5 Tips to Boost Brain Power and Productivity

Achieving business success requires more than collecting advanced degrees and learning sales and marketing strategies. These things are useful, but we are so ‘dis-integrated’ in our thinking these days that we miss the forest (the big picture) because we are so busy trying to cut down trees (“doing stuff” and gathering information).

We need to integrate and do both, and do it with clarity and a clear and passionate ‘why’. Gaining clarity and ‘why’, though, is a product of making time to slow down and reflect. If we do it this way, paradoxically, we’ll likely get more done easier, with genuine productivity, and in less time. Now wouldn’t that be nice?

You may also start to enjoy your life again as you find more time for relationships and self-care. Maybe you can even nurture the source of your very life force—your spirit!

I have personally and experientially found out, even before the brain science started to document it, that self-mastery requires a tangible understanding of how to retrain our brain. Why retrain? Because for the most part, the way most people have wired their brain does not serve their highest good or support their true potential.

In this post, however, I want to focus on five things you can do to begin to boost your brain’s power and efficiency, even if you don’t yet understand techniques to rewire it. Here are 5 Tips to Boost Brain Power and Productivity the ‘soft’ and powerful way:

Stop Multi-tasking – This dumbs down your brain’s capacity to function laser-like to functioning like a 40-watt bulb. Not smart. It creates ADD-like symptoms and creates stress in your body, which is not good for brain cells. Also, being busy is not the same thing as being productive.

Get a Healthy Night’s Sleep – Sleep allows restoration. You don’t want to run your brain into the ground, do you? Our body needs to restore itself; it has an amazing capacity for self-healing, if we allow it.

Nutrition – Blueberries and Omega-3 are reported to be healthy for the support of brain cell vitality. I typically have one or both every day in some form. Also, drink plenty—typically 64 ounces—of clean water per day. Dehydration is toxic to brain cells!

Mindfulness – This form of meditation has been supported by research to allow the brain to focus better; slow down busy-brain; stimulate brain cell growth; reduce stress; and increase EQ (even IQ per some reports), creativity, concentration, immune system function, and on and on. Why aren’t they teaching this in schools?

Aerobic Exercise – Increasing oxygenation of the brain from increased blood flow/circulation is a way to stimulate new brain cells, as well as to increase metabolism, energy and alertness. Have you exercised today? It may be helpful to add that to your to-do list, yes?

As you can probably tell, I’m an advocate for breaking out of the mode and truly innovating. We can’t have health, wealth, and happy relationships if we keep doing things the old way. Don’t expect to be truly productive if you never take the time to slow down enough to restore, rest, and rejuvenate. Cramming in ‘hard skills’ without the balance of ‘soft skills’ will kill you—or haven’t you noticed the alarming rise in depression and chronic disease statistics?

Is this due to aging alone? Of course not! I’ve met too many over-90-year-olds to know that this is not the case. The secret is also in the ‘how’: how you think and feel. You may want to make the time to learn how to manage your brain in a way that supports you instead of “dis-integrates” you.