“Maintaining productivity as an effective decision-maker, innovator, strategist and planner necessitates continued development and sharpening to take advantage of the brain’s vast capacities,” Chapman said. However: “Neglecting your cognitive health and allowing your brain to lose its mental edge with routine [life activities] rather than innovative thinking has unnecessary and deleterious economic, social and personal ramifications.
In our always-on connected society, more and more people express concerns about feeling mentally exhausted, and experience memory lag and information overload. Many of us may therefore conclude that we need a vacation or some downtime, when the actual remedy needed may be a boost in brain health.
Here are the six brain-boosting habits:
1. Limit multitasking.
Multitasking diminishes mental productivity, elevates brain fatigue and increases stress.
2. Get an adequate amount of sleep.
Make sure you regularly get seven-to-eight hours of sleep. Information is consolidated in the brain at a deeper level of understanding during sleep.
3. Commit to an exercise routine.
Get 30 minutes of aerobic exercise three to four times a week, to improve memory and increase attention and concentration and brain blood flow in the brain-memory area.
4. Construct bottom-line messages.
Summarize your task-assignment reading, training seminars, articles, movies you see or books read. Abstracting novel ideas, versus remembering a litany of facts, builds a brain with an enhanced long-term memory for global ideas and the ability to retrieve fundamental facts.
5. Laser-focus on important tasks.
Block out information that is relatively unimportant. Limiting the intake of information is a key brain function associated with brain health.
6. Stay motivated.
A motivated brain builds faster and more robust neural connections. Identify your passions and learn more about them.
Resources: Entrepreneur.net