Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

When I taught at UBC – a fellow faculty rushed home after a brief cell conversation that reported her aging mom naked as a jaybird out on Main Street.

For the second time that week, the woman simply left home without her mental comfort zone – in this case - her clothes. Most people agree,  that some routines are worth holding onto in any civilized community. Fewer recognize, though, how the human brain rewires daily for ruts or renewal. How so?

Common practices and patterns stack up in your brain’s basal ganglia much like Word files stored in a computer. That nuclei cell collection holds hundreds of everyday routines most people take for granted. Removed or diseased … this brain function would do us in. Just as my friend’s mother drifted into the street without her clothes, certain conventions work in our favor.  

Without question,  we all depend on comfort zones – such as dressing before we head out to work.  Addictions to ruts or rigid routines … on the other hand …  will literally shrink the human brain. So what practices do we keep – and how can we distinguish?   

Over at Comfort Zones, and Other Impediments, Robert Hruzek defined a comfort zone as “… mental conditioning that causes a person to create and operate mental boundaries….” I see it more simply ... the opposite of comfort zone is creativity. You?

Speaking of creative ... Bob’s cool thumb task showed how habits are hard to beat.  You could say, when it comes to dressing before I hit the road for the day though – I’m glad they are.

My question is … How can human brains break out of ruts in ways that adapt for beneficial change?

Think of one peer who lives close to comfort zones daily and you’ll likely see an opinionated, bored and often discouraged worker. Now see another person who seems to rise like a phoenix out of ashes. The difference? You'll likely agree that age is rarely the key contrast between these two polar opposites.

Yet people who do the same thing over and over –literally rewire their brains for more of that inclination. They lean toward opinionated viewpoints - and lose sight of broader opportunities. The kind that transform entire organizations from narrow focus without vision – to far reaching visions.

Here are five tactics to reboot your brain – and rewire its plasticity for new neuron pathways:

1. Survey your multiple intelligences - then use any one weaker intelligence today.

2. Check out collective brainpower where you work and use your results to propose one workplace improvement to person you respect.

3. Include the top five ingredients for a healthy brain – in your diet this week.

4. Overcome boredom with one thing you do best today.

5. Try each of Einstein’s 5 keys to curiosity … persistence, risk, alternative thinking, imagination, questioning.

We all know people who run brain dead meetings for losing deals. And yet few of us will win Einstein’s 1921 Nobel Prize for the kind of curiosity that led to theoretical physics.

What’s your quest and how will you hitch your wagon to its star today?