Be Your Best

The Best Ideas and Best Work Performance Come from Muscle Recovery?

I was sitting at an ENT Specialist Doctor’s office a while back to have my ear checked out.  I slammed my right ear down hard on some lake water while water skiing this past summer, and although my hearing has come back over successive weeks — for a while, I had lost about 80% hearing in my right ear.  While sitting waiting for my appointment, I had some completely, totally 100% distraction-free time going on.  0 noise, 0 phone calls, 0 email, 0 distractions.  I was thinking about how often this happens (100% distraction free awake time) on a weekly or daily basis.  Not very often.  I started making a list of when I have 100% distraction-free time (waiting at the Doctor’s office which is fortunately not very often, in the shower, in the bathroom, sometimes brushing my teeth, sitting at the airport, moments just before falling asleep).  The list is not very long and the amount of time is not very much.  I did not count driving to work since there is plenty going on to keep alert to.  So, why is this issue important anyway?  Well, there are a couple of really important points that are very well and thoroughly studied and documented that you should be aware of and aggressively utilizing for your personal performance benefit and that of our teams:

1. The best ideas happen the most frequently when the brain is at rest and in a relaxed situation (ever notice when you try to force thinking of new ideas or problem solving, it is difficult — but then ideas start flowing while in the shower, etc..)

2. The most effective work gets done when the brain is totally focused on a single topic for an extended period of time

I am sure that all of us already know about these two key points, but how many of us are really proactively leveraging these two principles to our benefit and our organization’s benefit?

I had a chance to interact a bit with Tony Schwartz, author of the book ‘The Power of Full Engagement’ at a conference, and have read this book as well (which I highly recommend everyone reading, by the way).  Tony is an expert in the field of body energy management and physical/mental performance.  Anyway, from Tony I learned a lot more about the 2 points made above about how the brain/body works with respect to optimized performance.  Tony did extensive research studies, starting with the top Tennis players in the world, to find out what makes them better than all the other players.  I know this is ‘sports’ and not business, but hang in there with me.  It gets good.  Tony found that the major differentiator between the top elite player and the next level down is that the elite players were able to “rest” without distraction more often and more effectively during the match.  And this ‘rest’ was not just physical, but resting of the brain.  In other words, between points, the elite players would create massive amounts of “rest/recovery” within a 20 second period while the other players would not.  Ultimately the elite player was able to go harder, longer, with more sharpness because of getting so much ‘rest’ during the match.  Ok, so what does this have to do with us mere mortals in business?  The big deal and key points are that heavy “stress” is: (a) actually productive if it is followed immediately and frequently by rest/recovery, and (b) muscles ‘grow/repair’ during rest/recovery, not during stress (and, as you know, the brain is just another muscle).  In fact, ‘stress’ is required to live (the opposite being atrophy), but we are optimized when we are frequently cycling  between stress and rest/recovery.  Bringing this full circle back to 100% distraction-free time and why it is so important for our optimum performance: placing huge stress on your brain…and then providing frequent rest of your brain…allows it to operate at a much higher efficiency level (think of lifting weights — muscles stressing and then growing/repairing during rest).  When does brain rest occur?  Distraction-free or relaxing time.  When does the brain operate at maximum effectiveness for work needing to be done?  It’s when you are focused on one single thing or independent successive things for a 60-90 minute time period totally undistracted.  After that period of ‘stress’, the brain needs some rest/recovery for a short period to stay optimized.  When you allow the brain to ‘rest’ for a longer period of time, then it can recover and expand even more (i.e. Shower time).  Try to carve out more 100% distraction-free time slots for both ‘work’ and ‘rest’ in your schedule and see what happens.

Take Care, Todd
President
DEE