There is no need to take a break if you’re on a roll though, Trougakos advises. For some people, working over an extended period can be revitalising—you get into a zone. It is only when you’re forcing yourself to go on that you should stop.
Research from the University of Notre Dame even shows that sleeping shortly after learning new information is the most beneficial for recall.
Notre Dame psychologist Jessica Payne and colleagues studied 207 students who habitually slept for at least six hours per night. Payne randomly gave each student information to study at either 9am, or 9pm, allowing for the 9am team to be awake for the rest of the day, while the 9pm, went to sleep. She tested these students on their recall after 30 minutes, 12 hours, and 24 hours. She found that after 12 hours, those students who slept shortly after studying had a better overall memory. After 24 hours, when both teams were well-rested, all students had superior memory recall.
“Our study confirms that sleeping directly after learning something new is beneficial for memory,” Payne says.
In a world where we believe to be more successful you have to work longer hours, perhaps it’s time for a change, or even time for a break. Payne will be presenting these and other findings at the 2013 NeuroLeadership Summits in Sydney in June this year.
5. Optimise your peak time
What if you aligned everything in your schedule according to your body’s biological clock? New research is showing there’s a peak time for all activities, from when you should think critically to the best time for a tweet.
People run on circadian rhythms that are patterns of brainwave activity, hormone production, cell regeneration and other biological activities linked to our 24-hour daily cycle. Disruption of these rhythms can be quite harmful. Steve Kay, a professor of molecular and computational biology at the University of Southern California, says problems such as diabetes, depression, dementia and obesity, can develop from not listening to our body’s clock.
If you get paid to think critically, try to get most of your work done in the late morning, right after a warm shower. This will motivate your body’s clock by raising its temperature and preparing your working memory, alertness and concentration for getting things done. Anytime before noon is the best for when it comes to focusing because the afternoon (12pm-4pm) is prime time for distractions according to recent research led by Robert Matchock, an associate professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University.
If you get paid to think creativity, most adults perform their best right as they begin to slump in terms of wakefulness. Martin Moore-Ede, chairman and chief executive of Circadian, a training and consulting firm, says at around 2pm, sleepiness tends to peak. This can boost creativity. When you’re fatigued, your mind can’t stay focused and you drift in and out of all these different avenues in your mind, which allows for you to free associate and be open to new ideas.
In summary, it turns out that if you want to be most effective, letting go of the need for your own conscious mind to do all the problem solving might be the key. Let your unconscious do more work, whether through napping or distractions, and try seeing things through the eyes of others. Finally, quite counter-intuitively, perhaps others know more about us than we do ourselves.
