ENDURE: September 5, 2014

The Comfortable Calm of Routine.....

Spoiler Summary: The human brain might work best when it's able to focus on complex tasks rather than trying to keep track of every task - if this time of year feels a little like "getting back to normal" - that's one of the reasons why.

It's been a long time since Will Cobb and Gus Edwards penned their way into history.....107 years to be exact. Wait, you don't know who Will and Gus are?  Maybe you remember some of the chorus:

"School Days, School Days, dear ol' Golden Rule Days....

Reading and 'riting and 'rithmatic, taught to the tune of a hick'ry stick"

With the many changes since 1907, the lyrics probably wouldn't even make sense to the age-group their song refers to - I'm not sure how long ago the "hick'ry stick" was put away for example, but I'm glad I never had to find out if that particular "tune" was catchy or not.  But whether you learned the Golden Rule as part of your formal curriculum or not, one thing is for sure - the nostalgia of the good ol' days, "when life was easy" is something most everyone can get caught up in now and again.

But have you ever stopped to think about WHY life was so easy then?  Was the world just less stressful overall?  Perhaps - life certainly seems to get faster and more hectic year by year.  But is that the only thing?  Probably not - at least so-says the science of peak-performance.  Challenges that are intense enough to produce the stress response in combination with the skills to control/overcome those challenges not only DO NOT appear to do harm, they actually lay the neural foundation for moments "in the zone" - also known as peak-performance or, in psychology, the state of "flow."  

On the contrary, challenges that far outweigh skills cause anxiety and weaker performance - what is commonly referred to as the feeling of being "stressed-out."  So why, during a time in life when every year is a series of new challenges, was it so easy?  Some say that we tend to remember positives far more vividly than negatives - and there seems to be some truth to this - but that's not all.  

One key that often gets overlooked, and at the same time represents a tactic that anyone can put to good use is ROUTINE and the bottom-brain autopilot.  The human brain can largely be broken into 2 units: the "top" brain (literally positioned to the top and front) is used for analysis.  It tends to be slow & methodical and requires substantial sources of fuel to run.  The "lower" brain (deeper and lower) on the other hand is exceptionally fast, is "always on", runs on low-energy and is best suited reacting quickly. Imagine how much less stressed you could feel if you had twice as many (top) mental resources to work on the problems of the day....well, the more of the stressors that get shifted to auto-pilot, the more resources free up and are available to work on more complex problems. The more often we do a task, the more it becomes routine.....and when something becomes routine, we are able to shift which part of the brain is being used to accomplish the task. We literally free-up the top brain while shifting tasks to the lower-level, less resource-intense bottom brain.  

Maybe the school days were "easier" because there was so much routine.  The bus came within a few minutes of the same time - every single day.  Maybe you started your day with the Pledge of Allegiance - the same way every single day.  You saw the same faces that sat in the same seats.  You followed a schedule that was planned out for you and in many cases your choices (e.g. food in the lunch line) were limited.  In some schools even the clothes were "uniform" and therefore routine......less to keep organized....less to try and control.....less to stress about.

Whether it's health, prevention and safety or "reading, 'riting and 'rithmatic" - freeing up resources which allows for greater focus on the complex tasks of the day can help us to perform at our best....AND feel "easy" while doing it.  Here's to keeping it easy!

Have a great week,

Mike E.