Hey Brainiacs,
Welcome to this week's newsletter! Let’s talk about what drives our productivity and the ways we can boost it.
Productivity and Dopamine
Our productivity is largely dependent on our motivation to complete a task1. And our motivation can be dependent on a lot of things, like money or social acceptance, but at a biological level it is driven by dopamine2,3. You may remember dopamine as the rewarding chemical that caused our brains to seek novelty. Well, because it acts on the reward systems within our brain, it also causes us to feel motivated4. Release of dopamine can be rewarding by directly giving us the feeling of pleasure, or by creating the feeling of ‘wanting’ to achieve a goal, and thereby eliciting motivation. So, any activities or habits that disrupt our dopamine systems will ultimately disrupt our motivation and affect our productivity. I’ll run through some top tips later about how to avoid disrupting our natural dopamine.
Productivity and Circadian Rhythms
Circadian rhythms are biological cycles that occur over 24 hours. Basically, a daily cycle. The cycle includes changes in our mental state, physical state, and correspondingly, our behaviour5. The most obvious of these is our sleep-wake cycle. Circadian rhythms are driven by cells in our brain, which signal to release different chemicals, such as cortisol and melatonin, at different times6. Thus, at night, the body will release melatonin to cause you to feel sleepy, while in the morning, the body will release cortisol to make you awake and alert5,6.
The below figure outlines the major changes the human body undergoes as part of its circadian rhythm. I want to highlight that our bodies are prepared for physical activity at different times than when it is prepared for mental concentration. We tend to be most alert and focused in the morning, and ready for physical activity in the late afternoon/early evening.
Is everyone’s circadian rhythm the same?
Absolutely not. The time we like to fall asleep and wake up varies greatly, and this applies to everything that happens in between. People who like to go to sleep early and wake up early are known to us neuroscientists as ‘larks’, while those who like to go to sleep late and wake up late are known as ‘owls’7. Most of us are somewhere in the middle.
And our bodies are hard-wired to our circadian rhythms; we cannot easily change them. When owls and larks try to stick to a ‘normal’ schedule, they run into insomnia and sleepiness. In fact, disrupting our circadian rhythms is so harmful that night shift work- an extreme case of disrupted circadian rhythm- has been deemed a probable carcinogen by the International Agency for Research into Cancer8.
I don’t say this to scare you, but to encourage you to identify your own circadian rhythm and embrace it. If you really struggle to wake up early, it isn’t your fault. And finding ways to harness your circadian rhythm, as you’ll see below, will improve your productivity.
But how do circadian rhythms affect our productivity? We know from studies on schools that the time school starts and the schedule of classes influence how well children score on tests11. Similarly, we know that when employees are allowed to align the start of their work day with their circadian cycles, they report lower stress levels and higher productivity12. Furthermore, it has been shown that goal-driven behavior and motivation levels are under the control of circadian cycles10. This is likely down to dopamine. Dopamine production and synthesis are controlled by circadian clock genes, meanwhile, dopamine controls the release of hormones like melatonin9. Once again, it is important to avoid disrupting our dopamine systems, and identify when this system is functioning at its highest to encourage maximum productivity.
Based on what we now know about how dopamine and circadian rhythms influence our motivation and productivity, let’s run through some top tips:
Top Tips:
Identify which type of circadian rhythm you are, and what time of day you are most productive. You can do this by keeping track of how many tasks you complete each hour and finding the hours where you complete the most. Then, schedule your hardest work for that time of day. Schedule easier work for a time of day when you’re less motivated.
Hydrate! The human brain is 80% water and hydration has been shown to affect cognition. Being motivated won’t help if you can’t think properly13,14.
Avoid social media in the morning. Social media directly after waking up disrupts brain activity. It forces the brain from a sleep state (delta waves) to a focused concentration state (beta waves), bypassing the usual sleepy dream-like (theta waves) and awake but relaxed (alpha waves) states that usually come before concentration. This primes your brain to be distracted throughout the day and can activate your stress response15.
Move your body. Movement increases blood flow and therefore, increases oxygen to your brain. It has also been shown that exercise improves anxiety and stress; if you want to learn more about that, see my newsletter!
No screens before bed! Exposure to light, particularly blue light, suppresses melatonin secretion. This is useful in the daytime when you want to be awake and productive, however, at night it makes it difficult to sleep and reduces sleep quality16,17.
Improve your sleep quality. Good quality sleep is crucial for your brain to function properly18. Some things I’ve already mentioned, like exercise and removing screens before bed, will improve sleep quality. Other things, like avoiding large meals and caffeine close to bedtime19, reducing alcohol intake20, and sticking to a routine at bedtime will also help21.
Until next week,
Nicole x
P.S. Leave a comment with topics you want covered in future newsletters!
References
https://www.cancer.org.au/iheard/are-nightshift-workers-more-likely-to-get-cancer
Diurnal and circadian regulation of reward-related neurophysiology and behavior - PubMed (nih.gov)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167844213000323
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.01413.2009?rss=1
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jbio.201900102
https://www.neurology.org/doi/abs/10.1212/WNL.0000000000208056