4 Ways Your Brain Is Holding You Back

4 WAYS YOUR BRAIN IS HOLDING YOU BACK

FROM IMPOSTER SYNDROME TO DESIGN FIXATION, HERE ARE THE WAYS YOUR BRAIN WORKS AGAINST YOU AND HOW YOU CAN OUTSMART IT.

BY NATASHA BURTON

You may not realize it, but your brain is working against you.

Think about it: How many times have you tried to focus in a meeting, only to succumb to a burning desire to check your Instagram?

Or how about the time you were told to come up with 10 new ideas—and found you couldn’t even brainstorm one?

Turns out there are a slew of psychological tendencies that can get in your way at work, affect your productivity, and even hurt your rise through the corporate ranks.

And as much as you may believe you’re the master of your mind, with all those synapses firing constantly there’s sure to be some brain activity that’s conspiring against you.

But we’re here to help you show your brain who’s boss.

Here are four all-too-common behavioral phenomena that have the potential to waylay your best professional intentions—along with some advice from psychologists on how to transcend them.

BRAIN BLOCKER #1: THE GOLDFISH EFFECT

Here’s a fun fact: The average attention span of a goldfish is nine seconds.

Here’s another one: According to research by Microsoft, the average attention span of a human now maxes out at eight seconds—that’s down from 12 in 2000.

That’s right—a fish can now concentrate longer than a human.

The reason we suffer from the Goldfish Effect? Our always-connected society leaves us in a constant state of sensory overload, making every digital notification suddenly the most important thing to attend to.

How It Can Hinder You at Work Between responding to emails, fielding multiple chats, and actually answering questions in real life, you get so bogged down in the minutiae of the day that by 5:30 your to-do list has only gotten longer.

And if you pride yourself on being able to juggle multiple tasks, you may be fooling yourself—University of Utah research suggests that only 2% of people are actually effective multitaskers.

How to Outsmart Your Noggin What you drown out can be just as important to your brain’s efficiency as what you absorb, according to a recent University of Rochester study.

Researchers found that people with high IQs were also the best at filtering out background stimuli—suggesting that smart people are good at suppressing information that is less important to the task at hand.

But if you’re not a natural at ignoring the not-so-crucial stuff, it is something you can get better at with time, says Ben Michaelis, a clinical psychologist and author of Your Next Big Thing: 10 Small Steps to Get Moving and Get Happy.

The key is to start small. Define a limited period of time—say, five minutes—when you