Train Your Brain on Time: How to Make Your Days Longer

TIME IS MONEY

You know the saying. Time is so important to us, especially as life continues to speed up. We actually spend money in order to gain more time… Maybe that’s to make more money, maybe that’s to have more experiences. Either way, I think we can all agree we love time-savers; and the idea of giving up your precious time is painful.

So, since time is of the essence, how are we supposed to carve out more of it for new health routines? What’s the harm in rushing through our days and multitasking whenever possible? I’m not actively suffering from any major health conditions right now, so why would I slow myself down or lose a chunk of my time to add more in?

You can probably tell that’s not how I think now. You’re also probably expecting me to persuade you to think otherwise, too. I’m probably going to tell you that you actually do have the time, and that it is important… Well, you’re pretty spot on. But, I’m also here to tell you I did think like that, too. But once I figured a few things out, it was like a glass shattering moment when I suddenly started noticing my minutes, hours, and days felt longer. I became more productive, and subsequently happier. I want that for you.

Let’s rewind though to before the glass shattered. I started out thinking it was completely impossible to fit anything more into my days. To be honest, back in grad school, I remember firmly telling a therapist I COULD NOT get the bare minimum number of hours of sleep she suggested I needed because there was no room in my schedule for it.

I’m forever grateful for her stern reply to me, “There’s always time. You’d be surprised.” I dismissed her advice for a few weeks, thinking she just didn’t understand the pressures and responsibilities I was facing. But eventually I started realizing I was just getting in my own way. Something shifted in my mind, and I heard her advice again with more open ears: “There’s always time.” I started choosing my health, and fitting everything else in as it laid out. And it worked! It honestly just felt like magic at the time. For years now, I’ve been using that anecdote with family and friends who’ve asked my advice about getting through grad school or improving their sleep habits. But I never really had an answer for why it worked for me besides, “My therapist told me to change my thinking so I changed my thinking.”

IT’S IN YOUR HEAD

Turns out, It wasn’t Houdini magic that helped me turn things around, it was brain magic. The brain has several mechanisms constantly working to perceive and manage time. I got some healthy advice and didn’t know the mechanics behind why it worked, but I think understanding your brain’s mechanisms might allow you to hack it for the better!

Follow along if you’ve been wanting to make changes but find yourself saying, “I’m just too busy,” or, “There’s just not enough time for it all.”

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#1: YOUR BRAIN DOES NOT HAVE ENDLESS FOCUS

No matter how hard we want to believe that our focus just takes some determination, and maybe some strong coffee, we’re just kidding ourselves. The brain does not have endless attentional abilities. We can improve our attention, sure, but not to super-human magnitudes.

Check in with yourself: how long do you think you can stay purely focused on a task? Before getting into the research, I thought I was capable of probably 5-6 hours of focus in one sitting, especially if it were procrastination-driven focus (oops).

Let’s define attention for a second. Attention is your brain’s ability to sustain its focus on something, uninterrupted. This allows your brain to process the information it’s receiving and to have the capacity to do something with that information. Attention is the foundation of productivity. Think about your daily activities- how long do you have to stay focused in order to complete these tasks? How often do you force yourself to complete a task long after you’ve lost your focus?

Your attentional abilities will vary, depending on the kind of sleep you got the night before, what’s on your mind, the time of day, your motivation, and your environment. One study conducted to assess employee productivity and focus at work found that employees only maintain true focus on their work for 2 hours and 53 minutes. Another found that people only focus on work for 6 hours per week. That obviously varies based on the type of work done, but it does make you wonder how in-tune we are with our attentional skills, how we can grow our attention, and how we can use that knowledge to increase our productivity.

My takeaway from this information is that you need to have a better awareness of your own attentional capacities and plan accordingly. If you know you’re going to lose focus after a certain length of time, don’t hold yourself captive to the task just because it needs to get done. You most likely will get to the end result with a lower net time committed by breaking the task up than you would if you persisted until it was done.

#2 YOU’RE NOT AS GOOD AT MULTI-TASKING AS YOU THINK

So you know you can’t stay focused on one task forever, but what about speeding things up by doing two things at once? Multi-tasking is an incredibly complex activity for your brain to power. Unfortunately, our brains are not that great at doing two things at once. By attempting to do so, we’re hardcore taxing our working memory systems.

Working memory is our ability to hold information in our memory as we need to use it. The more your brain has to hold onto, the harder a task. So, for example, when you’re trying to process what your boss is saying during a meeting, while also trying to respond to emails, think about how much your brain is doing to not only process the complexities of both tasks but also trying to make up for the information missed or the mistakes made along the way. More often than not, when you’re “multi-tasking,” you’re actually just bouncing back and forth between progress on two different tasks, which actually requires your brain to constantly search its working memory for where you last left off and readjusting to returning to that task.

How inefficient! When you attempt to multi-task, you’re not only taking longer to do each task compared to how quickly you’d do them separately, but you’re also taxing your brain’s resources, most likely making future tasks in your day that much harder.

If that’s not enough reason to quit multitasking, there’s research that shows chronic multi-taskers may actually be hurting their brains.

#3 YOUR BRAIN TAKES TIME TO REFOCUS

So you’re getting the point that staying focused is a complex skill that your brain is working really dang hard at… But, did you know the brain needs a lot of time to get re-focused? One researcher states that, once you’ve become distracted, it takes the human brain “an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to task.”

23 minutes! So, think about all the times you get interrupted or distracted in your day, by your own doing or someone else’s. If it’s a brief distraction that doesn’t take away from your train of thought and doesn’t require your brain’s attention to fully shift, it probably won’t derail you to the extent of almost 30 minutes lost. But, think about how often distractions really do take you away, and consider how much it takes to get your flow back.

#4 YOUR BRAIN THRIVES ON DOWN TIME

So we can’t stay focused forever, we can’t multitask, and unexpected distractions are terrible for our productivity and time management. We need some good news! Well here it is: your brain does a lot of the important and meaningful work while it’s resting. Actually it needs the rest!

The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain responsible for the higher level skills we use during complex tasks, such as controlling our attention. The default mode network (DMN) is what becomes active during wakeful rest. So, when you give your prefrontal cortex a break, your DMN kicks into action… peacefully. While you rest, your default mode network is doing things like generating creative ideas, reviewing past and present memories, and supporting your social processing.

So, not only are conscious breaks good for resetting your productivity, they’re also important for supporting your memory, problem solving, and social skills.

HOW TO HACK IT:

1. Because your brain does not have endless focus… Take inventory of how long you need to focus for certain important tasks in your day. Once you have an idea of how long a task takes, time yourself and see how long you can actually focus on that task. Depending on what you find out, make some edits to your routine:

2. Because you’re not as good at multitasking as you think… decide which 1 task you’re working on and make a mental (or written) plan for the rest in other parts of your day. Take note of how much faster you get each 1 task done compared to how long it would normally take you to do 2 at the same time.
3. Because your brain takes time to refocus… eliminate any distractions you have control over. Silence or turn off your phone, exit out of email applications, close the door, post a sign or away message, get comfortable, take care of your basic needs, etc. You can’t anticipate or control all distractions, so make a game plan for recognizing when your attention is being pulled away and for managing that effectively. For example, if you work in a cubicle environment and can’t shut yourself off from other people, think of a short response that could help preserve your attention, such as “I need to take a break from this in x minutes, can I come find you then?”
4. Because your brain thrives on down time… take planned or conscious breaks throughout your day. Consider the following to best support your brain’s recovery, encoding, and processing of the day in order to maximize your potential for return to focus:
   1. Meditation
   2. Positive Constructive Daydreaming (PCD)
   3. A brief nap

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NEXT TIME:

Now that we have a better understanding of how we can be more consciously efficient with our time, we can talk about how to be more strategic about our routines and habits. Our brain’s internal clock system, the circadian rhythm, has a lot to do with why we do better with certain tasks at certain times of day. And you know what that means… more hacking potential. Stay tuned.