How to get your brain back in gear after the festive break!
It feels like wading through treacle. It kind of literally is, after all that sugar we’ve likely all consumed! It’s the getting your head back in the game after a long break from work. If you’re like me, you’ve not opened your laptop since mid-December and reading emails about serious things make you want to run to the kitchen and whip up a totally unnecessary batch of procrastination-flavoured cookies. There’s just so much to do and you don’t know where to start. So let me help you. We’re going to start slow. The first thing I want to draw your attention to is your beautiful body. At work, a pet peeve of mine is the corporate speak that talks of people as ‘heads’ i.e. ‘we need some more heads on this’. We are more than heads! Your body and your head are connected and it’s a very important connection to be aware of ESPECIALLY when you’re trying to get motivated again.?
So here are 7 ways you can slowly ease yourself back into the work headspace without feeling scatterbrained, overwhelmed or procrastinating.?
- Prepare your body for all the sitting it’s going to be doing by satisfying it first thing in the morning with exercise and/or stretching. Then set a time to do ANOTHER exercise session, even if it’s just a 15 minute walk, later in the day. This gets you away from the screen and boosts your creativity.?
- Meditate. When you meditate, it’s like allowing a shaken snow globe of thoughts to settle. Once settled, you have crystal clear water in that snow globe. And you’ll have a crystal clear brain. Between 12-15 minutes of meditation per day, in the morning, is best to get your mental fitness in the best shape possible. Any longer is a bonus. Again, this is creating coherence between the mind and the body. It is the breath that connects the mind and body and so conscious attention on your breathing increases cognitive function (memory, mood, regulates emotions, increases focus, decreases cortisol omg the list goes on and on and on!) Oh and consistency is key. Just like the key to healthy eating isn’t ten carrots on a Monday and then you’re good. It’s a daily effort.?You may want to use this time to visualise your ideal (most focused/productive) day ahead.
- CUT THE CRAP food and increase your water intake. All the excess sugar, dairy and yeast products contribute to candida (yeast) build up in your body which leads to brain fog, depression, sluggishness, itchy skin etc. Fill up on green vegetables, oily fish, green tea, rice, filtered water and berries and you’ll start to reap the mental benefits as the gut and brain are in constant communication. It might be a shock to go from all that crap to super healthy so if it’s going to be unrealistic for you, choose one thing to increase and one thing to cut. E.g. increase water intake and cut dairy.?
- Turn off your phone. Sigh. I really want to make this something people can get empowered from. I challenge you to step away from your phone completely for either 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours or 24 hours depending on how long you can without actually needing to be available. Even if it’s just one app. I did a 24 hour Whatsapp break on one of the days over the festive season and it was bliss. I didn’t open it for a full 24 hours. I have notifications off anyway. Your phone use is fragmenting your attention. Phones are designed by highly skilled professionals including psychologists that specialise in addictive technology. How it works is that you are on what is called an intermittent reinforcement schedule with notifications, meaning you never know when you’re going to get one (they are intermittent) and so you end up checking your phone more in case you ‘win’. Like slot machines. Same design. What this does to your brain at work is keep you distracted during tasks because you’ve trained your brain to want to look at something else frequently to see if there’s going to be a win there. By ‘win’ I mean a dopamine hit because that’s what notifications give us. See? It’s all very well designed by the apps to keep us using them! And then you wonder why you can’t follow what’s going on in that meeting without thinking about other things. Even if you can only commit to 90 minutes with your phone off, make sure you…?
- Put your phone out of sight. I’m going to make two points about the phone because it’s such a big thing. Research shows that even having our phone visible to us in the room decreases our attention, focus and memory. So even if it’s off and you can see it in your peripheral vision it’s going to interrupt your focus, attention and memory. Your brain will be thinking about it. So get it off and then in another room. Right now, my phone is upstairs in the bedroom and I am working from downstairs. It’s not allowed in the same room as me when I’m writing or working on something that I want to fully focus on. In general I’m creating far more boundaries with my phone and increasing my sense of presence by doing one thing at a time.?
- Prioritise between 1-3 things each day that you will feel a sense of progress from having got them done. The difference between a satisfying day at work and one where you feel confused because you’ve been at it for hours but don’t feel like you made much progress, is the quality of the task you’re focusing on and the level of focus you’ve given it. So you might get a lot of ‘bitty’ stuff done but you’ve avoided that tax return which would really lighten your load. This leads to stress because it’s weighing on you far more than the bitty stuff but the bitty stuff (replying to emails, writing social media posts, anything you could pay a PA to do…) is the low hanging fruit. So it’s EASIER to do and the brain likes easy and the path of least resistance. But if you start with just one thing each day you are dreading and do that first (you eat that frog) you will feel so much more of a sense of progress, satisfaction and fulfillment which will then energise you! And what’s what we all want more of! Energy!
- Give yourself a break. It’s not easy to suddenly switch gears. Have compassion for yourself and be your own best friend by taking breaks, going to bed early, taking care of yourself and being mindful of your self talk. You’re doing great. Break down bigger frogs (the tasks you really don’t want to do) into smaller bite size chunks and remember anything can be done when you break it down.?
