REBOOT YOUR MOTIVATION
Hack your brain’s reward systems to restore your get-up-and-go
As a tumultuous 2020 draws to a close, we’d forgive you for wanting to give your brain a welldeserved break. But at this time of year, snowballing
Yuletide chores can easily become an avalanche. That’s why our gift to you is a mental hack that’ll help you avoid starting 2021 buried beneath all the jobs you’ve not got round to yet.
“Take 10 seconds to figure out how each task aligns with something meaningful,” advises neuroscientist and productivity specialist Gabija Toleikyte. “For instance, if the idea of lengthy queues for your partner’s present is a drag, think about how being a good husband is important to you.” That might sound like self-help talk, but it’s a strategy based on sound science.
A 2008 study by researchers from McGill University, the
University of Ottawa and the University of Massachusetts found that reframing a task as something you want to do, rather than have to do, makes you 24% more likely to succeed.
“When we do things that align with our values, it supplies our mind’s primal systems with dopamine. This is the foundation of motivation,” Toleikyte says. To sustain this productive drive, however, the prefrontal cortex – your mind’s concentration centre – requires an occasional short pit stop. And we mean short: as Virginia Commonwealth University research found, hourly 60-second micro-breaks dedicated to reading or YouTube improve your attention levels more than longer breathers. Taking regular breaks can increase the time you can put your prefrontal cortex to good use, from a maximum of four hours per day to six. And the final fix for success is to forget multitasking, says Toleikyte. “Your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. Juggling many jobs amounts to ineffectively switching between them. Focus on one and your mind employs a higher concentration system, the dorsal attention network, to complete tasks faster.” Consider your to-do list done.