Prioritize Prioritizing — instead of being drained already at 9 am
Or how to save your brain energy
How is our brain working in regard to energy usage?
Conscious mental activities chew up metabolic resources.
Prioritizing is one of the brain’ most energy-hungry processes.
The brain likes to minimize energy usage because the brain developed at a time when metabolic resources were scarce. So there is a slight discomfort involved in putting effort into thinking, or any other activity that uses metabolic resources.
When you want to do a task that requires cognitive performance and your energy is down, it is best to recharge and try again later.
Picturing something you have not seen is going to take a lot of energy and effort. This partly explains why people spend more time thinking about problems (things they have seen) than solutions (things they have never seen). It s explains why setting goals feels so hard (it’s hard to envision the future).
This explains why prioritization is so hard. It involves imagining and then moving around concepts with which you have no direct experience.
3 Things you can do to take care of your brain energy
Do prioritization when you are fresh and energized, or you might crash and burn down the hill…Schedule the most attention-rich tasks when you have a fresh and alert mind. Making a tough decision might take thirty seconds when you are fresh and be impossible when you are not.
It is helpful to become aware of your mental energy needs and schedule accordingly. Experiment with different timings. One technique is to break work up into blocks of time based on the type of brain use, rather than the topic.
For example, if you have to do some creative writing for several different projects, which requires a clear, fresh mind, you might do all your creative writing on a Monday. People don’t tend to do this - they tend either to work on one project at a time or to respond to issues as they arise, sometimes thinking at a high abstract level, sometimes at a more detailed level, and then sometimes multitasking and switching around a lot. Instead, you could divide a day into blocks of time when you do deep thinking such as creative writing, other blocks for having meetings, and other blocks for routine tasks such as responding to emails.
One another insight about prioritizing is getting disciplined about what you do not put on the stage. This means not thinking when don’t have to, and becoming disciplined about not paying attention to non-urgent tasks, unless, or until, it’s truly essential that you do.
Bottom line
Conscious mental activities chew up metabolic resources.
Prioritizing is one of the brain’ most energy-hungry processes.
Your ability to make great decisions is a limited resource. Conserve this resource at every opportunity.
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Resources:
Dr. David Rock: “Your Brain at Work”