Andrius Penkauskas: Mindfulness in the Maze of Cognitive Productivity
Have you ever experienced that fantastic sensation when your mind is razor-sharp, effortlessly gliding through challenges? It is like your brain is throwing a party, pouring dopamine for handling yet another task. The night is young, and you are on a winning streak, ready to take on more tasks, and nothing can stop you. However, there is a twist. When you are in a flow state, time flies faster than you realize. And before you notice it, you have been working deep into the night. You finally wrap up, feeling positive and motivated, but then it hits you – your brain is exhausted. Despite the positive vibes, all that remains is to set the autopilot on and head straight to bed.
It is a bit like riding a rollercoaster of cognitive productivity. You might begin at the top, feeling unstoppable, but the downward slide is just ahead. When you finally hit the brakes, even with all the positive energy, you are just exhausted. And let us not even begin to discuss the impact this exhaustion will have on your efficiency the following day. Feeling weary is a reminder that, no matter how much you are acing your tasks, your brain needs care to keep up. Without care, productivity will not last. Your mileage may differ, but at least in the research field, many aim at sustained efficiency. To make things right in the grand scheme of cognitive performance, it is essential to establish a reciprocal relationship with your brain. The key to getting good mental performance lies in providing the mind with what it needs beforehand. Sounds easy? Yes, it is if you do not get into details.
The mind is an incredibly complex mechanism. To tune it into high-performance mode and keep it there requires hard work, discipline, and practice. However, there are risks. Prolonged exposure to excessive cognitive load and continuous engagement in tasks that exceed one’s capacity may elevate stress levels, eventually leading to chronic stress and contributing to burnout, as discussed by iMotions. Due to this reason, I recommend actively maintaining a healthy cognitive performance and minimizing potential risks. This article may be interesting to those who are curious about the relationship between stress and mental workload.
If you are still with me and interested in continuing, I would like to share some insights and methods that have helped me handle and sustain a substantial cognitive load.
Let us begin with the foundational principles. Conceptually, the mind resembles a muscle, as it can undergo progressive training. Moreover, our brain has comparable requirements to muscles—it demands proper nourishment, hydration, and rest to maintain optimal performance. If these initial steps seem like a hurdle, then tackling them is your starting line. On the flip side, if you have these basics under control, let us venture into the realm of cognitive offloading.
According to Google Trends, this term is anything but a buzzword. Despite not being widely discussed, it represents a valuable strategy that can assist our brain in effectively managing significant amounts of information. As termed by Morrison et al. (2020), cognitive offloading involves reducing the mental processing demands of a task through physical actions like writing down information or storing it on a device. Curious why this is essential? The brain has a limited capacity to store and process information. When confronted with large volumes of information, the mind can experience a mental fog induced by infoxication (yes, that is not a typo), hindering our ability to perform at our best. To avoid this, start developing a habit of externalizing information. Populate your calendar, set reminders, use to-do lists, and write notes. All this will help reduce your memory load, leaving more capacity for challenging tasks.
Moreover, if you decide to take notes, do not just transcribe; instead, make sense of the information and get used to writing by hand. According to research by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer, those who wrote out their notes by hand had a better conceptual understanding and were more successful in applying and integrating the material than those who used laptops for note taking.
Focus your attention on one task at a time. Sustained attention is critical for optimal cognitive
performance and productivity, as emphasized in Ivalylo Durmonski’s blog post. And this serves as the key motivation to quit multitasking. Additional stimulus stems from a plethora of scientific evidence detailing the harmful effects of this strategy. Even though I am not particularly fond of this trend, this seems to be a rare case where less is more. That is why being scattered over the place does not yield positive results. To operate effectively, eliminate distractions, silence sounds and vibrations on your devices, allocate sufficient time, take care of all necessities before starting a task, and then concentrate on completing it.
Even with everything in place, it is easy to get lost in the weeds when navigating from abstract ideas to tangible solutions. Avoid unnecessary wondering around and time wasting, establish clear goals and priorities. Contemplate courses of action and hypothesis; this will help to enhance your understanding of the task. Continuously revisit these considerations as you advance to maintain a clear view of your course and end goal. If faced with a problematic obstacle that seems too challenging, break down the task into manageable bits and systematically iterate through them. If this strategy does not work and you are stuck, do not hesitate to seek assistance from others who may have the relevant expertise.
Maintaining focus on a task is crucial, but it is equally significant to be mindful of time. Consider setting gentle alarms as reminders for hydration, nutrition, and micro-breaks. These pauses are essential for giving your brain the needed rest to sustain productivity and clear the operative memory buffer, facilitating the transfer of knowledge to long-term memory. During these micro-breaks, engaging in light physical activities can be beneficial. According to this review, even light exercising promotes the release of dopamine, which helps to reduce anxiety and depressive symptoms and contributes to motivation and focus. As we finish navigating the labyrinths of cognitive productivity, I wish you to stay focused, motivated, and concentrated on your endeavours.
It is funny how fast, once again, the night has crept in, signalling the end of our conversation. I express gratitude for accompanying me this far. In this story, I concentrated on methods and strategies that operate on the foundation of habit, manifesting their impact gradually through consistent practice. Please accept my sincere apologies if you were seeking an immediate solution to elevate cognitive productivity. I must admit, such remedies are elusive. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed our discussion and look forward to writing to you in the future!
P.S.
Please keep in mind that the insights I shared are rooted in subjective experience, so approach it with a discerning mind. For more scientific and evidence-based material, investigate the research surrounding these topics.
Andrius Penkauskas works as a doctoral researcher in the Neuro-Innovation PhD Programme. His research focuses on multimodal data analysis of iNPH (a type of dementia).