Optimizing your brain for work and eliminating stress

If you read the newspapers or talk to friends and colleagues, you’ll quickly learn that the level of stress and intensity people face at work is steadily on the increase. Whether it’s because of the continued global recession, the threat of layoffs or that those of us in jobs are being asked to do more and more with less resources, it’s clear that people are facing increased pressure to perform and prove themselves. It makes it hard enough just to maintain the status quo in your job, let alone get ahead and progress in your career or improve your business. What’s worse are the physical and mental consequences from excessive stress that build up week after week, month after month. A recent study has shown that it’s not just the stress, but how you react to it, that could have a substantial impact on your health 10 years from now (ref: Affective Reactivity to Daily Stressors and Long-Term Risk of Reporting a Chronic Physical Health Condition, Annals of Behavioural Medicine, 2013).

Stress is a major problem in our society and affects us all in different ways. Women tend to over-commit themselves to numerous activities and never give themselves any down time (Something Dr Libby Weaver describes in her recent book as Rushing Woman’s Syndrome). Men tend to adopt an all or nothing approach by pushing themselves to the limit on activities and can often be too staunch to engage in relaxation exercises. The question to ask yourself is: “In terms of my reaction to stressor events, am I a ‘Velcro’ person or a ‘Teflon’ person?” I.e. do I react in a way that stress sticks to me, or do I just let things slide off me and remain calm and relaxed.

One of the biggest requests we’re hearing these days is ‘How can I consistently be at my best every day at work and not suffer the down days where I’m off my game?’

I find it surprising that in a time where many businesses are now starting to look at workplace productivity and employee engagement from an organisational perspective, very few people are looking at the individual cognitive level and how workers are employing their own brains for optimal performance. In fact most of us tend not to stop and think how we’re ‘driving’ our brain and mind each day at work and the effect this is having on us.

Understanding the brain and how the interaction of its key components can impact upon your stress response and success at work is fascinating and well worth understanding if you want to get the most out of life – both during and after work. We’ll take you through three key components that should have a profound impact on your ability to achieve peak performance at work and eliminate the negative consequences of stress altogether.

1. The ‘PFC’, the Reptilian Brain and the scourge of multi-tasking

If you aren’t familiar with the Prefrontal Cortex (or ‘PFC’) then you will want to take note. Understanding the PFC and learning to use it properly could have a major impact on the rest of your working life. The PFC is part of our more recently evolved ‘human’ brain. It’s a key part of the brain that’s involved in decision-making, prioritizing, sorting, computing, time-keeping, etc – all frequent activities in your working life. Now the critical thing to understand about the PFC is that, although it governs such important activities, it’s only just a very thin layer of brain tissue at the front of the cranium. David Rock, in his excellent book Your Brain at Work notes that its size relative to the rest of your brain is like the amount of change you might have in your wallet compared to all the money circulating in the entire US economy. Basically, a key area of our brain that we use at work is incredibly small and can be very easily overwhelmed with too much work – particularly when we attempt to multi-task, as we’ll soon see.

The next key brain region to contrast the PFC with is our Limbic System (aka the emotional or ‘Reptilian’ brain). The Limbic System is one of our least evolved brain regions and is responsible for our emotional reactions such as our ‘fight or flight’ response. A key part of the Limbic brain is the Amygdala which governs emotional memory and triggers various chemical responses, including the negative effects associated with too much stress.

Now when our PFC gets overloaded, it’s like blowing a fuse and your brain then defaults to using your Limbic System and Amygdala in a fight or flight mode. How often have you been in the situation of trying to manage multiple tasks at work, with deadlines piling up day after day, and then a client or someone on your team lets you down and you snap and overreact?! You then feel terrible afterwards and it takes until at least the next day to feel better. At home you might also notice this when, for example, you or your partner are cooking multiple things on the stove and then you are interrupted by someone and lose your cool. As part of the stress response, you end up flooding your body with a raft of neurotransmitters and stress hormones. Once these are depleted you will find it very hard to focus and concentrate and the only way you can replace them is with rest, sleep and proper nutrition.

If you hadn’t guessed it, then the number one reason why our PFC gets overloaded is due to the scourge of multi-tasking. Numerous studies have shown that our brains and particularly our PFCs are not designed to cope with multi-tasking; particularly, trying to manage and concentrate on more than one complex task at any point in time. The reason being that for any complex task we’re focussed on, our PFC requires a large degree of “task management overhead” to effectively manage it. Think of the process like Random Access Memory needed to run one or more computer programs at the same time. As we add a second and even third complex task, our Task Management Overhead requirements quickly become too much and the stress overcomes us.

Our society hails multi-tasking as something we all need to be better at, yet the reality is this mode of behaviour can wreak havoc in our working lives. Some stress is useful to keep us focused, yet the level of stress created by trying to manage too much at the same time is what could ultimately lead to an early grave.

In order to manage your PFC so you’re at your best each day and minimize the build up of stress, there are some very straightforward things you should be doing right now. Most are so simple that you’ll claim you’re doing them already, yet reality might paint a different picture on any given day:

• Ensure you start off each morning by listing out all the activities you need to complete that day and for the week. Prioritize each activity in terms of both urgency and importance.
• Systematically work through each one-by-one until completed. No matter what you think, you will always clear your backlog faster this way. Resist the temptation to switch between multiple tasks at the same time just because they’re equally important. Doing so will reduce your productivity by more than half.
• Combine and group together similar or common tasks to undertake them one-by-one in the same sitting. For example, turn off your email pop-up notifications and just set aside times of the day when you check and respond to emails. Arrange sales calls or meetings during the same segment of the day where you can get into the zone and be much more productive.
• Set aside do-not-disburb times where members of your staff will not bother you so you can focus on more challenging tasks (one-by-one until completed). Conversely, let your team members know of ideal times to interrupt you.
• If you really need to push along two or more urgent tasks at once, then schedule different times during the day (using your Outlook calendar) and work on each one in turn. Ensure you close off or bookmark where you are up to on one project before switching to the other.
• Take some time out to identify and map out each of the specific triggers at work that usually lead to you developing stress or feeling overwhelmed. Come up with a key word or process that allows you to break the pattern by very quickly noticing the trigger and your natural response, but instead choosing to stop, smile and take a short break to clear your mind and re-focus.
• Challenge yourself to think of other ways in which you can streamline your various work activities each day. What you are essentially doing is de-fragmenting your workload and this will pay dividends for your PFC and how you feel by the end of the day.

The other component to building your stress-resilience is meditation. Numerous studies are now showing that effective meditation has the potential to both strengthen your PFC and actually shrink your Amygdala and hence your stress response (ref: Growing the Brain through Meditation, The Harvard Mahoney Neuroscience Institute Journal, 2006). The problem with proper meditation is that it requires substantial discipline and can be very frustrating at first until you master it. Choosing properly engineered audio brainwave entrainment is like ‘effortless meditation on steroids’ and can be a really effective strategy for building your resilience to stress in this way. We’ll expand on that in more detail below.

2. Resetting your Stress Bank

How often have you been in the situation where something minor has happened, or someone has said something trivial that you didn’t like, and you’ve disproportionately lost your cool and blown a fuse? You’ve taken every other frustration and stressful feeling you’ve accumulated this week or month and combined it into this one reaction. Maybe this happens rather frequently to someone you know. If we look at the trigger event in isolation, it never warrants the atom bomb-like reaction we’ve just let off.

You can see from the first section above how easy it is for workers to accumulate stress throughout their working day and week. I like to refer to this as your ‘Stress Bank’. Unlike our savings habits though, we tend to make many more stress deposits and aren’t so good at making stress withdrawals. At most, we might go for a drink after work or watch an intense TV show and if we’re good, do some physical exercise. Having too high a Stress Bank leads to elevated levels of cortisol and adrenalin (the stress hormones), increased muscle tension and also leaves you feeling terrible when you get home and on the weekends. Many people get through their working lives having never really reset their Stress Banks to zero other than when they take a two or three week holiday once a year. Imagine the kind of toll this is taking on your long term health.

What is really needed is a way to reset your Stress Bank right back to zero, at least every night or two. One highly effective method is through the use of properly engineered brainwave entrainment, combined with relaxing visualizations. We suggest using an audio entrainment track designed to take your brainwaves down from an active “Beta” level, to either a relaxed “Alpha” or “Theta” state. One useful example of a visualization is to lie back in a comfortable, supportive chair and close your eyes. Just notice the level of tension and stress you might be holding throughout your body and mind. Notice your breathing and whether its coming from your upper lungs or around your stomach. Visualize walking into an elevator at level 10 and seeing the same comfortable chair in the elevator. See yourself relaxing in the chair and when you’re ready, click on level 0 and just allow your mind and body to relax deeper and deeper as you feel the elevator slowly descending level by level. As each level slowly passes by, allow yourself to let go of tension, breathe slower and viusualize your stress hormones (cortisol and adrenalin) declining to a much more relaxed level. You may find that your mind races around initially and thinks of everything you should be doing but just observe your thoughts without judgment and allow them to settle down. Take several minutes or as long as you want to do this and as you slowly approach level 0, allow yourself to feel that you are resetting your Stress Bank back to a baseline of zero. You should also notice that this process will allow you to sleep much more deeply at night and feel at your best on the weekends too.

3. Optimizing your cognitive function

We’ve talked about how important it is to have a sound understanding of your PFC and how, if used improperly, you can default to your primitive emotional brain and build up stress in your system. We’ve also shown how through being conscious of your ‘Stress Bank’ you can employ effective methods for resetting your stress levels on a regular basis. Both of these strategies alone will make a big difference in your performance at work. The last factor to consider is what other key steps you can take to keep your brain and mind functioning in an ideal state:

• Key nutrients: Consider taking a high quality omega-3 fish oil, as well as a ‘bio active’ B-vitamin complex (eg from Thorne Research, ProThera, HS Fighters or similar company), every day. Regardless of your diet, you’ll find these nutrients will really help if you are pushing your concentration and focus to the limit at work. A highly absorbable form of magnesium can also help with any muscle tension you develop.
• Cardiovascular exercise: This is a no-brainer (excuse the pun) but if you are really pushing yourself at work each day and not engaging in regular exercise every second day then you need to take a reality check. Many studies are showing how exercise is key for cognitive function and some scientists are now suggesting that exercise and our ability to travel long distances may, historically, be a key factor in the evolution of our brains. Exercise is also highly effective at reducing stress hormone levels in the blood.
• Manage your blood sugar levels: Your brain’s primary fuel is glucose, so ensuring you have even blood sugar levels throughout the day is critical to your performance at work. Just like we suggest being conscious of your PFC and how you use it throughout the day, you need to do the same with your blood sugar. A lot of workers suffer from mid-morning and mid-afternoon dips in their blood sugar and hence find it very hard to focus and concentrate. Ensure your three main meals a day have a good balance of protein, good fats and complex, slow-release carbohydrates. Have some low-glycaemic foods to snack on for mid-morning and late afternoon.
• Entrainment: We’ve already referred to it above, but properly engineered brainwave entrainment technology can have major impact upon your performance at work. Certain frequencies can be employed to support your memory, creativity and cognitive function, while others can boost your energy levels, motivation and quieten the negative voices that lead to procrastination. Experts are focusing on what businesses can do to support employee engagement; however, we’ve found that properly stimulating your brain with the right supporting frequencies can have a much more direct impact on engagement and productivity at the individual level.
• Power naps: Lastly, you need to ensure you give your brain a decent rest each week. If you work particularly long hours, then chances are you aren’t getting enough sleep and deep relaxation. Most people find that when they hit the weekend, they have to do chores around the house, drink with friends or look after the kids. Using entrainment and a visualization like the above will really help with relaxation but studies are now showing that if you are not getting enough sleep each night, you actually need to take a decent power nap mid-afternoon (around 3pm) to properly make up the time (ref: The role of a short post-lunch nap in improving cognitive, motor, and sprint performance in participants with partial sleep deprivation, Journal of Sports Sciences, 2007). It’s not enough to sleep later in the morning. Make sure each Saturday or Sunday afternoon you take time out for a powernap so that you can recuperate properly.

*If you would like to try properly engineered brainwave entrainment to help enhance your performance at work and overcome stress, then WorkSharp has been optimally formulated to meet your needs. Our customers cover the full spectrum of busy professionals, including lawyers, bond traders, engineers, sales professionals, creative advertisers, etc – all of whom need to be consistently at their best every day and avoid the build up of stress.