#ThinkfullyHabit: Give in
Ever felt physically exhausted even without undertaking any physical activity? It turns out that a hard day’s thinking can be just as tiring as physical exertion. The fatigue is essentially your brain’s way of telling you to switch off in order to save itself.
“Taking regular breaks from mental tasks actually improves your creativity and productivity. Skipping breaks, on the other hand, leads to stress and fatigue. ”
WHY?
In a latest study, neuroscientists looked at the brain chemistry of two groups of people. The first were assigned with hard versions of a task and the second with an easier version. In the first group, mental fatigue kicked in over the course of the day, which had the knock-on effect of altering their decision making capabilities. It left them far more likely to take immediate decisions and to choose easier actions.
This has been shown in previous research as well, but this time by studying the brain’s biological metabolic abilities they could identify that it wasn’t just about the brain using up energy, it's that higher cognitive tasks were leading to an accumulation of a chemical called glutamate (a neurotransmitter involved in carrying messages around the brain’s neural networks) in the lateral pre-frontal cortex of the brain.
The brain simply can’t sustain mental exertion indefinitely because glutamate is a potentially toxic substance that needs to be regulated. When asked if there’s a way around this, lead neuroscientist Mathias Pessiglione of Pitié-Salpêtrière University in Paris, France, simply says, “Not really, I'm afraid...I would employ good old recipes: rest and sleep!”
It doesn't mean we shouldn't think hard or undertake cognitively tasking activities, but it does mean that important decision making shouldn't really happen at the same time. When we’ve had a hard day’s thinking, big decisions that aren’t absolutely necessary or don’t really need to be taken are best avoided. We can’t really fight the biological process that’s at play. Just like when we’re physically exhausted and we need to rest, so too when we are mentally exhausted. Even though it feels like a shortcoming of the brain, it’s time to give in to the brilliance of the brain to effectively regulate itself.
REFERENCES
A neuro-metabolic account of why daylong cognitive work alters the control of economic decisions. Wiehler A, Branzoli F, Adanyeguh I, Mochel F and Pessiglione M. Current Biology. 2022;32:1-12.
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