Holidays = Clear Minds. Use Yours Wisely!
When you get back from your holiday, don’t waste your fresh, clear mind on the small stuff you can do any time. Tackle the big stuff!
You would have noticed before that you have a refreshed, clear mind after a holiday or break. Especially a break where you haven't thought about work at all.
Thanks to neuro-imaging, we now have some very good science that explains the value, importance and function of mental rest.
The research suggests we need to place high value on using our fresh, clear mind after a holiday to first solve any tough problems/challenges before automatically filling it up with emails and other everyday tasks that waste this precious commodity.
Research in the lab by Mark Beeman, one of the fathers of neuroscience research into insight, shows that we tend to solve about 60% of problems with the Aha! Phenomenon.
The Aha! Phenomenon involves finding a sudden solution that you can't really explain. It's non-linear problem solving, and it's the way we solve a lot of complex problems.
A rested mind isn't stuck in the wrong answers
One aspect of the research on insight is work by Stellan Ohlsson. Ohlsson explores how we need to stop thinking about a problem one way before a new solution can emerge.
An easy way to explain this is: how often do we spontaneously think of an idea or a solution to something when we’re not even thinking about it? We might be driving in a trance, or automatically in a zone cooking a meal or doing a chore like mowing the lawns - and then we have an idea pop into our minds. If you are interested in understanding in more detail the science behind this I suggest you read David Rock’s book 'Your Brain at Work'.
Ohlsson also explains how when facing a new problem, people apply strategies that worked in prior experiences. That works well if a new problem is similar to an old problem. However, in many situations this is not the case, and the solution from the past gets in the way, stopping better solutions arising. The incorrect strategy creates an impasse.
"The projection of prior experience has to be actively suppressed and inhibited. This is surprising, as we tend to think that inhibition is a bad thing, that it will lower your creativity. But as long as your prior approach has the highest level of activation, you will get more refined variations of the same approach but nothing genuinely new comes to the fore."
- Stellan Ohlsson
So it turns out that the ability to stop one from thinking something is central to creativity.
After a holiday, this happens automatically as your circuits for solving a problem one way have become less dominant.
What this means at work is that new answers to tough problems are more likely to emerge into mind when you haven't thought about a problem for a while. So use this resource - your fresh, clear mind after a holiday - to tackle big challenges, not little things you can do anytime.
A quiet mind notices subtle signals
David Rock explains this in his book ‘Brain at Work’...
Beeman has found that people experiencing insights have an intriguing brain signal just before the insight occurs. The brain in some regions goes quiet, like a car going into idle.
According to Beeman, "About a second and a half before people solved the problem with insight they had this sudden and prolonged increase in alpha band activity over the right occipital lobe (the region that processes visual information coming into the brain)." The alpha activity disappeared exactly at the moment of insight.
Beeman continues, "We think the alpha activity signifies people sort of had an inkling that they were getting close to solving the problem, that they had some fragile weak activation that was hinting at the solution somewhere in the brain. They wanted to shut down or attenuate the visual input so they could decrease the noise in their brain, in order to allow them to see the solution better. Kind of like saying, 'Shut up, I am thinking about something.'"
You all do this all the time, probably without noticing. You are talking to someone then for a moment you avert your eyes, perhaps looking up, to be less distracted. It's the brain's way of shutting down inputs to focus on subtle internal signals. If you don't do this, insight is unlikely to occur.
So if we want to solve tough problems, it's useful to tackle things where our mind is quieter, with less overall activation. Like after a vacation.
A happy mind is an open mind
A scientific study by Subramniam et al explored the mechanics involved in how positive mood increases the likelihood of insight, a fact that has been established in other studies since 1987.
The findings showed that positive emotions open up a broader awareness of internal information, allowing us to access those more subtle signals discussed above. This has been recently fleshed out in research that shows that our field of vision opens up with a positive mood.
The opposite can be true as well - negative emotions like anxiety make it harder to distinguish subtle signals amidst greater ambient neural activity.
That happy feeling leftover from your vacation is not just a good feeling, it can be an asset for tough problem solving.
Distance gives us clarity
Think of a snowy mountain.
If you are a foot away you only see snow.
Twenty feet away you see a slope.
100 feet away you see the contours.
A thousand feet away you see that it's the biggest mountain.
The further away from an idea, the fewer amounts of details you hold in mind, and the more context you can perceive. Seeing the big picture, the connections between information, is also more likely to activate the right hemisphere, which appears important for insight.
So how can I make the most of my clear mind after a holiday?
Turn email notifications OFF. If you have to check it for emergencies, DO NOT be lured into answering any pointless emails. This will get in the way of your higher level thinking.
Use your rested, clear mind to do the harder thinking. What are your top 1-3 challenges?
Think about what your goals are for the next quarter, or what the next step in your career might be
Get distance. Walk up to the top of a hill. When we are too 'close' to an idea, either by knowing too much, having an agenda or experiencing strong emotions, it's hard to see an idea completely. A recent study on creativity showed that distance literally makes you more creative.
Journal your thoughts. Brain dump any hard wired thoughts to clear them from your consciousness to create room for new thoughts/ideas.
Laughter is compulsory every day to open your mind up to a new level of openness
Before starting your first day back at work
Re-read this blog and think carefully about what you are going to put your valuable, refreshed and clear mind to in your first few days back at work.
Value this precious resource highly. It may be your only chance to see the mountain you are on, to decide if you're taking the right path up, or even if it's the right mountain to be on at all.