Encourage Your Brain: An Eye-Opening Brain Hack to Get You Going

So wouldn't it be interesting if we could peek inside our brains? And in a way, we actually can, and that's because our eyes are part of our brains. So when we're in utero in development, the skull kind of squishes out the eyes and they become a part of our brain. That's according to a neurobiologist at Stanford University. So the other interesting piece is that more than 50% of the cortex, the surface of the brain, is actually devoted to visual processing. So hundreds of millions of neurons that have to do with processing visual stimuli and information compared to, say, for auditory processing, there's only tens of thousands of neurons for that. So the brain really gives a ton more space and real estate towards the visual processing. So what makes that information important or relevant? I'm going to be speaking at the Career Thought Leaders Symposium that Marie Zonoff is putting together, and my topic is going to be Insight Action Traction. And I'm fascinated by the brain hacks that we can use to kind of get past procrastination or hesitation or misprioritization or any of the things that we do that keep us from moving towards the things that are most meaningful in our lives. So the Encourage Your Brain tip for today is simple. If you want to get something done, flood your system with visual stimuli, reminders that are colorful or inspiring or meaningful and simple. So maybe that's color-coding your calendar with an important to-do list. Maybe it's Post-it notes that are fun shapes and colors. Maybe it's changing up your screensaver. You know, maybe it's writing down a mantra that's important to you. You get the picture. Those are simple ideas that we're likely already aware of in our experiences, and yet when we add that understanding behind it that our brain is devoted a huge amount of real estate to that visual processing, we can use that information to be smarter and more productive.