In Sum Total
Better awareness to better actions
As a student of cognitive science, the insatiable thirst to understand the human mind has kept me ON always.
In grad school, when i was introduced to the information processing model for the first time, I was in awe with the human brain. I guess that was the first time I fell in love with life-sciences.
Look closely: humans have an amazing capacity to process complex information. Our brain can bring order out of chaos. It can place people, words, and behaviour into patterns that make sense to us. Our brain has an attention filter that helps us find patterns in the information we see and hear. This helps us know what to pay attention to and what we can safely ignore.
In the caveman days, it helped us be alert to predators. In the information age, it helps us identify data that impacts the way we live our life. How fascinating?
Human perception as a function blew my mind. The open questions like below kept my curiosity high.
Genetically speaking, we are only 2% different from Chimps and yet why are we so advanced? What changed in us?
The best part is, we are only 0.1% different from fellow humans and yet we are so unique. What is making this happen?
A few folks are successful in their endeavour and many are not? Why?
Some waste time in stress and anxiety and some perform despite stress and anxiety? Why?
Everyone has the same amount of time but why do some make the most of it and many don’t?
& more
I took up Anthropology as an elective. A whole new understanding about societies and culture opened me up. More than culture, it kindled questions around cognition. I had a totally new meaning to the word distributed cognition by then. It was not so much about cultures but about cognition that excited me. This made me venture into areas that i never dreamt of going into.
It is almost 15+ years now. Every time I learn something new in psychology, physiology, economics, productivity, mindfulness, growth hacking, semiotics, linguistics, everything culminated into the cognitive science kitty. This was fascinating.
Two years ago I could not contain my curiosity to know more about neurobiology of our brains given the rise of first world problems (information management, knowledge handling, productivity, digital notes etc). It started there and went into hyper-learning mode of all things neuroscience. Connecting dots backwards, this is the best thing I did to myself. The investment of learning for two years gave me exponential returns both in work and in life.
I had new ways to look at my day job (user experience design). Not just product design, I was able to contribute better to business design and life design aspects as well. Little did I know that this is transformation. In short, neuroscience truly changed my life. It not only helped me transform but also helped me transform many lives as a mentor and a coach.
It changed my leadership style. It built me up as a better human. It gave me resilience. It made me more empathetic. It gave more facts than just beliefs. On that note, I shared my love for neuroscience these 30 days with you. I hope you are able to see life a little differently than before.
Did we not know already that we must eat well, sleep well, hydrate well and move well? Yet we don’t do it. I didn’t do it. I still suck. Many of my friends don’t. My children don’t. There must be something to this isn’t it?
As human beings we are impatient. We want the best outcomes. We want more but we want to spend less. We don’t want to understand how things work but we want it to work. We are not so curious to go and dig deep but we are slightly curious. We are biased and sloppy. We get distracted by life every moment. We can’t be present in the here and now. We know it is not healthy but we crave for it (sugar, alcohol etc). We search for excuses to prove coffee is good for us, wine is good for us etc. We want quick fixes. We don’t want to work hard. This fascinated me and I wanted to know more about the nature of the beast.
Neuroscience helps us to understand things better via hard facts and less murky ways. The more we understand the chemical architecture of our brain and the body, we can empathise with our nervous system better.
With AI giving extraordinary productivity, we are stepping into a different world. The so called first world problems are getting serious and will get even more serious in the days to come. Our pursuit of happiness and wellbeing is going be the biggest chase of the next century.
There was no time in history we had this level of convenience and ease of living but there is a different kind of threat to human wellbeing now. Our cognitive needs will take prime importance. The pandemic is going to be around cognitive fitness.
With the help of neuroscience, you will be able to see yourself separately from the human system. You can understand the ways of the body and the brain. You know that your boss is not a lion and that email will not harm you but your body doesn’t know it! This awareness may help you take better actions.
The biology is not changing for next 100 years (at-least) but the environment in which we live is changing rapidly and will change drastically in the days to come. Decoupling the systems will help us make changes to our current lives. Life design will become super important in our lives.
Last year when Elon Musk boasted about working close to 120 hours per week and being on the edge of a burnout. Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post and a friend of his, wrote him a letter that stated:
“You’re a science and data-driven person. You’re obsessed with physics, engineering, with figuring out how things work. So apply that same passion for science not just to your products but to yourself. People are not machines. For machines—whether of the First or Fourth Industrial Revolution variety—downtime is a bug; for humans, downtime is a feature.”
We need a new way to empathise with ourselves. Science shows that the brain starts to eat itself after chronic sleep deprivation.
Neuroscience helps us replace myths with scientific facts and allows us to rationalise good decision making. The old factory model of working doesn’t work with our new ways of working.
In the long term, an efficient employee is no longer the one who stays at the office until midnight, but the one who goes home to relax and switch off before returning to work the next day on top form. This is a mindset change that is needed among employers and leaders. The future of work must ensure the following happens.
We need more down time than before. We need naps during the day. We need more rest to rejuvenate.
We must change the office hours to flexible hours and trust our people with creative productivity. An environment fostering low cognitive load is a must.
We need more healthy food than ever before. The abundance of junk is detrimental to our wellbeing. Capitalism is sucking our wellbeing. We may need to induce scarcity in our lives for our own wellbeing.
We need community activities like laughing, walking, playing, hugging etc. We need to unwind together. Productivity needs a new definition.
We need both passionate love and compassionate love around us for the larger wellbeing.
Acceptance of who we are helps us to forgive who we are.
Being mindful of biology, psychology, personal context and mental states will enable us to deal with life better.
Eating well, sleeping well, moving well and hydrating well must become a norm.
A life filled with love, light and laughter will ease the cognitive load. It is not about being hard on self with cold water baths and intermittent fasts but being kind on our biology and neurology by giving less input to our bodies and brains will help us live at ease.
We are getting into a phase of life where we are going to deal with invisible struggles and unfathomable pain. Let’s gear up and be more compassionate. Mindfulness and awareness is a must whether we like it or not. Enlightenment is against our human biology and hence only 0.00001% make use of it. If it becomes 0.1% the world will truly be a better place to live.
🥂 to knowing!
I truly enjoyed writing everyday. I wrote the series more for me than for someone else. Thank you for travelling the distance with me. From here on, let us become more human by going practical and actionable. Let us get to the how from here on.
Yo! Thanks for reading. Means a lot to me as attention is the hardest currency 🙏
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