Your brain needs more down time

I am talking here about that feeling that can creep up on you mid afternoon when your eyes are tired and your brain is sluggish and you can’t work out how to finish that report or mounting number of emails to respond to.

Did you know that our brains are constantly demanding 20% of all the energy our body produces? We need more downtime for our brains as our world encourages us to access more information in the palm of our hands 24/7. When we are daydreaming our default mode network (DMN) is busy making sense of what it is has learned that day and looking for solutions to problems, rehearsing conversations with people that have upset us, wondering about how to make things better in our lives, question how we have behaved towards others.

This down time is when we work out life, you know that light bulb moment you might have in the shower or when you are digging out the weeds?  So if we are always being called to our mobile phones for the numerous alerts it produces then we are not giving our brains the chance to have these important thoughts. 

Ferris Jabr writing in the Scientific American Mind promotes ‘naps, meditation, nature walks’ to have ‘mental breaks’ in order to “increase productivity, replenish attention, solidify memories and encourage creativity”.

How much downtime do you give your brain?