Turn off your brain to get ahead in 2022

Committed to career success? When you turn your computer on, turn your brain off.

I understand your hesitation. Keeping your brain turned on might seem like an essential part of getting ahead in business, but the plain fact is that many people have long and successful careers without using their brains even once. If you doubt me, take a closer look at your manager.

To be fair, people who are bad thinkers are usually good listeners. They listen because they know that no course of action they could think up on their own will be as good as what some doofus in management tells them to do.

They’re wrong, of course, but by the time the no-brainers figure that out, they’re so high up the management chain and so lavishly overpaid, it doesn’t really matter.

If you’re trying to decide whether to use your brain in 2022, it might interest you that Hallie Levine has been doing some thinking on the subject. Her recent story “Four Smart Ways to Keep Your Brain in Tiptop Shape,” in The Washington Post, provides a useful road map for those who resolve to do the exact opposite.

No. 1: Monitor your health.

To keep your brain in tiptop condition requires aerobic exercise, as well as strenuous strength training. Putting up with your boss, while it does require strength, does not count.

You could make your New Year’s resolution to create a detailed spreadsheet of your exercise requirements and follow it. Or you could file it somewhere in the cloud and get on with your slacker lifestyle.

As your body slowly disintegrates, do keep your hearing in top shape. Thirty-six studies, published in a medical journal for otolaryngologists, determined that “age-related hearing loss was linked to an increased risk of cognitive decline.” Exactly what we’re looking for.

I imagine the article ignores the advantages of tuning out all the criticisms and complaints you would otherwise be hearing (and isn’t that just like an otolaryngologist?). Plus, wouldn’t it be nice when, after blowing off another important assignment, you could explain, “Gee, I guess I wasn’t wearing my hearing aids”?

Be warned — depending on the acuity of your management, this excuse will wear out by March or April. Then, you’ll have to go back to “the printer ate my assignment, and the dog ate my printer.”

No. 2: Keep moving.

If you want to be a big thinker, you need a big hippocampus. That’s “the part of your brain involved in verbal memory and learning.” So, if a co-worker asks, “Did you see the hippocampus on the new VP in marketing?” you’ll know to stay clear.

By keeping your body in constant motion, you will increase blood flow to your hippocampus, which is why you should resolve to spend as much time as possible lying on your couch, watching moody Norwegian criminals try to avoid even more depressed Norwegian detectives.

If you do have to walk somewhere, walk off your job. And leave your hippocampus behind. Where you’re going, you won’t need it.

No. 3: Eat brain-friendly foods.

A Mediterranean-style diet “of grains, nuts, beans, and healthy fats from foods such as fatty fish” appears most protective for brain health, which is the best argument I know for a diet of burgers, cinnamon buns and Hershey’s chocolate syrup.

As for eating lots of fish, that’s expensive, unless you work at a big bank and the company cafeteria offers an all-you-can eat caviar bar. (Try the beluga caviar with uncirculated gold coins. It’s yummy!)

For those still thinking they want to use a tiny part of their brains in 2022, a sensible option is a diet of goldfish. The fish, not the cracker. Many children are given goldfish as presents, and while nibbling at Junior’s fish tank may cause tears, it’s worth trying. If anything will get you to turn off your brain, a goldfish diet will do it.

No. 4: Do what you love.

If you are one of those weirdos who loves their job, this will be a problem. Resolve in 2022 that every time you are given work that will require thinking, you will do something completely mindless instead. Reading this column is an excellent choice for brain-numbing behavior. Work Daze comes out once a week and before very much of the year has passed, you will be well on your way to flipping the “on” switch in your brain to “off,” permanently.

This will take commitment and it will be painful, but trust me, your hippocampus will love you for it.