High levels of stress affects our ability to think and perform at our best and can actually start to make some areas of our brain deteriorate. Fortunately, rest helps the brain ‘grow back’ to normal function. How much rest do we need? Coincidentally, it takes four weeks for some brain regions to grow back to normal size. If you haven’t taken four weeks holiday in a while, now could be a good time to start.

In a study of medical students who crammed for three weeks before final exams, it was shown that their cortex (the part of the brain that learns, controls behaviour and helps us to think critically) actually began to shrink. A smaller cortex means less ability to do all the things that make you valuable in work and life and help you achieve your goals.

The student’s brains eventually returned to normal size, but only after four weeks of rest. While some long weekends and a few short breaks here and there help us to recharge in the short term, our long term brain health and our ability to perform requires us to have some longer breaks as well.

Here are some tips for making this more effective:

1)     Get away

If possible, get away. Away from work and away from home. This makes sure that there is no feeling of ‘oh, I really should be doing x’ around the home or home office

2)     Turn off the office

Set up your auto-responder and divert your phone. You might still see your email on your smart phone, but if you’ve set up an auto-reply, then you set the expectation for people that you won’t be getting replying until you are back from holidays.

3)     Spend time slowing down

Don’t go flat out every day on your holiday. Trying to cram things into your holiday can sometimes be as stressful as cramming them into your work day. Make sure you take time every day to stop and slow down. Maybe a long walk on the beach, or an hour reading a book – anything that takes your mind of

Take a look at your day and see what you complete. What we actually get done during our workday says a lot about where we focus our attention and what priorities we are carrying. The question is: do you like what your day says about you?

Our lives are filled with espoused priorities – the things we say are most important: things like our health, our families, being a good leader, being productive so that we can spend time on the most important things (whether that means work things or other things).

Do this quick exercise: make a list of just four things that are important to you – it can be at work or outside of work – it’s up to you. These should be the top four things that you feel are most important. Now, go back and have a look at your calendar or task list from yesterday (or the last work day). Take a good look at these. How many of these things actually helped you achieve those four ‘most important’ things?

If you’re like most people, this is a little frustrating. Quite often we find, through this exercise, that people spend a good deal of their day doing things that don’t get them closer to their goals. In some cases they do things that actually get them further away. In many cases, we can go the whole day (or whole week) completely neglecting one of those ‘most important’ things.

If you’re one of those people, take these simple steps to rethink the way you work and the things that get your attention:

1. Be clear about what is most important:

Think of the simple question that was asked earlier. What are the four things that are most important to you. If you had to think long and hard about that, then it is no wonder you don’t prioritise those things. When we are clear about what’s most important, then it becomes easier to factor those things into our days and weeks

2. Highlight simple behaviours that get you closer

Try to do something every day that impacts all four of the things on your list. These should be simple things that, when done regularly, will make a big impact in the long term. Don’t wait for opportunities to do huge things that make an enormous difference. Doing smaller things every day will eventually make a big impact.

3. Review every day for two weeks To embed the behaviours and keep you on track, review your most important things every day for two weeks. Answer this simple question for each one: ‘What did I do today that got me closer to …….?’

We all make choices every day about where to focus our time and energy. Sure, there will be things that you simply have to do, but there are always small choices along the way. Make sure you choose behaviours that will have the biggest impact on the most important things.

If you have the right inputs, you can create the right chemicals. You can create calming chemicals like serotonin or damaging, stress chemicals like cortisol.

To fight stress, the fuel we take in is critical. Here’s what we need: antioxidants to fight the damage that stress causes; omega 3 fats to rebuild cells and B-group vitamins to help produce calming chemicals that work in opposition to the stress response.

Antioxidants:

When we are under stress, we produce enormous amounts of energy and our cells (both body and brain) work overtime. This is why stress is exhausting. Just like a car, when we run our cells at high levels, high levels of by-products are also produced and it is these by-products (called free radicals) that eat away at our brain cells (and others) and hurt performance.

Antioxidants neutralise these free radicals. Foods high in antioxidants are coloured fruits and vegetables and berries. Article – 5 Foods Rich in Antioxidants

Omega 3 Fats:

Omega 3 Fats nourish our brains. After we are working overtime with the stress response, we need to repair the cells. We also need to make sure we have enough of the fuel that helps us to build new cell connections (this is learning) and lay down new behaviuors and habits. Omega 3 is that fuel.

Omega 3 Fats are found in some nuts, and fish such as salmon. Article – Best Omega 3 Foods

B-Group Vitamins:

These vitamins provide the inputs from which our calming chemicals are made. Like anything, if you don’t have enough ingredients, you can’t make enough of what you need. B-Group Vitamins, especially B6 and B12 are the ingredients for serotonin and GABA – the calming brain chemicals that help us to switch off the stress response so we can get back to normal.

Milk and milk products are one source of vitamin B. Article – Foods that are high in Vitamin B

The worst thing you can do when you are experiencing high level negative emotions is to try to suppress them. High-level emotion prevents us from thinking clearly, but so does trying to stop them, as our ‘emotional handbrake’ competes directly for resources with our rational brain. Research shows that the most immediate way to neutralise negative emotion is to write down succinctly what you are feeling. Describe it in three words or less and then get on with your day.

High-level emotions stop us from doing our best work. Our emotional centre, when switched on, actually causes our rational brain (the prefrontal cortex) to switch off. For some reason, we are hardwired so that these two regions cannot function at the same time. And usually it is the emotional area that gets the attention in these situations.

But the opposite is also true. When we switch on the rational brain, the emotional area starts to dampen down and this is something that most people don’t take full advantage of. Finding a succinct label for the emotion and writing it down seems to switch on the prefrontal area in such a way that it helps to switch off the emotional region.

Students with high levels of performance anxiety performed thirty percent better on exams when they were asked to succinctly describe their emotions (in written form) just prior to sitting the test.

Every manager has at least one person who isn’t hitting their targets. You really want them to do better, but do you sometimes sabotage that by managing them like underachievers?Here are some tips for helping those who are languishing.

We want our people to perform at their best. No doubt about that. Regardless of your personal intentions – whether you want to look good as a manager or you want to make sure your business stays healthy, we all want our people to do their best work.

When people start to underperform, when they start to let us down, our initial impulse is to take back some control. We might decrease some responsibilities, take back some of the project, or micro manage them just a little in order to make ourselves feel more comfortable. This is human nature. We have a goal that is being threatened, so we take back some responsibility.

But how does this impact the person doing the work?

If we look at the way we manage our top performers, versus the way we manage our underperformers, we’d see two completely different management approaches. And while this seems logical on the surface, it seems ludicrous when you dig a little further. I’ll break down the logic:

You do ABC – and someone performs really well.

You have someone that isn’t performing well – and you really want them to do well – so you do XYZ, instead of ABC.

In other words, we manage high performers like high performers. And we manage underachievers like underachievers – even though we want them to be high performers.

That doesn’t sound so logical.

And a big component of this is a feeling of control. When we take control away from people, their ability to think critically, to problem solve and to control emotions and behaviours is compromised. As leaders, we tend to give our high performers a lot of control, and our underachievers less. This might end up being a self-fulfilling cycle.

In a study last year, a group of people were given a problem solving test and their scores were recorded. Each of the participants were then asked to describe a person in their lives that they thought was controlling. For 15 minutes, they were asked to describe the person, their actions and specific situations. After this interview, they were given another (equivalent) problem-solving test and each and every one of them performed about 30% worse.

Just the thought of someone controlling us decreases our ability to problem-solve by 30%!

But it turns out actual control isn’t completely necessary. In many research experiments using computer tasks, just the feeling of control can reignite someone’s performance. As with most things, perception is more important than reality.

So here are some key considerations for giving people the feeling of more control.

1)    Be more organized to delegate

To delegate well and give people control, you have to be more organized than when you simply do it yourself. Give yourself and your direct reports longer lead times, that allow them to get their work done, get some feedback and then redo it it if necessary. When your direct report gets it wrong too close to the deadline, you have very little choice but to take it back and do it yourself

2) Delegate pieces of projects, rather than the whole thing

In doing this, you’re bound to find things that people are proficient at. Remember, the sweet spot for development is at the juncture of challenge and support – too much of either is a poor recipe for learning. Give people pieces of the project that you are happy for them to control, rather than setting them up to fail by asking them to do the entire thing.

3) Create the perception of control

People always need to feel like they control something. There are always things that we have no control over – such as deadlines. But there are also things that we can make sure people do have control over – that might be the way in which the work gets done, the timeline for milestones or even the color of the binding for the final report. These small things can actually make a big difference to the way people perform.

People do their best work when they feel like we trust them and when they have a sense of control. Not when they are operating on fear or worried about making mistakes.

These simple things might just help your underachievers turn their game around.

Coffee can be your best friend or worst enemy. If you follow these simple rules, coffee just might help you boost performance.

Let’s get one thing straight. Unless you have a particular intolerance or allergy, coffee is not bad for you. In fact, in recent years coffee has been linked to a decrease in various cancers an increase in longevity, and even weight loss. From a performance standpoint, coffee increases alertness, brain activation and decreases the rate of perceived exertion (that is, things seem easier when we have caffeine on board).

Like most things, coffee can also have detrimental effects – and sometimes it’s the habits associated with coffee that bring you down.

So here are the coffee rules. If you want your daily fix to boost your performance, not make you sick, then follow these.

1) Five is too many

The ‘safe’ amount of caffeine you should consume in one day is generally accepted to be about 300mg.  For argument’s sake, the average espresso has about 100mg (see this article). Two coffees are fine. Three should be fine. If they are only weak (different cafes can be as low as 50mg) then four would just scrape in. But five is definitely too many. This will create ‘caffeine rebound’ and physical dependency

2) Water + Coffee = Clever

Coffee will dehydrate you. Whenever you have a coffee, try to drink at least the same volume of water. This will keep you hydrated and this is a pre-requisite for cells that need to perform (including brain cells)

3) Ditch the sugar

The caffeine is doing the work. Coffee can actually be a great pick me up, especially around that 2-3pm slump. You don’t need a sugar kick as well. It only adds calories and while the coffee is good for you, the processed sugar generally is not. You can end up with a ‘sugar high’ which is inevitably followed by a ‘sugar low’, and by spiking your blood sugar levels like this regularly, you can damage the energy producing structures in your cells, leaving you with less energy in the long term

4) Pull back on milk

Go for skim milk if you can – this will decrease the fat intake and also calories in your day. If you really must, a full-cream coffee once a day isn’t going to kill you. If you drink a really milky coffee, like a latte, then try to roll back to a flat white, which has less milk. If you are trying to lose weight, then ditch the milk altogether – maybe a short macchiato or a long black (again, one milky coffee a day won’t kill you)

5) There’s no such thing as a ‘good’ muffin

Often what makes coffee so bad for you is the treat that you have with it. Ditch the muffin (usually heaped full of sugar and butter) in favour of a healthier snack. Maybe fruit or some avocado on toast. If you must have something kind of sweet, try some fruit toast with just a hint of margarine.

6) What’s your cut-off time?

If you have trouble getting to sleep at night, then you might need to re-think that last coffee of the day. Now, some people can have a cup of Java an hour before bed and be fine. Others will feel the effects of that 4pm cup when it’s time to hit the pillow. Know your cut-off time, and if you really need something, go for peppermint tea as a natural pick-me-up, without the caffeine.

Coffee can be a great booster, social excuse and/or sometimes an excuse to get out of the office for ten minutes. If you follow these rules, then coffee will remain your friend. And not become your enemy.