I know a lot of business owners struggle with being active and busy all day, yet feeling at the end of it that they accomplished nothing. You don’t have to continue to work this way. IFF (if and only if) you are ready to think differently about work and decide that you want to have a different life, you can absolutely work with your brain instead of against it – which is what you’re doing now.
But how do you know what the “right” way to work with your brain is?
*Science has entered the chat*
I wrote this post in honor of Carl Sagan; his birthday, November 9, is Carl Sagan Day. If you’re not familiar with him, he was an astronomer and popular science educator. He’s quoted fairly often and I think this quote gets to the heart of science-based productivity:
“The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true.”
Bear that in mind for the rest of the article! You may strongly disagree with some of these points, but they’re backed up by scientific evidence.
The only science you really need to know for this article is that we humans are a branch of primates and that our brains developed over hundreds of thousands of years. (Any nonsense about humans being formed from dirt or ribs is… well., nonsense about dirt and ribs.)
Also, some parts of the brain developed in other animals millions of years before we humans arrived. However, some parts (particularly the prefrontal cortex and other associated brain regions) are more fully developed in humans than in other primates or animals. Because the powerful prefrontal cortex (which manages executive functioning) is evolutionarily still pretty new, it’s a massive energy hog.
During most of those hundreds of thousands of years, we humans had to defend ourselves against predators, and hunt and gather our food each day. We survived by cooperating with each other to do all this. There were no screens, no machines, no difficult math problems, and we spent a lot of time bonding with each other. That’s why the current way of working is so hard on us; it's all brand new.
We’re able to work this way because human brains are extremely adaptable. That doesn’t mean we have to continue working in a way that’s harder than it needs to be.
Humans only get a few hours a day for complex thinking tasks
Throughout most of our human history, people mostly had to find food and water, make shelter, and bond with their tribe/village. These aren’t particularly difficult tasks for the human brain, and there was no need to develop the power of strategizing/planning/number crunching for long periods of time. So we didn’t.
Instead, we get about four hours of peak prefrontal cortex time, and these hours will fluctuate depending on your sleep chronotype (whether you’re an early riser, late night owl, or somewhere in between.)
Notice that’s not even eight hours, and I know a lot of business owners work ten to twelve hours a day. Sometimes that’s inevitable. But it’s not good for your brain (and therefore your business) to do that day in and day out, especially since peak executive function is gone after hour four.
No, you cannot multitask (even though you think you do)
Specifically, when I say multitasking, I am referring to two (or more) tasks that you’re trying to do simultaneously, when both of them are complex tasks that will involve the thinkiest part of your thinkmeat. You can walk and chew gum at the same time because those are not challenging for your big brain. Examples of so-called multitasking:
Trying to listen to a presenter and read emails at the same time
Drive and text (fucking stop doing this, you keep hitting your brakes every two seconds and you are swerving all over the road)
Work on a business plan/crunch numbers/analyze data while listening to a presenter
You may feel like you’re multitasking, but you’re not. (The human brain does a lot of work, like regulating temperature and breathing, that we’re unaware of.) What’s actually happening when you try to do two cognitively complex tasks is that your brain switches very fast from one to the other. It’s draining, and since you don’t have your full attention on both tasks, it actually takes you longer.
Another thing we know about the brain is that every time you switch types of tasks, you lose a little brain energy. That’s true even when you’re not trying to multitask. Instead of dropping what you’re doing to read an email when it comes in, batch all your emails together once or twice a day at most. Then you won’t be as tired out from the cost of switching.
Interruptions drain a lot more time than you think
Research shows it can take up to 23 minutes to get back to where you were. So for context, if you allow emails to pop up on your screen, three email popups can derail over an hour of your time (23 minutes X 3, ok math not science, but that’s 69 minutes.) That’s not including the time it takes to read and respond to the emails. Just the notification of them.
Is having an email pop up on your screen worth losing an hour or more of work? Same goes for pings, buzzes, beeps, chirps, and any other phone or computer notifications.
Human design/astrology/quantum “business”/neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is all bull$hit
None of this stuff has any scientific underpinning. Human design and neuro-linguistic programming, despite the name, were both made up by dudes in the 20th century. Nothing to do with neuroscience at all.
Scientists who study quantum mechanics will be the first to tell you that they don’t understand it at all. Shit gets really weird when you’re at the quantum level.
“Social” media is not for socializing and connecting
Rodent brains, while not human brains, do have a lot of similarities. That’s why you see a lot of mouse/rat studies in the literature. Rats who always got treats when they pushed a lever, and rats who never got treats by pushing a lever, will give up on pushing the lever. But rats who sometimes got treats by pushing the lever and sometimes didn’t will keep pushing that lever pretty much forever.
That’s because of the brain’s variable reward system, which we humans have too. It’s the basis for all casinos (except presumably the bankrupt ones). The machines are all programmed to dispense treats every once in a while, to keep you coming back and losing more money (because unless the casino is owned by a complete moron, the house always wins.)
The casino system is also the basis of all “social” media platforms. You get an alert that someone engaged with your post or whatever, so you’ll be lured in to spend your time there. Then the platforms can push ads in your face and make serious money.
To the platforms, you’re a rat pushing a lever that brings them money. They don’t care about your content. Do with this information what you will. However, I VERY strongly recommend that you never, ever, EVER click on an ad on a platform. See something you want to buy? Hit their website instead.
If you want to connect and socialize with someone, phone or see them in person.
Your Interruptor (smartphone) distracts you even when it’s face down
Yes, we already have research about this. Just seeing an Interruptor is distracting. If you’re trying to focus and do hard thinky work, silence your notifications and put the phone in a desk drawer or credenza behind you where you can’t see it at all.
Generative AI will turn your brain into goo that slides out your ears if you’re not careful
To be fair, no studies have reported actual ear goo – I’m exaggerating a tad. Studies HAVE shown that people lose functions that they outsource to gen AI (think Claude, ChatGPT, Replika, Harvey, etc.)
The brain is an energy conservation machine. Each night while you sleep, the brain strengthens some pathways between neurons in your brain, the ones you’re clearly using, and prunes back connections for those that don’t.
If you write with gen AI, you will lose the ability to write. If you use AI to think (generate ideas, make decisions), you will lose the ability to think. If you use AI for creativity, you lose your own creative ability.
The amount of brain goo due to generative AI is up to you. Choose wisely.
Recap (tl;dr):
Science is how we learn about the world, and sometimes it doesn’t agree with the wider culture. You can either hustle and grind your way to burnout working the way everyone else does. Or you can work with your brain so you’re working smarter instead of harder. Up to you.
Looking for some help turning these science-backed ideas into daily organization so you can actually get $hit done? Talk to me about how I can work with you - schedule here.