In the first post of optimum human magazine, I want to talk about what you can do to improve your focus and creativity by using science and scientific tools in simple words so that everyone can benefit from them,
We often see people with with disastrous workplace that are focused and sharp, they are productive and successful, but why is that that even in cluttered environment, some people can be extremely focused?
we are going to talk about all the factors that affects our focus, things like, vision, light, noise in the room and listening to music or using noise canceling headphones. We are going to discuss a checklist of important things to provide a suitable environment for your body and brain to reach the optimal state to learn and be productive.
1- Vision And Light
let's divide our days into 3 stages. From the time you wake up until 8 hours later, our brain is in a unique state of high levels of dopamine and epinephrine which they set your brain in the state of alertness,
Being in a well-lit environment will impact your brain state throughout the whole day, Getting morning sunlight in your eyes 30-40 minutes after waking up, then you want bright lights specially overhead lights shining on you as safely as possible, Don't get crazy and blind yourself with lights, overhead headlights have a special impact on our Melanopsin ganglion cells (which is a fancy name you don't even need) which are mainly in our lower half of retinas, that create a state of alertness. in the phase 1 we want to be as alert as possible,
- Get Sunlight
- Turn on over head lights if you have those
- also you can have a ring light( Which influencers on TikTok use them)
- place your work desk close to a window so you can
In the second 8 hours, you want to start dimming your environment, not dark, you don't want to fall sleep, Turn off the over head lights. in the second phase, Dopamine and Epinephrine start to decrease in your body and hormones such as serotonin that put your brain in a creative mode. This phase is optimal for brainstorming , creating work and abstract thinking.
If you work with screens and computers, you may want to decrease the brightness,
people with darker eye colours tend to have higher tolerance for screen lights, on the other hand , people with lighter eye colours such as green tend to have higher sensitivity to screen lights,
- Reduce the lights
- Turn off the overhead lights if you have those on
- reduce the screen brightness
Now that we are approaching the 3rd phase, we want to change our lights from blue lights to yellow and red. around 5:00 pm, or 6:00 pm you may want to start doing this.
In the 2rd phase, you want to transition from normal white lights to yellow or red lights,
note the fact that normal white lights containing blue lights will kill the melatonin secretion process in your body and the more you keep looking at the screen, using the white lights, working in a lit environment, you interrupt our circadian cycle, to your body it is like a jet lag.
Except the time you need to stay awake and work on something like a college project or research for your paper, don't do this,
If you really have to stay awake, keep all the lights on, and keep your bladder full, Drinking water and not going to bathroom, turn on a neuron pathway from your bladder to your brain which makes you very alert, that is why you wake in in the middle of the night just to use the bathroom.
Visual Focus
After Light, We are going to discuss another factor related, Where our Visual focus is in our environment. In simple Terms, where do you put your book, tablet or screen. There is a great relationship between our alertness and visual focus. Let me drop some science in here! There are 6 muscles attached to our eyeballs. 4 of them are located at the top, the bottom , left and right, those muscles can move your eyeballs up, down, left and right. the left muscles can pull eyes at different angles.
when we are looking down, a certain Neurons are activated which makes us calm and stimulate the state of sleepiness. On the contrary, when we look up, the Neorons, stimulate alertness. when you are looking down below the level of your nose, you decrease your level of alertness.
If you want to be sharp focused and be fully alert, you want to locate the screen or whatever thing you are looking at, at the eye level or slightly above it. So if you want to work with a laptop, Screen or book, elevate it at least to your nose level or even higher. Another important factor is your posture. Ideally you want to be seated. Studies show, that our beautiful biological system makes us sleepy more and more, when we get our back closer to the ground or we elevate our feet close to our waist.
So far we have:
Brightly lit environment in early part of the day, get sunlights in your eyes 30-40 minutes after you wake up
Stay in a lit workspace, Have your over headlights on, if you can have a light ring in front of you
you want to start dimming the lights in the second phase of the day. specially over head lights as we get close to 5 or 6:00 pm, you change light colours into yellow and red
In the second phase, Turn on red colours and avoid blue lights.
do not look down, place your screen or laptop or book in your nose level or slightly higher
stay seated and fully erect, do not lay down on the couch or the bed. Avoid inclining
Have you ever experience the feeling that when you seat to work you can't focus or maintain focus? There are studies showing that even in most level of focus, Most people can only maintain focus for about 3 minutes. Except about 6 minutes to be able to engage in your task at hand. Our Neurochemical system takes some time to ramp on.
Another aspect for our vision for optimizing our workplace. You can build maximum level of focus when we are in Parvocellular mode(which is another fancy name).When we are narrow our vision to a single point in space, and we shrink our visual window, we place ourselves in Parvocellular mode in which it creates a heightened state of cognition and thinking. meaning ?
Put your hand on the sides of your face, like a horse with blinders. You need to put that screen or book or laptop in that window. If there are other object in this window then your visual window is big, On the other hand if you cannot see the entire thing, you are too close.
Most of us suffer from lack of focus, this can be a huge impact to tell our brain focus on the only object in our visual window. But This Focus can make your eyes Tired. So what should we do?
Every 45 minutes, You want to give your eyes a Panoramic vision at least for 5 minutes. Best way to do this is to take a walk outside and look at the distance. you want to relax your eyes. if you cannot walk outside. open the window look off the distance.
analytic work vs Creative thinking
We are going to discuss about how to use physical environment to shift your brain toward Analytic and detail oriented work or toward abstract and creative thinking.
The Cathedral Effect:
people who are in high ceiling environment ( Cathedral ) place their brain chemistry for abstract or creative thinking. on the other hand hand, people in low ceiling environments tend to be detailed and analytic thinking. It makes lots of sense. our ancestors would go to mountains and open areas then they would go to small spaces and our system has adapted to that.
when we are in a small space, our vision, our hearing and our physical movement is restricted.
when we are in an elevators we scale down our bodies more and natural impulse is to scale down ourself. But in open spaces we have an opener body language.
The influence of ceiling on People:
You can read the Article above. The study shows the different impacts of ceilings with different heights( 8 ft and 10 ft ). significant difference between the two situations. In the environment people had abstract and creative thinking whereas in the other environment, people were detail oriented and analytic. They asked people to generate word sets related to different topics. people had to link them to different concept. for more information, read the article above.
How to put this into work:
If you want to do creative work and thinking, Do it in the second phase of the day dim the lights start using red and yellow lights. work in an environment with high ceiling( outside, Patio or etc). place you screen or lap top of book at the eye level or above.
if you want to detailed and analytic work, Do it in the first 8 hours after waking up. the work that requires motivation, analyzing and detail should be done in a brightly lit environment with head lights on and low ceiling environment. seated and the screen or the book or the lap top at the eye level or slightly above. you can use a hat or hoodie to restrict your vision above your head.
The Auditory Environment
in this section we want to discuss if we should have music in the room or talk about the noise in environment. There are lots of data that shows very type of sound can improve cognition.
Background noise to optimize workspace:
Isocronic Tones : like --> beep (pause) beep
Monaural beats : repetitive beats just to one ear
binaural beats : repetitive beats for two ears
Binaural beats:
They usually contain two different pattern of beats for each ear. different patterns for different ears. our auditory system converge these two together and generate interaural time differences. It makes a third particular brain wave. Binaural beats create time differences and put the forebrain into cognition action and alertness. binaural beats that are useful for this type of brain function has 40 Hertz frequency (colzato 2017). it brings improve cognitive functioning at the level of Memory, reaction times and verbal Recalls. ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26612201/ )
If you want to use a binaural beats, Do not go with the ones with Rain or wind. just simple 40 Hertz Binaural Beats. (even +-5)
Try Listening to this beat before the task at hand. You don'y need to listen to it while you work but it seems to be beneficial. Also 40 Hertz binaural beats appear to increase striatal Dopamine Which highly impact focus and motivation. in general Dopamine hormone is the Motivation hormone which does incredible tasks in our bodies even including movement. Parkinson patients lose the ability to create Dopamine. Also people with higher we have Striatal Dopamine we blink more which is a sign of Alertness.
Sitting or Standing up ?
First of all I should mention Interruption in the process of our work is deadly to our work. It makes all the attention go away and it requires the brain to recalibrate all over again. You want to control everything around you; people, phone and etc. Think of this: your focus is like a Gem that eveytime it is interrupt, you must fight to get it back! Try saying No. Do not place your desk toward any doors. keep it toward a wall. The ability to put the phone, internet, people generally are distraction.
Now let's talk about Role of movement. Question! is it better to be seated or standing up?
well as it turns out, Both!
Just Seating is Terrible for us. people who seat for 5-6 hours a day have all sort of issues.
the people who combine standing and seating have the best situation. Studies show that people who decreased their seating time to half, had incredible improvement on reduced neck and shoulder pain, improved cognitive conditioning. ( https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/21/11604 )
This shows we should spend half of our time seating and the other half standing up.
what we can do:
Get adjustable Desks
elevate your screen or book or Laptop
I Tried to make it as simple as possible. I always struggled to maintain focus and I did not know what I was doing wrong. Now I gave you tools and information you need to be set to optimize your workspace.
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