Sometimes the light bulb goes on and things just make sense. All the dots connect. It’s always been curious to me that one of the most significant benefits when I am able to start my day with a short meditation or yoga is that the day just goes better.
Exactly what do I mean by the day goes better? Mainly, I seem to know how to prioritize.
I spent some time recently rereading one of my all time most influential books Your Brain at Work by David Rock. My big AHA was realizing what is happening and why the space and awareness I create with these practices make prioritizing a lot easier.
Rock has a great metaphor about the part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, that does some of the most important thinking tasks, like setting goals and planning, solving problems, visualizing a situation that you haven’t seen before and thinking creatively.
He refers to it as a very small stage that can’t accommodate very many actors. The actors are ideas. And this tiny stage requires intense light for you to see those actors. This light takes up lots of energy.
Once you’ve figured something out, like learning to drive, or brushing your teeth, your back brain takes over because it’s now a recognizable pattern. This requires much less energy. Energy here is glucose.
You’re not imagining things when you get exhausted when you are doing any of those prefrontal cortex activities. It’s real. Rock recommends prioritizing first thing in your day because this can get things in order while those valuable brain resources are available. Sound reasonable?
What is the biggest trap of the morning for most people? Email. Over and over and over again, I read and hear that doing email first thing or constantly letting it dictate your attention is a real day killer.
Face it, we’re not going to catch up. With email, quickly there are too many actors on the stage, it seems endless, we can’t even begin to complete the task of responding and you get swept away in a sea of anxiety and overwhelm, fatigue and defeat.
So this week are you willing to see things differently to find a better way?
- See your precious prefrontal brain power as a precious resource. Imagine it as water or saffron, or gold coins. Decide to use it wisely and with intention.
- Make a mind body practice your first priority, 10-20 minutes of yoga or meditation.
- Directly after your practice review what really matters in the next 24 hours and write down your priorities for your work for that day. Get specific about the amount of time for specific tasks and for the relationships in your life.
Take it one day at a time. Be kind to yourself. Building new habits takes practice. At the end of the day see how you did. Review what worked and didn’t work.
This is the rinse part. Repeat tomorrow. With every day you are embedding this new habit and using your brain wisely.
Here’s some more of David Rock.
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| David Rock at TEDxTokoyo |
And this one is a summary of the Your Brain at Work book by Brian Johnson.
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Be well…it’s a state of mind.
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