The Three Brain Gears

Things at The Curious Wolf have been very very busy recently, especially with the book coaching side of my business which has grown and developed rapidly. I love it but it’s made me think about how we spend our time and how effectively we use our brain on a day to day basis. We know that we need to rest our bodies to achieve peak performance but do we ever rest our brains? Sometimes? Ever??

I listened to a really interesting podcast recently - it was an episode of Rangan Chatterjee’s and it featured Dr Mithu Storoni. She talked about our brains having three gears. 1st gear is when we’re relaxing/not doing anything taxing, 3rd gear is when we’re doing something that uses our full concentration and brain power, and 2nd gear is when we move back and forwards between the two. She believes that we spend far too much of our day in 3rd gear - she likened it to running a marathon by sprinting. I know what she means, don’t you?

Apparently, if we spend too much of our day in 3rd gear, even with adequate sleep, we can still feel fatigued the next day. Interesting, eh? It has made me reflect on how I organise my day. Running a book strategy session is definitely 3rd gear - they are intense! I don’t run more than one in a day. It’s the same with my book coaching clients - I have a limited number of 1:1 spaces so that I can give my full 3rd gear time to my clients to give them the best of me that I possible can.

Look at your day, is it overbalanced with 1st gear? 3rd gear? Have you found the perfect combo? I’d love to hear from you about what you think about this, whether or not you listen to the podcast, it has certainly sparked some interesting conversations recently!