Another import aspect of brain function is how a brain processes ‘input signals’. These signals can come through your eyes, ears and your skin. The more signals to process at any given time, the more ‘tired’ your brain becomes. In fact, your brain works like the CPU of your computer. The more apps you run at the same time (more signals), the harder your CPU runs (that’s why your computer gets warm and you hear the fan spinning).
I always like to have a lamp and a cup of hot drink on my desk while working; cozy.
While your modern CPU may have multiple ‘cores’, your brain has only one core. Amazingly, it’ very powerful and it can handle multiple inbound signals at the same time. This is why you can drive a car while listening to music and paying attention to road traffic at the same time! However, we all know that if we do too many things while driving a car (such as checking our phone), accidents may happen. This is because we ‘overload’ our brain with multiple signals and tasks, then our brain loses attention and get distracted from the core job (safely driving a car).
Reflecting this on how your work, it seems that it’s a bad idea to listen to music while trying to write a million-dollar business proposal or doing homework? Yes, it is indeed a BAD idea! Scientific studies in the past 10 years have shown evidence that ‘multi-tasking’ is a bad idea for works. The same goes to your work environment. If it is full of noises or people walking around you, then you cannot fully focus on your work. Although you can still work, the performance you have out of an 8-hr working day in such an environment is perhaps the same as spending 4 hours in a ‘good’ working environment (without listening to music and no distraction, of course).
Phone is a big distraction to work (do you know that?)
Now you know why some people can work for less hours but still have higher productivity than other people. ^_< I will show you exactly how to achieve this in part III of this blog series.
Dr. C. Richard Wu @ REEAConsulting.com
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