We’ve innovated our workplaces since the factory-floor work of the Industrial Revolution, but our brains haven’t caught up. Mithu Storoni is a physician, neuroscience researcher and ophthalmic surgeon. She joins host Krys Boyd to discuss why the 9-to-5 workday breaks up the natural rhythms of optimal brain function and offers tips for finding the best time to do your most creative and productive work. Her book is “Hyperefficient: Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work.”
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Transcript
Krys Boyd [00:00:00] It was a big victory for organized labor when we adopted the 40 hour workweek, the standard 9 to 5 workday that many people have had ever since, though that may have been a big loss for our brains and their potential to innovate. From Kera in Dallas, this is Think I’m Krys Boyd. The rhythms of modern office life were largely based on ideas about efficiency pioneered by people looking to get maximum performance at a factory workers. But while an assembly line conveyor belt can be set to a consistent speed and go all day, our brains don’t work that way. Many of us experience intense bursts of focus and creative energy that we can harness to do amazing things. Although our biological rhythms might mean they happen well before or long after, we are sitting at the office and in between we need rest. Or at the very least, we need different kinds of tasks to break up the day. Mithu Storoni is a neuroscience researcher and opthalmic surgeon who has looked into all this. Her book is called “Hyperefficient: Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work.” Mithu, welcome to Think.
Mithu Storoni [00:01:06] Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to join you.
Krys Boyd [00:01:09] I want to start by talking about how we came to associate efficiency at work more with quantity than quality of output. How did the Frederick Taylor Winslow system become a thing in the early 20th century?
Mithu Storoni [00:01:24] Well, in the 19th century we were discovering all sorts of things about energy. We were able to measure it. We discovered the laws of thermodynamics. And then, you know, we had this concept of, well, energy is wasted. It’s lost if we are working inefficiently. So, you know, the idea of inefficiency became very popular. And then you’re right Frederick Winslow Taylor was a was it was America’s or even the world’s first efficiency expert. He went around various shops and factories in the United States, and he looked at how things were done in these factories. And he discovered that, you know, people did not necessarily, you know, not work when things were not produced. It’s simply that they worked badly. So he created a system to really fine tune people’s movements, so they wasted as few kind of useless movements as possible. And then this filtered down and and inspired all this, among other things, Henry Ford with his Model T car. And then so Ford’s Model T transition really gave rise to the assembly line when he incorporated the ideas of efficiency of a moving conveyor belt of idea of car parts. And then all of this kind of set just just burst onto the stage as, as the Ford. Yeah. An assembly line model for producing as many as many items of something as possible standardized, made to the same measurements, but an enormous quantity. And this set the stage for our assembly line mode of of working and living, if you like.
Krys Boyd [00:03:15] How did that entrenched assembly line mode of working, even in offices in knowledge work, contribute to the growing dissatisfaction office workers felt with their jobs by the 1970s?
Mithu Storoni [00:03:27] Well, you know, it’s interesting because when we when the United States shifted from work being done manually in a large part in 1956 of post-Second World War era, and they shifted from from manual work to knowledge work or thought based, brain based working to a large part. When that transition happened, people changed what they did. But we really couldn’t. We forgot to change how we did it. So offices were arranged in rows. People clocked in in the morning, clocked out in the in the evening with a lunch break in the middle. Everyone started at the same time. And also the emphasis remained really on quantity for for the majority of people working in any organizations with people at the top, the executive level, with people making decisions. But everyone else really again, worked with quantity. Quantity of knowledge gathering, quantity of knowledge dissemination within an organization. So the way of working really remained the same, even though what we worked with and the tools we worked with, namely our brains instead of our hands changed.
Krys Boyd [00:04:43] So if we go further into the past, most people didn’t have bosses or companies to answer to, but they did have plenty to get done in any given day. What can we learn from modern, extant, hunter gatherer communities about how they paced themselves to get everything to?
Mithu Storoni [00:05:01] Right. And this is such an important concept. So in pre-industrial times, the idea of working all of starting work all together, working at the same pace, at the same time, doing the same thing and working continuously. These were three things which were almost unheard of. And if we do look at hunter gatherer communities, both relatively recent ones and actually current existing ones, we find they have a very different way of working. They work in bursts. They work in what we can call a sort of power law where they do really intense work for the shortest period of time and then they relax into lighter work, lighter and lighter work so that the more intense the work, the shorter the period of time they do it in. And then they do less intense work for longer, which translates into working in a sort of rhythmic way in bursts with intervals of relatively light work. And it’s not just hunter gatherers. If we look at some of the greatest thinkers in our time, Einstein and Freud and Charles Darwin, some are some researchers have researched, have looked at how they used to write their letters, which is a way they used to work during their time. They didn’t sit in the borrowed trees and the new type on computers and their mode of letter writing actually also resemble this kind of burst power law way of working, which suggests that somewhere inherent within us, when we are given the freedom to really work at our peak, we gravitate towards working in these rhythmic ways.
Krys Boyd [00:06:39] Even tiny babies seem to be shaped by these power law curves.
Mithu Storoni [00:06:43] Exactly. So when you look at tiny babies and look, you look at their sort of rest and wake cycles and remember when tiny babies are awake, they’re really working because they are absorbing information. They’re learning about the world as much and as quickly as possible. So they are working and their rest and sleep phases actually also start resembling a power law very, very quickly. Soon after they’re born. So you see these rhythms embedded everywhere.
Krys Boyd [00:07:14] You write about some fascinating research into how we perceive the passage of time differently depending on what we’re doing. How does this work and how might this time set the pace for our bodies and our minds?
Mithu Storoni [00:07:28] Well, if you think about it, if you if you think about a film you’re watching or you think about, you know, you’re watching a scene in front of you. If you’re watching something that’s moving continuously with no, you know, it’s so only kind of if you, in effect, watch an assembly line perform in front of you. There is no slow link in the chain. Everything is going fast and at the same speed. So your perception of time is set by the events in front of you and everything moves at the same speed. And there are no slow parts. You think time is uniform continuous? And the more advanced technology becomes, so the faster the speed of this assembly line becomes. Thanks to the speed of information transfer, the speed of activity, the speed of workflow in the workplace, the faster you perceive time to pass. And when your brain thinks time is moving faster and faster, what it starts to do is it starts to process information faster and faster because it thinks it has to, because time is moving fast and it has to predict what’s going to happen in the next moment, which will arrive sooner than it expects. So because of this, the brain kind of switches itself into a state which is which, which kind of leans towards being hyper vigilant. It becomes faster at processing information. There’s a there’s a tradeoff between speed and accuracy. So it trades away accuracy for speed. And this is really the type of mental state that we exist in. Whereas in today’s world, in today’s assembly line template workflows, whereas if you look back and you look at pre-industrial times, so even in the present day, if you were to visit a place that isn’t so embedded in this assembly line template, perhaps somewhere rural, somewhere relatively pre-industrial, you’ll find that this perception of time is actually very different rather than time seeming to move at a constant, steady, fast pace, time really dilates itself. Your perception of time dilates and contracts depending on how you perceive events to unfold. So if you if you’re working very hard, doing something very intensely, you perceive time as moving very quickly. Whereas, you know, if you’re sitting board, you don’t have a watch, you don’t have a clock, but you’re just sitting bored. The time, the day is just passing idly by. It feels as though time is passing slowly, so your brain relaxes. It doesn’t need to process information quite as fast. So rather than going slow, slow, slow slows its slices information quickly and then it steps off the pedal. And when it does this, your brain is in the right state to rest, rejuvenate, but more importantly, to actually think creatively, to have those moments of insight. So all of those things are necessary for for really putting your brain into this kind of imaginative state.
Krys Boyd [00:10:42] Of course, the emergence of technologies from clocks to electric lights to zoom meetings, all that has shoved our biological clock to the side. Right? It doesn’t matter if we do our best work late at night, if that office brainstorm is scheduled for 10 a.m. absolutely right.
Mithu Storoni [00:10:59] Because technology is now dictating workflow and the pace of technology is getting faster and faster extra cheaper and faster and better quality information transfer, our perception of time, which is dictated by workflow within the workplace, is getting faster and faster and faster. And the normal rhythm that we experience in a in an environment where we are not a slave to technology driven workflow, the normal rhythm there would be you’re probably moving quite fast in the first half of the day, possibly also in the latter half of the day. And then you wind down and as you wind down, everything slows down. Your brain steps off the pedal, you get into this very light, slow state and then you drift off to sleep. But if you’re living a life that’s really dictated by technological workflows, you are working according to technological time and that time never slows down. So whether you’re working at 10 p.m. or even midnight or 8 a.m. in the morning time feels equally fast, your deadlines feel equally urgent, and you’re forcing your brain to be equally alert, even though physiologically it needs to wind down.
Krys Boyd [00:12:19] These are these three metaphorical gears that you write about that our brains can be and as we engage in our daily tasks. Year one is a slow speed. What do we do best in gear One gear.
Mithu Storoni [00:12:32] One is really when your brain steps off the pedal. So when it steps of the pedal, your thoughts are slower. You are your your mental windshield is is nice and clear. Everything gets wiped. And that’s a great way to just look at a problem with a wide angle view to just let your ideas incubate. Let an insight hatch. That’s the sort of state of brain you need to be in in order to do that. And you need to have lots of that in order to be able to step on the pedal and work at a higher gear for longer. So you always need to come back to this gear, one, to put your brain back into this very rejuvenating state.
Krys Boyd [00:13:19] Can we be in gear one while we’re at work, or is that for our personal time?
Mithu Storoni [00:13:24] So the brain actually is in all three gears atmost moments during work, it’s always oscillating. So, for instance, you’re sitting on your computer. The moment you close your eyes, you shift into gear. One. But I’m talking really about what is predominant. So when you’re working, you’re predominantly going to be in gear, two. But as soon as you go for that walk or you close your eyes or you take a breather, that’s going to be when you shift into gear one
Krys Boyd [00:13:53] Mithu, gear two is where we want to be to sort of plug along efficiently but comfortably. But we can be in a high energy state in gear two or a lower energy state. What’s the difference between those two?
Mithu Storoni [00:14:08] As long as you can focus and you are focused in the right gear for what you’re doing, within that state, you will realize that sometimes some types of work need you to focus really strongly in what you’re doing. You might be reading a complex email report or your trying to look at any errors in something you’ve written. All of that requires deep, unfailing concentration. But there will be times when you while you’re working, you have to think about an idea, think about a problem, solve a problem, or just try and daydream your way into innovating, into kind of creating something. These are what I describe as low energy and high energy gear, too, because at these points you’re in gear too, but your attention is slightly less sticky. So in the low energy state, it can wander a little bit. So while you’re working, you’re searching for an idea, you’re needing inspiration. You get it in this low energy state. And if you’re brainstorming ideas while you’re in this focused mode, you want to sort of go laterally a bit, you want to think laterally, you want to go out of the beaten track. That’s what I describe as a high energy. Guess who states?
Krys Boyd [00:15:24] So what is Gear three? Is that only like for emergencies where we have to pass someone on the freeway and we need a burst of speed and energy?
Mithu Storoni [00:15:33] It pretty much is when you’re while you’re working, you know, there will inevitably be moments when you have to push on the pedal. You might be working to a deadline. You might be forced into doing something very, very quickly. And it sort of it gives you a little bit of extra gas, a little bit of that extra push on the pedal, but that’s it. Gear three also has its advantages. But what’s important is you stay in gear three for as short a time as possible. So really short bursts of gear, three majority of the time in gear, one and two only while you’re working and focusing.
Krys Boyd [00:16:13] So gear three is a little bit like high intensity interval training. Like we can go, go, go. But then we’re going to need some recovery time in between.
Mithu Storoni [00:16:20] It is exactly like high intensity interval training. That’s that’s that’s a great analogy. It helps you get things done. It also activates a different part of your brain temporarily, which is actually can which can actually be very helpful. But you mustn’t be in that state for too long. That’s the caveats.
Krys Boyd [00:16:40] What are the tradeoffs of sometimes ignoring what our brains are trying to tell us in terms of what they are best suited to do in every given moment, in terms of how our work can be affected. Like what if we have a job that makes us think we need to stay in gear three all the time?
Mithu Storoni [00:16:58] So there are a couple of tradeoffs. The first is if you’re in year three, you’re not in the best mental state for focused concentration. You are also absolutely not in there in a mental state or anywhere near a mental state where you can think innovatively, where you can create, where you can have insight, where you can have those moments. So being in gear three is completely antithetical to being in a state where you’re foraging for ideas or you’re looking for inspiration or you’re creating in any way, shape or form. That’s the first thing. The second thing is the brain is not like muscle. It cannot keep working for very long, for long periods of time without getting tired. But when it gets tired, it doesn’t perspire. It doesn’t go read. Your brain doesn’t ache in any way, so you don’t really realize that it does, that it is tired. But what it does to you is it sort of it detaches its attention. Your motivation slumps, You start thinking of other things, your mind starts wandering. And that’s a really subtle sign that your brain is tired. If at that point you step on the pedal, you get to gear three and you push on. Your brain actually processes information in efficiently. So the pathways inside the brain, that information transfer takes actually start changing into less efficient routes. And what that ultimately manifests as is first, the work you’re doing feels more and more effortful, so more and more difficult. And second, the quality of the work you’ll be doing will be very poor. So you will not be able to think of, you know, a great many really good ideas. You’ll be able to think of ideas, but they won’t be original. They won’t be really, really good. So the quality of your work starts suffering. And this is a really interesting tradeoff because if you’re working on a factory line, even if it’s a mental factory line, where all your work involves, is writing emails, not really thinking about stuff you can more or less manage in gear three without it affecting the quality of your work. But if you’re doing work that requires you to really think, solve, create, innovate, then being in Q3 is not going to let you reach your full potential.
Krys Boyd [00:19:20] There is, I gather, some variation in how challenging any of us finds it to shift between gears throughout the day. What is the difference between people you describe as having stiff versus springy gears?
Mithu Storoni [00:19:33] So you will know. We all intuitively know those people around us who are who really thrive when there is competition, when there is risk, when the situation is challenging. And we all know people and, you know, I might be one of them who are the opposite, who thrive when actually that the ambient level of uncertainty is pretty low, where there isn’t huge amounts of, you know, challenge or risk or threat. And the reason why this there is this difference. Well, one of the reasons why there is this difference is because our gears so the brain switches its gear in anticipation of the information it needs to process. If it thinks there is a lot of uncertainty and if it has a very low tolerance for uncertainty, it will process information very fast for a pretty low level of uncertainty, which means your brain switches to a high gear at the slightest provocation. So simply being in an environment with a little bit of threat, a little bit of challenge, a little bit of competition will swing someone with what I call a springy gear, will swing that person right into either high end gear to even possibly gear three. Whereas for another person who is not quite as reactive to uncertainty, they need a bigger dose of uncertainty for their brain to think. It needs to splice information faster. And so they need a bigger bit of a big, bigger chunk of uncertainty in the environment, whether it’s coming through competition, through risk, through deadlines in order to swing their gear upwards. When we’re in gear, too, that’s when we feel the best. So the level of challenge someone with a stiff gear needs to get to get to is much greater than the level of challenge someone with a springy gear needs to get to gear two.
Krys Boyd [00:21:41] What about people with brain differences like ADHD? Are they typically springy or stiff when it comes to shifting gears?
Mithu Storoni [00:21:51] This is an interesting question because many people with ADHD, not all, but many people with ADHD. First of all, there does seem to be an issue with shifting gears. And second, some research suggests that the problem seems to be that people tend towards a lower gear, so they need a bigger challenge or a bigger stimulus to get to this gear two state. Once people with ADHD find something that really captures their attention, they are in gear, too, with almost hyper focus. So that seems to be the case in a large number of people with ADHD, although not all.
Krys Boyd [00:22:36] What are the best times of day, broadly speaking, for people to do their most creative work, what you call the low energy gear to stuff?
Mithu Storoni [00:22:45] So across the whole day, there is a network in the brain, which is the your brain’s hub for the neuro transmitter, norepinephrine. And this network. Sort of it’s it’s it’s activity sort of follows the arc of the sun, if you like. So we all know that when we wake up, we feel slightly groggy. Life feels a little bit slow. I thoughts are slow and that’s when this particular network is working quite slowly. I’m using quite metaphorical language. Yeah, but it’s working quite slowly. That is one of the best times for creative thinking because your mind is clear, you’re thinking slowly and that sets just the right pace for creativity. As the day goes on, the sun rises higher, the world gets brighter. Your brain also switches into a more alert, more brightly alert states. That seems to happen with a bit of variation between around 9 or 10 in the morning. So if you’re looking to be creative, doing it first thing in the morning is a great time to do it. But there is actually a second window because this cycle repeats itself because as we wind down in the evening, our brain switches from being brightly alert to being slower. Thoughts are slower, everything feels slow. That happens late in the day before bedtime, around about at sunset onwards, depending on where in the world you are. And that gives you the second creativity window. So the first window is first thing in the morning, the second window is last thing in the day.
Krys Boyd [00:24:36] So how can we schedule our days to take advantage of our optimal creative periods if we are, say, commuting in traffic during our highest energy times on both ends?
Mithu Storoni [00:24:51] You know, we have to be creative to be able to do this. So, you know, one way is, first of all, figure out what you’re doing. Do you have creative work to do? Do you have problems to solve if you are actually commuting during this period of peak creativity, one thing you can do is think if you’re driving a car, you can still think if you’re using transport, you can still think so. Put on some noise, canceling earphones and use that time to just sit and think, to solve, to innovate, to create. All of that involves thinking. If you’re not commuting or if you have that sort of flexibility, that sort of understanding with your employer, with your team, then you could also suggest that if you are working on something creative coming in earlier in the morning perhaps and trading off few extra hours in the morning for an earlier sort of time for leaving at the end of the day. So you can say I’ll come in, you know, two hours earlier, but I’ll leave two hours earlier also. And that might help you really harness your prime peak time for your particular creative work during the day. And it would be a win win situation between you and your team.
Krys Boyd [00:26:08] Mithu you’re an eye surgeon. How can something as subtle as the movement of our eyes affect the state of our minds?
Mithu Storoni [00:26:17] The eye is intricately involved with it, with the brain, essentially. In many ways, you can even see it as an extension of the brain. So things that happen in the eyes are very closely related to the brain. And so, as an example, you will know that when you meet someone and you get the feeling that they are a little bit anxious so that you know that they’re feeling very vigilant, you will notice that their eyes dart around. They are very unlikely to look at you in a very calm way with unwavering gaze. So that is that is a great link between the emotions of a human being and the movements of the eyes. And if you flip this, there is some data that one of the strategies some people can use to help you really focus on something, and this is being used by sport in the world of sport. Before archery, before shooting competitions. It’s also been used in the world of surgery, where what you can do is if you can hold your case and narrow your gaze to a very, very narrow target and keep your gaze there, hold it there. It seems to have a calming effect and it actually increases your ability to concentrate and focus attention. And in our according to our metaphorical model, it shifts you into gear two.
Krys Boyd [00:27:47] What makes walking ideal as a way of sort of detaching our gaze without leaving gear two when we need to be in gear two.
Mithu Storoni [00:27:57] Now, if you think of sitting on a park bench somewhere, sitting down on that bench, maybe close your eyes during a break if you’re lucky to have a park and a bench to sit on. If you’re doing that, then what tends to happen is as soon as you close your eyes, yes, you can detach from what you’re doing. Your attention can float. However, you very quickly slide into a little bit of lethargy and you might even fall asleep. You’re tired now while you’re walking. You can’t do that. Just the process of the physiological process of walking keeps you in an alert state of mind. But here’s what is so interesting about walking while you’re walking. The world moves around you. So as you’re looking at things around you, your attention cannot stick on anything. What you have to do is you have to direct your attention occasionally to where you are so that you don’t go off the path. And you know what, where you’re working, but your attention then is forced to drift. So you are creating a condition where you’re stuck in gear too, which helps keeps you at just the right alertness level for focusing and concentrating. But at the same time, the moving background forces your attention to wander. It sets your attention loose so you get into the same mental state you would be if you’re sitting on a park bench daydreaming with your eyes closed. So it’s a really unique way of fuzing these mental states and what happens as a result of it is you have mental clarity, you’re able to focus, but at the same time your attention wanders across fragments of thoughts, kind of simmering at the back of your mind. You can look at a problem through a 360 angle because you’re forced to really give up any focus, any anchor that you are, really any avenue that you are really entrenched in. So it forces you to detach your attention, to appreciate a problem, to see new angles, while at the same time being brightly alert and focused. So you can really look at whatever avenue you’re pursuing with clarity. So it’s a great way to solve problems, to overcome mental blocks and really also to have those moments.
Krys Boyd [00:30:33] Lots of us. Me too, who need to raise our gear and train our focus, rely on stimulants like caffeine to kickstart us. Does caffeine help with creativity?
Mithu Storoni [00:30:44] The answer is no, but it doesn’t necessarily harm creativity either. So why not? What happens when you’re being creative is there are really two phases of being creative, and one is when you are foraging for ideas, when you are sort of slightly kind of diverging your your attentional gaze and you’re thinking of things, you’re in that slightly daydream kind of state of mind where you’re looking at a problem in a wide angled view. You’re going off the beaten track. That’s the divergent phase. And once you hit upon something that is interesting, that is an idea that’s innovative, you want to bring it the focus of your attention, the spotlight of your attention, really narrow it and bring it onto what you’ve just foraged. So essentially you’re foraging and then you’re filtering what you foraged. And when you’re filtering what you foraged, that’s when you use focus. So when you’re taking caffeine, it shifts your your mental state so that you’re better at focusing. So it may help in that convergent phase, but there’s no there’s no data that it in any way helps that divergent phase. In fact, if you’re focused too well, you might not be able to really let your mind wander in that very lazy way.
Krys Boyd [00:32:10] And you also cautioned that caffeine is really only useful if we’re stuck in a lower gear, like if we’re in gear three already, a double shot of espresso. It’s only going to make things worse.
Mithu Storoni [00:32:22] This is exactly right. And you know, coming back to your point about creativity, creativity happens in that area between Gear one and Gear two. Caffeine raises your gear. So if you’re in gear one, it puts you deep within get two. But if you in gear two already then puts you into gear three. Now, when we are working hard and our minds are wandering, maybe we’re feeling a little bit bored. Maybe the work is feeling a bit tiring. It’s the middle of the afternoon or late in the morning. At that point, when your mind is getting tired, your brain is getting tired. Your brain actually shifts gear and it actually shifts down shifts to gear one. That’s why you feel bored. Your your thoughts might wonder. You feel a bit distracted. When you take caffeine, it shifts your gear back up. So it keeps you in gear, two. And that’s where the majority of us tend to use caffeine as a sort of aid to kind of stay on the job.
Krys Boyd [00:33:22] So on the other end of the spectrum, of course, we have to sleep at times. Some of us find it really hard to drift off after a day spent in a high gear, even if we are exhausted. What are some ways we can wind down so that we can get the rest we need?
Mithu Storoni [00:33:40] Right. So the first way is ideally, if you are working very hard during the day, what do you do during that day is probably the most important thing of all. So making sure you’re getting plenty of breaks, making sure you’re getting frequent breaks, spending lots of time during those breaks in year one. So that’s the first thing to do. The second thing to do is if you have the flexibility to do so, then not work too very late hours at at very high intensity. So if you’re doing something that’s really intense and stressful, the sooner you can end, the better. Because once you’re in that stress state, you will be in year three and you need to wind down to give one before you drift off to sleep. So ending sooner, lots of breaks. If those two methods have failed and you’re still stuck in a high gear late in the evening, then a couple of things you can do involves really tapping into your physiology. So we know that doing things like stretching exercises, doing breathing exercises actually help to forcibly relax you into a gear one state. But even before you do that, I would say the most important thing to do is to do a sort of a mental slate wiping procedure where if you’re thinking about what happened during the day and even though you’ve finished your work but you’re still thinking about it, you will continue to be in a high gear because your mind hasn’t stopped simply because you have stopped. And so the best thing to do, actually the end of your workday, is to do something that’s really, really absorbing, that detaches your attention completely from your work and makes you forget what your day has just been like. Do that first and then slide into something like a stretching exercise or a breathing exercise. And that should help you wind down before you fall asleep.
Krys Boyd [00:35:40] So let’s talk about how we can organize work sessions throughout the day to match the rhythms of our brains and bodies. You suggest we adopt maybe informal 90 minute cycles. How should we order the tasks we need to get done during those cycles?
Mithu Storoni [00:35:58] So the first thing to consider is what are you doing? What work are you working on? If you’re doing creative work, then a 90 minute strict 90 minute cycle isn’t necessary because you have to let your brain’s creativity and insights happen as they can. So there there’s no need to really have these very strict kind of end schedules. You can be much more flexible, but if you’re doing work that involves focusing, doing it, a 90 minute bounce is very wise because continuing beyond 90 minutes makes your brain very tired and you start underperforming. So 90 minute bounce is a good rule of thumb. Within that 90 minutes do the most intense or difficult kind of effortful work for the first bit of that 90 minutes. So maybe for the first 20 minutes or so. And then if you’re able to do so, switch to doing something lighter for the next, say, half an hour, 40 minutes or so. And then if you have the luxury to do so, switch to something even lighter. And that should take you into your break. And your break should be around about 10 to 20 minutes, ten minutes if you don’t want to lose momentum. 20 minutes if you can lose momentum and if you work in that sort of 90 minutes, you can call this a power loss cycle because you’re working at high intensity for the shortest period of time at a moderate effort for longer. If you work in these cycles, then you never really have to stop working. But at the same time, you’re giving your brain a chance to recover every time you’re shifting to lower intensity work.
Krys Boyd [00:37:42] What’s the difference between using a break as what you call a charging station as opposed to a rest station?
Mithu Storoni [00:37:48] So when you’re working on something and you’re within your 90 minute work schedule, you might not be tired because you might just be five minutes, ten minutes into the work you’re doing. But the work could do one of two things. It could either make you feel really, really bored or it could make you feel really flustered. So if it’s really difficult, you feel that it’s exhausting and your mind is pushing down on the pedal and you’re shifting into gear. Three If you’re feeling bored, you’re sort of having the same thing. You’re shifting down to gear one. So if these two situations arise, then simply pausing what you’re doing will put you back into gear too. So you’re doing the work As you’re doing the work, your gear either rises or falls. You pause, you take a very short pause. It resets itself. Then you continue doing the work. Your gear again rises or falls. You pause again and it resets your your gear. So here your pauses are acting to reset your gear because it’s the nature of the work that’s changing your gear, not your fatigue. In the second instance, you’re doing your work over the 90 minute period or even shorter periods. But the nature of the work is really draining you. So your mental resources are draining and it’s really exhausting for you. You are suffering from mental fatigue. So when you’re suffering from mental fatigue, then when you stop your work, you should not be doing anything that in any way stimulates you or taxes your mental resources. You have to stop and let your brain rejuvenate. Now, in the instance one that I describe where you’re going either up to gear three or gear one. If your work is so boring that you’re sliding into gear one even five minutes into what you’re doing, then every time you pause your work, you can actually help yourself get back into gear too, by doing something that stimulates you. So by going for a quick run by by listening to fast music or by doing something that just raises your gear. So active pauses really are the ones that I’m describing as the resetting pauses and the pauses for when you’re tired are the passive, restful pauses that I described.
Krys Boyd [00:40:22] I realized, Me too. I’m very fortunate. I have a lot of autonomy at work. And, you know, assuming that I get everything done that I need to get done, you know, I’m free to take little breaks or, you know, walks actually throughout my day, which is something that I have done for years. But lots of people, you know, have a manager or surveillance software truck tracking their every move. That software isn’t necessarily programed to recognize the importance of taking breaks. Do you have thoughts on how people can make a case to their managers for the importance of being allowed to work in these ways?
Mithu Storoni [00:40:59] So tracking software are the worst. I just think that they are just they make work so difficult. Yes. So what I would suggest is that it’s now obvious there is enough data and also the kind of work are doing is not changing. All of these make the case for the fact that the brain does not work like muscle. It needs to rest in order to work and it needs to switch off or downshift, lift its pedal its foot off the pedal at regular intervals in order to be able to work. And the case to get to your manager would be, how good do you want my work to be? Do you want me to just do something to a standard that can be beaten by a chat GPT you know, in a fraction of the time? Or do you really want me to produce my best work? Do you want me to write something that you know no chat GPT can produce? So it’s really do you want me to emphasize quality of work? And usually today the answer would be yes. If you want to emphasize quality, your brain absolutely needs to work at its own pace. Different kinds of work will feel and be difficult in different ways to different people. So enforcing the same timetable, enforcing the same sort of, you know, software to track when breaks are taken and so on is really unhelpful. In order for you to do your best work, you need to work in rhythms and you need to take a break when your mind is feeling fatigued. And in order to do that, you have to have the autonomy. So I think argue with you and argue with your manager about whether quantity or quantity is more important and if quality is more important, you absolutely need those breaks.
Krys Boyd [00:42:57] How can we build motivation for the parts of pretty much everyone’s job that we don’t really enjoy all that much, but, you know, we have to get done.
Mithu Storoni [00:43:06] So one way is to, first of all, think about motivation in two different ways. So you have the motivation, which is which we classically see as a carrot or stick, where you get the job done and then there’s either a prize at the end or there’s a punishment if you don’t get the job done. So the prize is really avoiding the punishment. But another better way of looking at motivation is to try and see and find something in the work, no matter how boring it is. That in some way gives you some kind of pleasure. It could be something like, Why are you doing the work? You find something that you can improve on or that you can do better or that you can learn as you go along. You might. You might have a kind, you know, you might be on a project or be given a project that you know nothing about, and that work feels really, really difficult, laborious. But if you can approach the project as a learning experience and find an island of knowledge and then progress by something like 20% at a time that has been shown to improve your sense of, you know, feeling, feeling an agent in that world of work can also give you a sense of intrinsic motivation in spite the kind of pleasure in you as you progressively improve in some domain. So viewing your work as something that you can really derive pleasure from is a good approach to take. And one way to do this is by looking at avenues along which you can improve in some way, improve your skills, improve your knowledge, or improve your progress. And as soon as you do that, no matter how distasteful the work is, it can feel a whole lot better.
Krys Boyd [00:44:59] Mithu Storoni is a neuroscience researcher and ophthalmic surgeon. Her book is called “Hyperefficient: Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work.” Mithu, thank you so much for making time to talk about this.
Mithu Storoni [00:45:11] Thank you so much for having me.
Krys Boyd [00:45:13] Think is distributed by PRX, the public Radio exchange. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram and listen to our podcast for free. Wherever you get podcasts, just search for Kera Think. You can also listen at our website kera.think.org. While you’re there, sign up for our weekly newsletter. It is free and full of good stuff. Once again, I’m Krys Boyd. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.
