Working Smarter < Working Brighter!

10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

When it comes to working smarter, not harder, there’s plenty of advice and honestly, it’s mostly quite sensible. For example:

(Nice to see they featured a method we talked about last week—great minds!)

But, as standards of productivity rise, the goalposts get moved too, and the treadmill just keeps on going

Not that these things are confined to Millennials, by any stretch, but Millennials make up a huge portion of working people. Ideally, this age group should be able to bring the best of both worlds to the workplace by combining years of experience with youthful energy.

So clearly something is going wrong; the question is: what can be done about it?

Workers of the World, Unwind

A knee-jerk response might be “work to rule”—a tactic long-used by disgruntled exploited workers to do no more than the absolute minimum required to not get fired. And it’s arguably better for them than breaking themselves at work, but that’s not exactly enriching, is it?

This is Brittany Berger, founder of “Work Brighter”.

She’s a content marketing consultant, mental health advocate, and (in her words) a highly ridiculous human who always has a pop culture reference at the ready.

What, besides pop culture references, is she bringing to the table? What is Working Brighter?

❝Working brighter means going beyond generic “work smarter” advice on the internet and personalizing it to work FOR YOU. It means creating your own routines for work, productivity, and self-care.❞

Brittany Berger

Examples of working brighter include…

Asking:

  • What would your work involve, if it were more fun?
  • How can you make your work more comfortable for you?
  • What changes could you make that would make your work more sustainable (i.e., to avoid burnout)?

Remembering:

  • Mental health is just health
  • Self-care is a “soft skill”
  • Rest is work when it’s needed

This is not one of those “what workers really want is not more pay, it’s beanbags” things, by the way (but if you want a beanbag, then by all means, get yourself a beanbag).

It’s about making time to rest, it’s about having the things that make you feel good while you’re working, and making sure you can enjoy working. You’re going to spend a lot of your life doing it; you might as well enjoy it.

❝Nobody goes to their deathbed wishing they’d spent more time at the office❞

Anon

On the contrary, having worked too hard is one of the top reported regrets of the dying!

Article: The Top Five Regrets Of The Dying

And no, they don’t wish they’d “worked smarter, not harder”. They wish (also in the above list, in fact) that they’d had the courage to live a life more true to themselves.

You can do that in your work. Whatever your work is. And if your work doesn’t permit that (be it the evil boss trope, or even that you are the boss and your line of work just doesn’t work that way), time to change that up. Stop focusing on what you can’t do, and look for what you can do.

Spoiler: you can have a blast just trying things out!

That doesn’t mean you should quit your job, or replace your PC with a Playstation, or whatever.

It just means that you deserve comfort and happiness while working, and around your work!

Need a helping hand getting started?

Like A Boss

And pssst, if you’re a business-owner who is thinking “but I have quotas to meet”, your customers are going to love your staff being happier, and will enjoy their interactions with your company much more. Or if your staff aren’t customer-facing, then still, they’ll work better when they enjoy doing it. This isn’t rocket science, but all too many companies give a cursory nod to it before proceeding to ignore it for the rest of the life of the company.

So where do you start, if you’re in those particular shoes?

Read on…

*straightens tie because this is the serious bit* —just kidding, I’m wearing my comfiest dress and fluffy-lined slipper-socks. But that makes this absolutely no less serious:

The Institute for Health and Productivity Management (IHPM) and WorkPlace Wellness Alliance (WPWA) might be a good place to get you on the right track!

❝IHPM/WPWA is a global nonprofit enterprise devoted to establishing the full economic value of employee health as a business asset—a neglected investment in the increased productivity of human capital.

IHPM helps employers identify the full economic cost impact of employee health issues on business performance, design and implement the best programs to reduce this impact by improving functional health and productivity, and measure the success of their efforts in financial terms.❞

The Institute for Health and Productivity Management

They offer courses and consultations, but they also have free downloadables and videos, which are awesome and in many cases may already be enough to seriously improve things for your business already:

Check Out IHPM’s Resources Here!

What can you do to make your working life better for you? We’d love to hear about any changes you make inspired by Brittany’s work—you can always just hit reply, and we’re always glad to hear from you!

Don’t Forget…

Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

Recommended

  • Inverse Vaccines for Autoimmune Diseases
  • The Recipe For Empowered Leadership – by Doug Meyer-Cuno
    Get the practical guide to leadership you’ve been waiting for. No fluff, just real advice on how to be a great leader. Available on Amazon now!

Learn to Age Gracefully

Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Strawberries vs Cherries – Which is Healthier?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing strawberries to cherries, we picked the cherries.

    Why?

    Both are great, and an argument could be made for either! But here’s our rationale:

    In terms of macros, as with most fruits they are both mostly water, and have similar carbs and fiber. Nominally, cherries have the lower glycemic index, so we could call this category nominally a win for cherries, but honestly, they’re both low-GI foods and nobody is getting metabolic disease from eating strawberries, so it’s fairer to consider this category a tie.

    Looking at the vitamins, strawberries have more of vitamins C, B9, E, and K, while cherries have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, and choline. Thus, a modest win for cherries here.

    When it comes to minerals, strawberries see their day: strawberries have more iron, magnesium, manganese, and phosphorus, while cherries have more calcium, copper, and potassium. By the numbers, a win for strawberries.

    So far, so tied!

    What swings it into cherries’ favor is cherries’ slew of specific phytochemical benefits, including cherry-specific anti-inflammatory properties, sleep-improving abilities, and post-exercise recovery boosts, as well as anti-diabetic benefits above and beyond the normal “this is a fruit” level.

    In short, both are very respectable fruits, but cherries have some extra qualities that are just special.

    Of course, as ever, enjoy either or both; diversity is good!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Cherries’ Health Benefits Simply Pop

    Enjoy!

    Share This Post

  • Make Social Media Work For Your Mental Health

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Social Media, But Healthy

    Social media has a bad reputation, and rightly so. It’s calculated to trick you into doomscrolling and rage-posting, and it encourages you to compare your everyday life to other people’s carefully-curated highlight reels.

    Rebalancing Dopamine (Without “Dopamine Fasting”)

    But it doesn’t have to be so.

    Find your community

    One of the biggest strengths social media has going for it is that it can, if used well, be a powerful tool for community. As for why that’s important from a health perspective, see:

    How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation

    Loneliness & isolation do, of course, kill people. By:

    • Accidents, e.g. household fall but nobody notices for a week
    • Depression and resultant decline (and perhaps even active suicidality)
    • Cognitive decline from a lack of social contact

    Read more:

    So, what’s “community” to you, and to what extent can you find it online? Examples might include:

    • A church, or other religious community, if we be religious
    • The LGBT+ community, or even just a part of it, if that fits for us
    • Any mutual-support oriented, we-have-this-shared-experience community, could be anything from AA to the VA.

    Find your people, and surround yourself with them. There are more than 8,000,000,000 people on this planet, you will not find all the most compatible ones with you on your street.

    Grow & nurture your community

    Chances are, you have a lot to contribute. Your life experiences are valuable.

    Being of service to other people is strongly associated “flourishing”, per the science.

    Indeed, one of the questions on the subjective wellness scale test is to ask how much one agrees with the statement “I actively contribute to the happiness and wellbeing of others”.

    See: Are You Flourishing? (There’s a Scale)

    So, help people, share your insights, create whatever is relevant to your community and fits your skills (it could be anything from art to tutorials to call-to-action posts or whatever works for you and your community)

    As a bonus: when people notice you are there for them, they’ll probably be there for you, too. Not always, sadly, but there is undeniable strength in numbers.

    Remember it’s not the boss of you

    Whatever social media platform(s) you use, the companies in question will want you to use it in the way that is most profitable for them.

    Usually that means creating a lot of shallow content, clicking on as many things as possible, and never logging off.

    Good ways to guard against that include:

    • Use the social media from a computer rather than a handheld device
    • Disable “infinite scroll” in the settings, if possible
    • Set a timer and stick to it
    • Try to keep your interactions to only those that are relevant and kind (for the good of your own health, let alone anyone else’s)

    On that latter note…

    Before posting, ask “what am I trying to achieve here?” and ensure your action is aligned with your actual desires, and not just reactivity. See also:

    A Bone To Pick… Up And Then Put Back Where We Found It

    Take care!

    Share This Post

  • Your Science-Based Guide To Losing Fat & Toning Up

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    This health coach researched the science and crunched the numbers so that you don’t have to:

    Body by the numbers

    Let’s get mathematical:

    Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) consists of:

    • Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): 70% of daily calorie burn (basic body functions, of which the brain is the single biggest calorie-burner)
    • Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT): 15% (the normal movements that occur as you go about your daily life)
    • Exercise Activity: 5% (actual workouts, often overestimated)
    • Thermic Effect of Food (TEF): 10% (energy needed for digestion)

    Basic BMR estimate:

    • Women: body weight (kg) × 0.9 × 24
    • Men: body weight (kg) × 24

    But yours may differ, so if you have a fitness tracker or other gadget that estimates it for you, go with that!

    Note: muscle burns calories just to maintain it, making muscle mass crucial to increasing one’s BMR.

    And now some notes about running a caloric deficit:

    • Safe caloric deficit: no more than 500 calories/day.
    • Absolute minimum daily intake: 1,200 calories (women), 1,500 calories (men) (not sustainable long-term).
    • Tracking calories is useful but not always accurate.
    • Extreme calorie restriction slows metabolism and can lead to binge-eating.
    • Your body will adjust to calorie deficits over time, making long-term drastic deficits ineffective.

    Diet for fat loss & muscle gain:

    • Protein Intake: 1.5–2g per pound of body weight.
    • Aim for 30g of protein per meal (supports muscle & satiety).
    • Protein has a higher thermic effect (20-30%) than carbs (5-10%) & fats (2-4%), meaning more calories are burned digesting protein.
    • Fats are essential for hormone health & satiety (0.5–1g per kg of body weight).
    • Carbs should be complex (whole grains, vegetables, fruits, etc.).
    • Avoid excessive simple carbs (sugar, white bread, white pasta, etc) to maintain stable hunger signals.
    • Hydration is key for appetite control & metabolism (often mistaken for hunger).

    Exercise for fat loss & muscle gain:

    • Resistance training (3-5x per week) is essential for toning & metabolism.
    • Cardio is NOT necessary for fat loss but good for overall health.
    • NEAT (non-exercise movement) burns significant calories (walking, taking stairs, fidgeting, etc.).
    • “Hot girl walks” & daily movement can significantly aid weight loss.
    • Women won’t get “bulky” from weight training unless they eat like a bodybuilder (i.e. several times the daily caloric requirement).

    Some closing words in addition:

    Poor sleep reduces fat loss by 50% and increases hunger. High stress levels lead to fat retention and cravings for unhealthy foods. Thus, managing stress & sleep is as important as diet & exercise for body transformation!

    For more on all of this (plus the sources for the science), enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    How To Lose Weight (Healthily) ← our own main feature about such; we took a less numbers-based, more principles-based, approach. Both approaches work, so go with whichever suits your personal preference more!

    Take care!

    Share This Post

Related Posts

  • Inverse Vaccines for Autoimmune Diseases
  • Heal Your Stressed Brain

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Rochelle Walsh, therapist, explains the problem and how to fix it:

    Not all brain damage is from the outside

    Long-term stress and burnout cause brain damage; it’s not just a mindset issue—it impacts the brain physiologically. To compound matters, it also increases the risk of neurodegenerative diseases. While the brain can indeed grow new neurons and regenerate itself, chronic stress damages specific regions, and inhibits that.

    There are some effects of chronic stress that can seem positive—the amygdalae and hypothalamus are seen to grow larger and stronger, for instance—but this is, unfortunately, “all the better to stress you with”. In compensation for this, chronic stress deprioritizes the pre-frontal cortex and hippocampi, so there goes your reasoning and memory.

    This often results in people not managing chronic stress well. Just like a weak heart and lungs might impede the exercise that could make them stronger, the stressed brain is not good at permitting you to do the things that would heal it—preferring to keep you on edge all day, worrying and twitchy, mind racing and body tense. It also tends to lead to autoimmune diseases, due to the increased inflammation (because the body’s threat-detection system as at “jumping at own shadow” levels so it’s deploying every defense it has, including completely inappropriate ones).

    Notwithstanding the “Heal Your Stressed Brain” thumbnail, she doesn’t actually go into this in detail and bids us sign up for her masterclass. We at 10almonds however like to deliver, so you can find useful advice and free resources in our links-drop at the bottom of this article.

    Meanwhile, if you’d like to hear more about the neurological woes described above, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • Healing Cracked Fingers

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small

    ❝Question. Suffer from cracked (split) finger tips in the cold weather. Very painful, is there something I can take to ward off this off. Appreciate your daily email.❞

    Ouch, painful indeed! Aside from good hydration (which is something we easily forget in cold weather), there’s no known internal guard against this*, but from the outside, oil-based moisturizers are the way to go.

    Olive oil, coconut oil, jojoba oil, and shea butter are all fine options.

    If the skin is broken such that infection is possible, then starting with an antiseptic ointment/cream is sensible. A good example product is Savlon, unless you are allergic to its active ingredient chlorhexidine.

    *However, if perchance you are also suffering from peripheral neuropathy (a common comorbidity of cracked skin in the extremities), then lion’s main mushroom can help with that.

    Writer’s anecdote: I myself started suffering from peripheral neuropathy in my hands earlier this year, doubtlessly due to some old injuries of mine.

    However, upon researching for the above articles, I was inspired to try lion’s mane mushroom for myself. I take it daily, and have now been free of symptoms of peripheral neuropathy for several months.

    Here’s an example product on Amazon, by the way

    Enjoy!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:

  • ‘Noisy’ autistic brains seem better at certain tasks. Here’s why neuroaffirmative research matters

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Pratik Raul, University of Canberra; Jeroen van Boxtel, University of Canberra, and Jovana Acevska, University of Canberra

    Autism is a neurodevelopmental difference associated with specific experiences and characteristics.

    For decades, autism research has focused on behavioural, cognitive, social and communication difficulties. These studies highlighted how autistic people face issues with everyday tasks that allistic (meaning non-autistic) people do not. Some difficulties may include recognising emotions or social cues.

    But some research, including our own study, has explored specific advantages in autism. Studies have shown that in some cognitive tasks, autistic people perform better than allistic people. Autistic people may have greater success in identifying a simple shape embedded within a more complex design, arranging blocks of different shapes and colours, or spotting an object within a cluttered visual environment (similar to Where’s Wally?). Such enhanced performance has been recorded in babies as young as nine months who show emerging signs of autism.

    How and why do autistic individuals do so well on these tasks? The answer may be surprising: more “neural noise”.

    What is neural noise?

    Generally, when you think of noise, you probably think of auditory noise, the ups and downs in the amplitude of sound frequencies we hear.

    A similar thing happens in the brain with random fluctuations in neural activity. This is called neural noise.

    This noise is always present, and comes on top of any brain activity caused by things we see, hear, smell and touch. This means that in the brain, an identical stimulus that is presented multiple times won’t cause exactly the same activity. Sometimes the brain is more active, sometimes less. In fact, even the response to a single stimulus or event will fluctuate continuously.

    Neural noise in autism

    There are many sources of neural noise in the brain. These include how the neurons become excited and calm again, changes in attention and arousal levels, and biochemical processes at the cellular level, among others. An allistic brain has mechanisms to manage and use this noise. For instance, cells in the hippocampus (the brain’s memory system) can make use of neural noise to enhance memory encoding and recall.

    Evidence for high neural noise in autism can be seen in electroencephalography (EEG) recordings, where increased levels of neural fluctuations were observed in autistic children. This means their neural activity is less predictable, showing a wider range of activity (higher ups and downs) in response to the same stimulus.

    In simple terms, if we imagine the EEG responses like a sound wave, we would expect to see small ups and downs (amplitude) in allistic brains each time they encounter a stimulus. But autistic brains seem to show bigger ups and downs, demonstrating greater amplitude of neural noise.

    Many studies have linked this noisy autistic brain with cognitive, social and behavioural difficulties.

    But could noise be a bonus?

    The diagnosis of autism has a long clinical history. A shift from the medical to a more social model has also seen advocacy for it to be reframed as a difference, rather than a disorder or deficit. This change has also entered autism research. Neuroaffirming research can examine the uniqueness and strengths of neurodivergence.

    Psychology and perception researcher David Simmons and colleagues at the University of Glasgow were the first to suggest that while high neural noise is generally a disadvantage in autism, it can sometimes provide benefits due to a phenomenon called stochastic resonance. This is where optimal amounts of noise can enhance performance. In line with this theory, high neural noise in the autistic brain might enhance performance for some cognitive tasks.

    Our 2023 research explores this idea. We recruited participants from the general population and investigated their performance on letter-detection tasks. At the same time, we measured their level of autistic traits.

    We performed two letter-detection experiments (one in a lab and one online) where participants had to identify a letter when displayed among background visual static of various intensities.

    By using the static, we added additional visual noise to the neural noise already present in our participants’ brains. We hypothesised the visual noise would push participants with low internal brain noise (or low autistic traits) to perform better (as suggested by previous research on stochastic resonance). The more interesting prediction was that noise would not help individuals who already had a lot of brain noise (that is, those with high autistic traits), because their own neural noise already ensured optimal performance.

    Indeed, one of our experiments showed people with high neural noise (high autistic traits) did not benefit from additional noise. Moreover, they showed superior performance (greater accuracy) relative to people with low neural noise when the added visual static was low. This suggests their own neural noise already caused a natural stochastic resonance effect, resulting in better performance.

    It is important to note we did not include clinically diagnosed autistic participants, but overall, we showed the theory of enhanced performance due to stochastic resonance in autism has merits.

    Why this is important?

    Autistic people face ignorance, prejudice and discrimination that can harm wellbeing. Poor mental and physical health, reduced social connections and increased “camouflaging” of autistic traits are some of the negative impacts that autistic people face.

    So, research underlining and investigating the strengths inherent in autism can help reduce stigma, allow autistic people to be themselves and acknowledge autistic people do not require “fixing”.

    The autistic brain is different. It comes with limitations, but it also has its strengths.

    Pratik Raul, PhD candidiate, University of Canberra; Jeroen van Boxtel, Associate professor, University of Canberra, and Jovana Acevska, Honours Graduate Student, University of Canberra

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

    The Conversation

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails: