If you’re like most of the people on earth right now, as our time in isolation stretches to a month or even more, with no definite end in sight, you may be struggling to focus. Claire Dale and Patricia Peyton offer some advice to boost your energy and productivity
Working from home can be especially challenging for people who are used to working in an office environment, or have young children, increased family obligations, and other distractions at home. Even many of us who are used to working from home are more distracted than usual and struggling to be as productive as possible.
Physical intelligence can help. Hundreds of chemicals (hormones and neurotransmitters) racing through our bodies (in our bloodstream and nervous system) largely dictate how we think, feel, speak and behave. Most of us operate largely at the mercy of those chemicals – experiencing thoughts, reactions and emotions, without realizing that we can strategically influence them through how we breathe, move, think and communicate. Physical Intelligence is the ability to detect and actively manage the balance of certain key chemicals so that we can achieve more, stress less and live and work more happily. There are hundreds of Physical Intelligence techniques – many drawn from the worlds of sports and the arts – and all supported by neuroscience. Here are seven brain hacks that will help you boost your productivity using the four elements of physical intelligence: strength, flexibility, resilience, and endurance.
Strength is our physical, mental and emotional capacity to keep a cool head under pressure, to look and feel confident, to hold our ground and act and speak decisively and wisely in complex, high-risk situations, without feeling threatened or needing to threaten others. The hallmark of strength is the ability to maintain and improve cognitive function while making quality decisions under pressure. two key components of strength are breath and posture.
1 Practice paced breathing
A 2012 study of South African bankers found that after 21 days of paced breathing, they achieved an average of 62% improvement in cognitive capacity on complex decision-making tasks. Breathe diaphragmatically by dropping your shoulders, relaxing your abdominal muscles, grounding yourself and breathing all the way out. Breathe in, observing how your lower abdomen expands out and your lower ribs expand to the sides. Breathe out and observe how the lower abdomen and ribs move inwards. Continue breathing in through the nose, out through the mouth with a steady count in and steady count out. In and out counts don’t have to match (e.g., three in/four out or five in/five out). Commit to a minimum of ten minutes of paced breathing daily. For an instant energy hit, choose a faster pace, briskly filling and emptying the lungs, (e.g., two in/two out). This boosts our DHEA levels, which gives us lasting energy reserves that power us steadily forward. (note: DHEA is so powerful it is a banned substance in synthetic form for Olympic athletes but we can make it naturally on our own every day.)
2 Ground and centre yourself
How empowered, confident, and tolerant you feel is greatly impacted by your posture. Grounded posture enables you to feel simultaneously stronger, more present, alert and more at ease. Centering reinforces the chemistry of high testosterone and low cortisol, and supports our dopamine function, enabling us to focus and co-ordinate our physical and mental energy to achieve and win. To ‘ground’ yourself, feel the weight of your body on the ground or in the chair – rooted rather than ‘uptight’. Continue paced breathing, release tension throughout the body; place your centre of mass where you need it (move your body forwards sideways and backwards to find the optimal point); breathe down to below the navel (to your centre of gravity), and focus. Repeat three times: Balance, breathe, focus.
Flexibility is about creativity, innovation and collaboration, engaging in divergent and convergent thinking, understanding and adapting to others, and being agile and quick thinking in changing environments, embracing and instigating change. If your role relies on your ability to innovate and think creatively (and right now, who’s doesn’t) try the following…
3 Move your body/shift your focus
There is a great deal of sound science around the benefits of movement on creativity and innovation. Well-known Stanford research indicates that we are 45% more likely to have an innovative idea if we are walking (even if just around our home), rather than seated and a University of Hertfordshire study concluded that spontaneous free movement enhances our capacity for divergent thinking. Research also indicates that simply shifting our focus and looking at something we find beautiful (in our home or in nature) can help spark creativity.
4 Shake It Out
If you’re having difficulty focusing, bend at the waist (slight bend in the knees). If possible, get your head below your waist. Shake your shoulders and arms vigorously, punch the air, etc. while you vocalize with an ‘ahhhh’ sound. This boosts dopamine levels and refreshes brain connectivity, dispersing chemicals that move through our body and can get stuck at the base of our spine. It’s like rebooting a computer for our body chemistry.
Resilience is our ability to bounce back quickly from adversity and conflict – physically, mentally, and emotionally – to remain optimistic and constructive in the face of challenge, and adopting an optimistic, learning mindset – all essential for productivity.
5 Make time for fitness
Aerobic exercise, getting the heart rate up and down regularly three times a day, makes our physical recovery and renewal system robust and enables us to recover quickly from mental and emotional pressure; (the same system, the parasympathetic nervous system, is used for all three). Strength/ Resistance training (squats, push ups etc.) boosts communication between brain cells. Extensive research supports the view that exercise is a cure for depression and responsible for improved cognitive function and health. Studies from Japan in 2014, for example, show that thirty minutes of mild daily exercise significantly improves executive function, decision-making and focus. Even – or especially – while in isolation find ways to engage in aerobic exercise.
Endurance is about mental toughness, determination, perseverance and planning, having a strategy for sustaining effort during difficult times and maintaining peak performance over the long haul. When things are physically, emotionally and mentally difficult, and extreme patience is required, we need endurance, a helpful tool in keeping us focused and productive.
6 Set interim goals and celebrate your successes
We are all in an endurance tunnel right now with our own unique obstacles that make it more difficult to focus. The visual cortex of the brain is very much connected to dopamine function (pleasure and reward). When we see something we want, we feel a shot of dopamine. When we step towards it, we feel another shot, and when we reach out and grasp it, we get a bigger shot.
Because of the link between dopamine and sight, if we imagine clearly what we want to achieve, really picture it, and experience the feelings of pleasure and reward we will have upon achieving it, we are more likely to be successful. If we don’t picture our goals, they may not feel as ‘real’ and, we may be more easily distracted.
Set clear goals for the day /week / project, identifying specific activities or milestones that will move you toward those goals. Imagine achieving the goals and the pleasure you will feel. Prioritise activities that will drive you forward, avoid distractions, and celebrate your successes along the way.
7 Sleep and eat well
Productivity is dependent upon our energy and ability to focus. Energy is the main currency of life. The executive function of our brains, (pre-frontal cortex), is extremely energy-hungry. Brain activity consumes up to 20% of the body’s energy – more than any other single organ. In addition to breathing techniques and exercise, sleep and diet are critical factors in having enough energy to remain productive. Hydration, nutrition, low alcohol, and plenty of sleep (seven hours minimum) are critical for our focus and productivity.
We are all in an endurance tunnel right now with our own unique obstacles that make it more difficult to focus. The visual cortex of the brain is very much connected to dopamine function (pleasure and reward). When we see something we want, we feel a shot of dopamine. When we step towards it, we feel another shot, and when we reach out and grasp it, we get a bigger shot. Because of the link between dopamine and sight, if we imagine clearly what we want to achieve, really picture it, and experience the feelings of pleasure and reward we will have upon achieving it, we are more likely to be successful. If we don’t picture our goals, they may not feel as ‘real’ and, we may be more easily distracted. Set clear goals for the day/week/project – identifying specific activities or milestones that will move you toward those goals. Imagine achieving the goals and the pleasure you will feel. Prioritise activities that will drive you forward, avoid distractions, and celebrate your successes along the way.
Claire Dale and Patricia Peyton are the directors of Companies in Motion and authors of 2020 Business Book Award-winning personal development book Physical Intelligence (Simon & Schuster), available in ebook and hardback.
