This article originally appeared on Business Insider.
Mithu Storoni, a neuroscientist and expert on mental stress, made three “radical” changes to the way she works after writing her latest book on optimizing workflow.
While researching “Hyperefficient,” a book about working efficiently in the age of AI, she realized the traditional 9-to-5 pattern of office work blocks creativity and doesn’t take into account the natural rhythm of the brain or a person’s individual needs, Storoni told Business Insider.
Data suggests the brain is better at performing certain tasks at certain times of the day, Storoni said. Creative, innovative problem-solving and thinking “peaks off-peak” early in the morning and late at night, Storoni said. In the mid to late morning, we tend to be more alert and able to do tasks that require deep focus, whereas, after lunch, it’s common to have an energy slump.
Most jobs will have an employee doing different types of work, from idea generation to admin, and each type requires a different mental state, she said. This means a rigid working schedule is ultimately inefficient.
“If you impose the same routine on everyone, you are actually preventing people from working at their best at what they’re doing,” Storoni said. “We need to radically rethink the way we work.”
There’s evidence to suggest that flexibility leads to a more productive workforce. In the 2023 Future Forum Pulse survey — which is backed by Slack and collected data from 10,646 knowledge workers across the US, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, and the UK — 39% of people with full schedule flexibility reported higher productivity scores than those who had no control over their hours.
In the book, Storoni outlines the three “gears” of the brain: with gear one being a daydreaming, relaxed state, gear two being the sweet spot for focus, and gear three being a hyperaroused, stressed mode. She shared the measures she takes to keep herself in gear two when working.
She stressed that this isn’t about “hacking the system” in an attempt to be as consistent as a computer or force your brain to work in a certain way but rather encouraging the brain to work the way it wants to work.
Schedule tasks around brain rhythm
As much as possible, Storoni now schedules her working day around the type of tasks she needs to do. “I work according to the time of day,” she said.
Typically, she starts her day with a workout, but if she needs to do something creative, like write a piece for a magazine, she’ll block off that time for work and find another time to exercise.
Storoni is mainly freelance, which gives her more flexibility than a salaried employee. But provided you have at least some agency over when you do which tasks, this idea could be applied to a typical working day, she said.
She does something creative when she has a mental block
When Storoni hits a wall, she leaves her desk and does something creative. “Even if it’s not actually working on that creative problem, I do something parallel that’s creative,” she said. It helps stimulate her imagination and get the juices flowing.
Taking a break to do something creative can help with writer’s block. Daniel de la Hoz/Getty Images via BI
This could be reading some fiction, listening to an audiobook on a walk, or even something more active like painting or drawing. “That puts me into the right state of mind for when I come back and overcome that mental block,” she said.
Taking time away from the screen is essential and doesn’t necessarily mean you have stopped working. “I go for a walk confident that actually, even though I’m not visually sitting and looking like someone who’s working, I know my mind is working,” she said.
This attitude helps her take breaks without feeling guilty or unproductive.
Shut off all potential avenues of incoming information
Maintaining a state of focus (gear two) can be hard and requires an element of self-control, Storoni said, so minimizing distractions can be very helpful.
When she’s doing focused or creative work, Storoni puts her phone face down on silent, pauses her email notifications, and doesn’t read anything.
“I don’t speak to anyone, I don’t take any messages, nothing until I’m out of that zone,” she said, adding: “As soon as you engage with something, you can’t say, ‘okay, we’re not processing this information.’ You have to because that’s what attention is.”
Having to process information from different streams at once can easily tip someone out of that focused zone as there’s too much competition for their attention. This means there are fewer resources for the task at hand, and the quality lessens, she said.
