shown that people who work overtime reach a point of diminishing returns. Taking breaks is biologically restorative. If we can train ourselves to take regular vacations - true vacations without work - and set aside important time for daydreaming and contemplation, we will be in a much stronger position to achieve our goals. And importantly, we will be happier and healthier because of it!
So, by switching off and relaxing during this Christmas holiday period, not only will you allow your brain the opportunity for it to perform its much needed restorative process but you may just find that certain solutions to certain problems appear with ease, allowing you to return to work in the New Year with more gusto and positivity whilst also being able to employ some of the above thought processes and techniques for further success.
PS. Please remember to employ your task-negative mode just as much, if not more so, than your task-positive mode this Christmas :-)
Happy Holidays!