Build in physical activity, meditation, and personal time for an optimal day.
Back-to-back meetings, endless screen time, long hours—the human mind is poorly designed for the typical workday. Neuroscientists take a different approach. “How do I get stuff done?” says Paul Zak, director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University. “Well, I’m not killing myself cognitively, and I’m certainly not working 15-hour days.”
To emulate brain experts such as Zak, zero in on your overarching goal: thriving without becoming mentally exhausted or disengaged. For most people, that means doing a mix of deep work, meetings, light tasks, and specialized activities. Fight the urge to hunker down for hours of uninterrupted writing or serial conference calls. “When you have a million different meetings, you will likely go to a place of deluge and get overwhelmed,” says Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist at Rutgers University.
But, you ask, don’t power businesspeople fill their days with meetings? Realize that seasoned executives have trained themselves to handle high social loads. “If they’re true leaders, they’ve been exercising their social brain for years and are probably operating at a capacity that your average person can’t,” says Michael Platt, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “If you stack meetings up, by the time you get to 2 p.m., your brain is mush.” We asked neurologists to share their tricks to achieve an ideal workday.
Wake up and move. “Of all the hacks to get your brain functioning optimally, physical activity is the most important,” Platt says. A quick morning jaunt pays dividends. “You want to get that heart pumping and that brain infused with fresh oxygen,” Zak says. He takes a 15-minute morning walk with his dog while drinking coffee, keeping his phone handy for voice memos. “In 20 minutes I’ve gotten some exercise, had my coffee, and gotten my day planned.” A treadmill or treadmill desk accomplishes the same feat.
Meditate. Studies show that mediation has a calming and regulating effect. It reduces inflammation in the brain and lowers stress. “We’re less clear on the mechanisms, but it turns down your arousal systems, which makes you less likely to make mistakes or rash decisions,” Platt says. Any kind of meditation works. “It doesn’t need to be very long.”
Start early. Most workers feel sharp sometime between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m., but people often waste their precious early hours of alertness on morning routines and organizational meetings. Zak suggests using those first 90 minutes to accomplish your day’s two most critical tasks. “I get to my desk before my family is awake, so I’ve got a couple of hours to be superfocused,” he says. People who are most attentive later in the day can shift their most important duties tasks to the afternoon and dedicate morning workouts to clearing out the cobwebs.
Adopt 20-minute blocks. It’s tough for people to stay immersed in an experience for long stretches, Zak says, suggesting that workers schedule most tasks and meetings in blocks of 20 minutes or shorter—except for activities that inherently require more time, such as deep work.
Try “brainwashing” breaks. Hydrate, move around, and look out a window. Zak’s lab calls this strategy brainwashing. (No, not that kind of brainwashing; more like a cleanse.) “They help you rinse out and get rid of all the stuff you’re focused on,” he says. Although 10 minutes is ideal, even one minute away from the screen with your feet up is beneficial. “There are two opposing systems in your brain—one that gets the job done and a network that supports creativity and exploration,” Platt says. When the get-the-job-done part is cracking the whip, creativity is “totally suppressed.”
Meet on the go. Neuroscientists like walking and stand-up meetings. “You’re getting that heart rate up, and after a while your feet start to hurt, so people get to the point and move on,” Zak says. He opts for phone calls and sometimes does interviews while trimming plants in his backyard; Platt also likes walk and talks. Both avoid videoconferences, where the brain works hard to glean the micro expressions, pupil dilation, and eyelines of attendees compressed into two-dimensional boxes. One idea is to say hello on camera, then turn the camera off.
Email bursts. Attacking your inbox for 10 minutes to 30 minutes several times a day doubles as a buffer between meetings. “Just knock out emails as if you’re crossing off things on your list. Try to be efficient with it,” Platt says. “Otherwise you get overwhelmed and overburdened with an overflowing inbox.” Don’t be available via email all day; constant email siphons your attention away from other tasks.
Lunch and exercise. “It’s not the time, but the intensity,” Platt says. “Seven minutes of high-intensity interval training is fantastic, or even just simple resistance training—stuff you can do in your office.” Expect to get tired after lunch. It’s called postprandial somnolence. “Lean in to your body’s own rhythms of taking a break after you eat to digest,” Zak says. He suggests the caffeine nap trick: drinking coffee before a 20-minute nap. Or just plain caffeine. “It’s perfectly fine to have an espresso or a coffee after lunch to fight [fatigue]. It raises your heart rate,” he says.
Connect with co-workers. Elements of fun are helpful. Starting a meeting with a little game or a prompt that moves people into a deeper conversation synchronizes brains, mindsets, and emotions. “Positive social interactions are really important for both individual well-being and building a culture of empathy, trust, and cooperation,” Platt says. “They don’t involve a lot of money or effort, but the impacts can really be felt.”
Schedule personal time. Go for a bike ride, or call someone to catch up. “Take time for yourself,” Platt says. “Many of us don’t do enough of that.”
Bloomberg Businessweek 22 September 2022
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