Boost Your Brain Power

Posted on Feb 24 by BrillianceInc

Your brain has something to tell you and ask of you:

1) Your brain would like you to know that it is overworked, and
2) Your brain would like a coach.

Your Brain is Overworked
You are asking too much of your brain. More specifically, your prefrontal cortex, that evolutionarily youngest region of our brain– the part responsible for higher thinking like prioritizing, categorizing, and strategizing–could use some support. And it’s no wonder: If you think of your whole brain’s information processing power as equal to the milky-way galaxy, the pre-frontal cortex can handle only about a cubic foot of that information. So, the part of your brain that distinguishes you from the animal kingdom and gives you your smarts, is akin to a Texas Instruments calculator (from 1980) embedded in an IBM supercomputer.

And for most of us, the prefrontal cortex is powerful enough to operate efficiently for about ninety minutes a day.
So, if you are wondering why, at the end of a long work-day you feel weary, and like you accomplished too little, it’s not you…it’s your brain. And because our to-do lists are only getting longer and more demanding, and our distractions increasing, we try to supercharge our brain with caffeine, exercise, ginseng–all of which may help–temporarily.

Here’s a short list of Indicators that Your Brain is Overburdened

• You misplace your keys, pen, etc, only to find it in plain sight (or in hand).
• You send off an incomplete email, or copy someone by mistake, or regret sending while angry.
• You bring your bad mood with you to work or home and smear it all over innocent bystanders.
• You fail to manage your time so that you get the most important things checked off your list.
• You get easily distracted.
• You forget why you are at the grocery store.

If you experience no symptoms like the ones listed above, please email info@brilliance.com and let us know what you are taking.

Optimize Your Brain

Fortunately, you can do a lot to positively affect performance in your fragile prefrontal cortex.

• Prioritize early: Do the your most complex thinking early in the day

• Limit distractions: Turn off some of the myriad electronic sounds competing for your attention

• Eat: Give your brain the glucose fuel it needs (and bring chocolate to your next meeting)
• Write it down: Put your thoughts on paper to free up space in your crowded brain
• Do something novel: Raise your dopamine levels by watching a funny video or reading a blog
• Take a shower (or go for a walk, etc): 90% of 6,000 people surveyed said they did their best work OUTSIDE the workplace
• Talk out loud to a human…which brings us to the request from your brain

Your Brain Would Like a Coach

The simple act of speaking to another person helps your brain clear through the clutter and achieve clarity and insight. Your “coach” doesn’t need to be a certified professional. Your brain wants someone who will listen, hear, and offer a different point of view. If you have someone in your life who does this gratis, keep him or her close. According to David Rock, author of Your Brain at Work, a person who sees things that you can’t, and offers up their observations and insights is “like having a bonus prefrontal cortex.”

And who couldn’t use a spare brain?

Questions for Transforming a Trusted Someone Into Your Coach

• What am I not seeing?
• What’s the silver lining? What good can come from this?
• What assumptions am I making?
• How do you see the issue?
• What would you do if you were in my shoes?
• What have I missed?

In summary (your brain likes summaries), your brain is overworked and underpowered for what you ask of it. While there are a number of ways to rev it up, the best may be to talk aloud with another trusted human being (unfortunately, dogs proved insufficient in Brilliance Inc. testing).

Quotes and Quips:

The Hazards of Mutitasking: Even the brain of a Harvard graduate can be turned into that of an eight-year-old simply by being made to do two things at once. (from Your Brain at Work)

Blackberry and the Brain: A 2005 University of London study showed that having any communication device on nearby reduces its owner’s IQ 15-20 points.

Stay tuned for future Ignite issues and blog posts about optimizing and leveraging your brain.

In the Next Issue:  Inspire Others to Change…Without Annoying Them where we continue our conversation about the brain and reveal the real path to change yourself and others.

The Statistics in this article were sourced in part from a presentation by David Rock at the South Bay OD Network Conference in November, 2009, hosted by Oracle Corporation.

Our thanks to Risë Venditti for loaning us her prefrontal cortex in refining this article.

More Resources:

Your Brain At Work by David Rock

Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

Neuroleadership Institute and Blog

David Rock Blog

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