8 Rules for Your Business Brain

You work long hours, right?

Even longer sometimes to correct mistakes?
Crazy, isn’t it!

FACT

Working non-stop = mistakes.

FACT 

Your brain can handle only five to six hours of hard mental work. 

After that, deal with routine things like meetings (unless you are leading them, of course), e-mails, phone calls, To Do lists …. these usually require less mental effort.

FACT

Burnout is the enemy of a responsive, innovative business brain.

Here’s how you can support YOUR brain to perform to its peak.

8 Rules for Your Business Brain

  1. Work fewer hours.

And make the hours you are working count.

  1. Understand what needs to be done and why.

Eliminate irrelevant tasks.

  1. Track your time.

Plan to be ruthlessly efficient then you can block out non-work time.

  1. Don’t over-promise.

Be realistic about what you can achieve.

  1. Say no.

Learn to identify tasks you can’t/won’t/don’t want to do.

  1. Hire help.

Learn to delegate otherwise you end up working longer hours (and making mistakes and losing perspective). ‘You will have to learn how to not be a perfectionist and how to not be a control freak.’ Geil Browning, Emergenetics International

  1. Get a life.

Enjoy life outside work.

  1. Unplug. 

Give yourself blocks of time when you let your phone take messages, your emails gather collect unread. The world will not end!

For more reading on ways you can support your brain during the business day, read Boost Your Brain at Work.