The Off-Button For Your Brain

We evolved our emotions for our own benefit as a species. Even the “negative” ones:

• Stress keeps us safe by making sure we take important situations seriously
• Anger keeps us safe by protecting us from threats
• Disgust keeps us safe by helping us to avoid things that might cause disease
• Anxiety keeps us safe by ensuring we don’t get complacent
• Guilt keeps us safe by ensuring we can function as a community
• Sadness keeps us safe by ensuring we value things that are important to us, and learn to become averse to losing them
• …and so on

But that’s not always useful. What was once a very good response to a common source of fear (for example, a sabre-toothed tiger) is no longer a helpful response to a modern source of fear (for example, an important interview).

Sometimes it’s good to take the time and energy to process our feelings and the event(s) that prompted those feelings. Sometimes, we don’t have that luxury.

For example, if you are stressed about your workload? Then staying awake half the night thinking about it is only going to make your problems worse the next day.

So, how to switch that off, or at least put a pause on it?

The human mind tends to have a “negative bias”, evolved for our own protection. If something is “good enough”, we don’t need to worry about it, so we move on to the next thing, until we find something that is a problem, then we dwell on that. That’s not always helpful, and the good news is, there’s a way to flip the switch on this process:

Identifying the positive, and releasing the rest

This exercise can be done when you’re trying to sleep, or at any time you need a calmer, quieter mind.

Take a moment to notice whatever you’re experiencing.

If it’s something that feels good, or neutral, identify it with a single word. For example:

• Warmth
• Soft
• Security
• Smile
• Peace

If it’s something that feels bad, then instead of identifying it, simply say (or think) to yourself “release”.

You can’t fight bad feelings with force, and you can’t “just not think about them”, but you can dismiss them as soon as they arrive and move onto the next thing. So where your train of thought may previously have been:

It’s good to be in bed ➔ I have eight hours to sleep before my meeting ➔ Have I done everything I was supposed to? ➔ I hope that what I’ve done is good enough ➔ [Mentally rehearsing how the meeting might go] ➔ [various disaster preparations] ➔ What am I even going to wear? ➔ Ugh I forgot to do the laundry ➔ That reminds the electricity bill is due ➔ Etc

Now your train of thought may be more like:

Relief ➔ Rest ➔ But my meeti—release ➔ If I—release ➔ soft ➔ comfort ➔ release ➔ pillow ➔ smile ➔ release ➔ [and before you know it you’re asleep]

And if you do this in a situation where you’re not going to sleep? Same process, just a more wakeful result, for example, let’s move the scene to an office where your meeting will shortly take place:

Five minutes to go ➔ What a day ➔ Ok, I’d better clear my head a bit ➔ release ➔ release ➔ breath ➔ light ➔ chair ➔ what if—release ➔ prepared ➔ ready ➔ calm ➔ [and before you know it you’re impressing your work associate with your calm preparedness]

In summary:

If you need to stop a train of thought, this method may help. Especially if you’re in a situation where you can’t use some external distraction to keep you from thinking about the bad thing!

You’re probably still going to have to deal with the Bad Thing™ at some point—you’ve just recognized that now isn’t the time for that. Mentally postpone that so that you will be well-rested when you choose to deal with the Bad Thing™ later at your convenience.

So remember: identify the positive (with a single word), and anything else, just release.

In mathematics, there is a thing called the “travelling salesman problem”, and it is hard. Not just subjectively; it is classified in mathematical terms as an “NP-hard problem”, wherein NP stands for “nondeterministic polynomial”.

The problem is: a travelling salesman must visit a certain list of cities, order undetermined, by the shortest possible route that visits them all.

To work out what the shortest route is involves either very advanced mathematics, or else solving it by brute force, which means measuring every possible combination order (which number gets exponentially larger very quickly after the first few cities) and then selecting the shortest.

Why are we telling you this?

Executive dysfunction’s analysis paralysis

Executive dysfunction is the state of knowing you have things to do, wanting to do them, intending to do them, and then simply not doing them.

Colloquially, this can be called “analysis paralysis” and is considered a problem of planning and organizing, as much as it is a problem of initiating tasks.

Let’s give a simple example:

You wake up in the morning, and you need to go to the bathroom. But the bathroom will be cold, so you’ll want to get dressed first. However, it will be uncomfortable to get dressed while you still need to use the bathroom, so you contemplate doing that first. Those two items are already a closed loop now. You’re thirsty, so you want to have a drink, but the bathroom is calling to you. Sitting up, it’s colder than under the covers, so you think about getting dressed. Maybe you should have just a sip of water first. What else do you need to do today anyway? You grab your phone to check, drink untouched, clothes unselected, bathroom unvisited.

That was a simple example; now apply that to other parts of your day that have much more complex planning possible.

This is like the travelling salesman problem, except that now, some things are better if done before or after certain other things. Sometimes, possibly, they are outright required to be done before or after certain other things.

So you have four options:

• Solve the problem of your travelling-salesman-like tasklist using advanced mathematics (good luck if you don’t have advanced mathematics)
• Solve the problem by brute force, calculating all possible variations and selecting the shortest (good luck getting that done the same day)
• Go with a gut feeling and stick to it (people without executive dysfunction do this)
• Go towards the nearest item, notice another item on the way, go towards that, notice a different item on the way there, and another one, get stuck for a while choosing between those two, head towards one, notice another one, and so on until you’ve done a very long scenic curly route that has narrowly missed all of your targetted items (this is the executive dysfunction approach).

So instead, just pick one, do it, pick another one, do it, and so forth.

That may seem “easier said than done”, but there are tools available…

Task zero

We’ve mentioned this before in the little section at the top of our daily newsletter that we often use for tips.

One of the problems that leads to executive function is a shortage of “working memory”, like the RAM of a computer, so it’s easy to get overwhelmed with lists of things to do.

So instead, hold only two items in your mind:

• Task zero: the thing you are doing right now
• Task one: the thing you plan to do next

When you’ve completed task zero, move on to task one, renaming it task zero, and select a new task one.

With this approach, you will never:

• Think “what did I come into this room for?”
• Get distracted by alluring side-quests

Do not get corrupted by the cursed artefact

In fantasy, and occasionally science fiction, there is a trope: an item that people are drawn towards, but which corrupts them, changes their motivations and behaviors for the worse, as well as making them resistant to giving the item up.

An archetypal example of this would be the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings.

It’s easy to read/watch and think “well I would simply not be corrupted by the cursed artefact”.

And then pick up one’s phone to open the same three apps in a cycle for the next 40 minutes.

This is because technology that is designed to be addictive hijacks our dopamine processing, and takes advantage of executive dysfunction, while worsening it.

There are some ways to mitigate this:

Rebalancing Dopamine (Without “Dopamine Fasting”)

…but one way to avoid it entirely is to mentally narrate your choices. It’s a lot harder to make bad choices with an internal narrator going:

• “She picked up her phone absent-mindedly, certain that this time it really would be only a few seconds”
• “She picked up her phone for the eleventy-third time”
• “Despite her plan to put her shoes on, she headed instead for the kitchen”

This method also helps against other bad choices aside from those pertaining to executive dysfunction, too:

• “Abandoning her plan to eat healthily, she lingered in the confectionary aisle, scanning the shelves for sugary treats”
• “Monday morning will be the best time to start my new exercise regime”, she thought, for the 35th week so far this year

Get pharmaceutical or nutraceutical help

While it’s not for everyone, many people with executive dysfunction benefit from ADHD meds. However, they have their pros and cons (perhaps we’ll do a run-down one of these days).

There are also gentler options that can significantly ameliorate executive dysfunction, for example:

Bacopa Monnieri: A Well-Evidenced Cognitive Enhancer For Focus & More

Enjoy!