Brains in Business
Want to be productive? Try this app! No, this software! Pick the exact right 115-step plan and you’ll be super-productive! Do these 13 things every night, wake up at oh-dark-thirty every morning, and you’ll get 197 things done each day!
Too many productivity “gurus” and lists of “hacks” try to use technology to solve the problem that technology has caused… or early birds assume it’s their habit of getting up before the roosters that makes them busy throughout the day. (Click here for why productivity does not equal busy.)
Being productive starts with your brain, not the brand-new planner you got or the app you installed. If you’ve read my stuff, you know I talk about the brain a lot. But you may be asking yourself, Self, what is the meaning of life? (42, thanks to Douglas Adams.)
Or, more relevantly to this particular discussion: Self, why does the brain matter so much to productivity?
(Brief) history of the human brain
Once you understand how your brain works, you’ll better be able to use it in a way that maximizes your productivity. And more importantly, you’ll understand why your time to be truly productive is LIMITED in any given day.
If you’re into technology, think of it like this: we’re using 100,000-year-old hardware to deal with 21st-century inputs. If you’re not into technology, then just know that (some) technology has far outpaced brain evolution.
There are a lot of structures in the brain that we have in common with animal ancestors. We still have a fight-or-flight reflex that involves the amygdala, which is found in all other animal brains, for example.
You’ve probably heard of the reptile or lizard brain, which acts quickly and at the level of your subconscious to get you out of danger when necessary. There’s also the mammalian brain, which includes memories and emotions - yes, other animals have these too. As an example, elephants are known to mourn their dead.
Finally, there’s the human brain with its very developed prefrontal cortex and some other associated structures. This bit is responsible for executive function, which is how the brain plans to achieve goals, controls reactions, makes decisions, and solves problems - the stuff humans do, in other words.
The reptilian and mammalian aspects of the brain have been around for much longer than the human ones - reptile brains first appeared about 500 million years ago in fish. The mammalian brain is only about 150 million years old.
But the human brain with developed executive function is much, much younger than that. Although our species Homo Sapiens has been around for about 200,000 years, some research suggests the “modern” human brain is only about 40,000 years old.
Millennia ago when humans as a species were young, there were no screens, timesheets, spreadsheets, graph paper, marketing, strategic business planning, etc. Or even chairs! But the human brain didn’t develop with these materials, and there was no need to concentrate for eight hours a day
Back then humans actually did have to worry about being eaten by predators. Despite the occasional poacher death by lions or other animals, we don’t have predators outside our own species anymore.
Humans gathered together in tribes, which is why Dunbar’s number of 150 is the outside estimate for how many people you can truly know. (Connections and “friends” on social media don’t count, unless you know them IRL.) They hunted and gathered, depending largely on where the tribe happened to be after humans migrated out of Africa.
Most of our ancestors’ time was spent with the tribe, including getting food. That’s where our problem-solving skills with the prefrontal cortex really helped. Although we were smaller and less equipped for defense than most of our food, we could figure out where they might be after they ran away and left our sight.
Most importantly for business leaders who want to be productive, there was no such thing as an 8-hour day. It’s completely made-up and there’s literally no reason to accept it as the norm. In fact, the 8-hour day is an extremely recent invention from the factory floors of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
In addition, the human brain part of the … well… human brain is extremely resource intensive. It takes a looooot of energy to keep that 3-pound wad of soggy electrically charged bacon going, especially the prefrontal cortex.
And the human body, including the brain, would rather not spend excessive energy anywhere because it never knows when it might need energy to flee a predator. (The fact that the human brain knows we have no predators doesn’t make a lick of difference to the reptilian/mammalian aspects that are in charge of resource allocation.)
Also, it’s slow. It is so slow compared to the other brain systems, and the brain would prefer to work fast with less energy, which means reducing the amount of time to use the “thinky” brain, as I like to call it. (I’ve been using this term for months and I saw Eric Barker pick it up!)
Also, when the brain was evolving, there were spurts of activity, and then not a lot going on. You might be hunting and gathering for a while, and then you’d relax. So the brain didn’t evolve to move back and forth between different kinds of work either.
The brain prefers to concentrate on one thing at a time, because it’s less tiring. (How many times have I mentioned single-tasking as a way to be productive?)
Bottom line? You get about 4 hours a day of thinky work, good decision making, and problem solving. Everything else is tiring and busy instead of productive.
Business leaders and “thinky work”
As an entrepreneur or business owner, you’re doing a lot of problem-solving and decision-making for your business. So your prefrontal cortex is in high demand, and that’s why the brain is so important to you.
Everyone has about four hours of thinky work a day - assuming you’re keeping your productivity tank full with all the things that are not work but recharge your brain. Play, nutrition, exercise, hanging out with friends. If you’re skipping some of these because you’re so “busy” - guess what, you’re not filling up your tank and you get even fewer hours of good productive time.
However, those four hours don’t coincide at the same time for everyone. Depending on your sleep chronotype, or the hours that you’re awake and asleep (naturally), you might be very productive early in the morning or later in the afternoon, or anywhere between the two.
That’s why some productivity “gurus” swear by getting up early - because that’s their sleep chronotype. It isn’t mine, and getting up early would mess with my productivity time, so I don’t do it.
One of the biggest boosts you can give yourself in terms of productivity (in addition to doing the things like hang out with friends) is to do your thinky work as much as possible within your 4-hour window.
If you’re a writer, write during this time. Do your strategic planning during this time. If you’re a CPA, get your tax returns done during this time. Save phone calls and emails for a different time - and no, you don’t have to answer emails or phone calls right away. (That’s a discussion for another day.)
Why productivity apps and software don’t work
Many times more technology is just one more thing added to your to-do list. There are some apps and software that are necessary for running your business, like a CRM and accounting software.
But as far as apps dedicated to making you more productive, they’re probably just adding an unnecessary extra layer. If your people have to spend half an hour each day updating their tasks in project management software, that’s half an hour they could be doing actual work.
Mostly this is because technology is the problem for a lot of people who want to be productive because it’s distracting. The best way to accomplish a task is to work on it and focus just on that task until it’s done.
Not to work on it for a bit and get distracted by an email, come back to it and work on it for a bit until you get a message on social media, etc. The vibrations and dings and buzzes from your technology are making you much less productive, not more. You’re distracted, which means your brain has to switch from task to task, which is energy intensive and draining.
Recap
If you want to be productive, the biggest changes you can make are to learn how to work with your brain. Then you’ll be maximizing the time you have each day to solve problems and make decisions. Technology aimed at productivity is part of the problem, not the solution.
Grab your productivity planner to be more effective here.