WATCH: Why is Time Management so difficult? Brain Friendly Time Management Introduction
Today, I’d like to talk about the first in the series about “Brain Friendly Time Management” and it’s about ‘The Five Principles of How You Can Become More Effective and More Productive.’
Brain-Friendly Time Management
So, in order to have ‘Brain-Friendly Time Management’, you need to know a little bit about the brain, right? And there’s three fundamental parts that I’d just like you to be aware of.
Pre-Frontal Cortex
The first is the ‘Pre-Frontal Cortex’. Think of it like your ‘thinking brain’. It’s where you do all of your rational thinking and it’s quite a delicate part of your brain that needs to be looked after very carefully. It’s where you do your understanding, memorizing, recalling, decision making, and above all, it’s also about ‘Inhibition’. Your ability to inhibit urges or your desires to be distracted to do other things. And when it comes to time management, that’s fundamentally important because ultimately, we cannot manage time, we can only manage our ‘Attention’.
Reward Structure
And another part of the brain that’s useful is the ‘Reward Structure’, it’s called the ‘ventral striatum’. And it’s about where you get an anticipation of a reward which produces a neurochemical called ‘Dopamine’. And it’s that anticipation of a reward that gives you energy, motivation, creativity and access to your prefrontal cortex and other parts of your brain to make useful connections in order to achieve your outcomes.
Threat Response
Another part of the brain that’s really important to be aware of is the ‘Threat Response’ and that’s based in the memory center called the ‘amygdala’ where all the memories of anything bad that’s ever happen to you are in this place called the amygdala. It gets fired up and then pumps adrenaline into your system and if you get too much adrenaline, it actually begins to shut down the prefrontal cortex. We get narrow vision, we get a pessimistic bias, we make accidental connections, and we get very easily distracted with a pessimistic bias that’ll have us think the worst is going to happen. And that’s not useful if you want to be productive.
So, what I’d like you to do is, I’d like you to think about managing your brain really carefully and focusing on attention rather than managing time. Focus on managing your attention. Be aware of distractions and be aware how you can inhibit those distractions and we’re going to talk about that in this series over the next couple of weeks.
So, remember when it comes to Time Management…
Stay Curious!
With best regards,
David Klaasen
Talent4Performance help business leaders clarify complexity. We inspire people and drive continuous performance improvement, so they can convert thinking into action and results.
©David Klaasen – 2022
