Dr. Karen Pollard is a clinical neuropsychologist and the creator of Brain Power Advisors. Brain Power Advisors was built on Dr. Pollard’s expertise of neuropsychology to help leaders and executive teams access and harness their brains’ processing power. She believes individuals and teams can function at a level higher than they ever thought possible if they have the right strategies in place.
Dr. Pollard is very passionate about using evidence-based neuropsychological tools and assessments to help business leaders increase their performance and work satisfaction, as well as reduce stress. She works one-on-one to teach her clients about their unique brain characteristics and how to make small adjustments in their everyday life to use the brain’s energy for better success and to maximize their potential.
1) Much of what is out there regarding productivity advice assumes a one-size-fits-most approach. Yet, we all have unique neuropsychological characteristics. That means that specific productivity strategies that are useful for some may not be so practical for others. Why is understanding how your individual brain functions a key component of mastering productivity?
I like to explain it like this: each of our brains is capable of performing the same functions, but each of our brains goes about it very differently. It’s like a fingerprint. In addition, there are hundreds, if not thousands of possible strategies to improve productivity and efficiency. When you learn the way that your brain uniquely uses energy (i.e., your brain’s fingerprint), then you can streamline the process of choosing the strategies that are best suited to work well for you. Once you understand your brain, you know where to spend your energy implementing a new strategy and where to not waste your time and energy.
Some people are definitely more insightful about their cognitive strengths and weaknesses than others. So if you happen to be a person who’s very self-aware, you likely know which tasks you do that exhaust you and which tasks energize you. The tasks that energize you are the ones that your brain probably does more easily. If you lean on productivity strategies that energize you and reduce ones that drain you of energy, that doesn’t fit your style, that’s a good place to start.
2) What is one bad piece of standard productivity advice that needs to go away and why?
The idea that you should work on a single project for a certain block of time. I hear a lot of people recommending this, “Focus on one thing for 20 minutes and then take a break.” And while that’s a great strategy for some people, there are many—particularly high achievers or those with an attention deficit disorder—for whom that strategy does not work. Their brains simply work more efficiently when they are allowed to switch their focus more frequently. As such, they shouldn’t box themselves in thinking they have to focus 20 minutes exclusively on a single project.
When I work with these types of people, I tell them to identify two or three high-priority tasks or two or three subtasks of a single important project and write those down. Begin working on whichever one seems most appealing at the time. And then, when their brain feels like it hits a plateau (e.g. they feel the impulse to get up, look out the window, check social media, etc.), they should switch to another of the high priority tasks. This way, they’re constantly making progress on something that is a high priority but aren’t forcing themselves to maintain focus on a single project when their mind loses steam on the task at hand and wants to wander.
Some people can focus for long periods of time because something’s exciting, or they just get on a roll and that’s fine. What I don’t like is rigid time blocking. They will work really well for a subset of the time, and then they kind of are spaced out for the rest, but really they’re not producing anything. Allow yourself the flexibility (if you feel the need to switch) to have another high-priority task ready to go during any time block.
Another is for people who aren’t morning people, they shouldn’t feel forced into thinking morning is the time when things get done because there’s definitely variability there. Schedule cognitively demanding tasks in the time of day when your brain works most efficiently. You don’t want to schedule those for times when your brain is going to struggle more.
3) Disregarding that we just indicated one-size-fits-most advice can at times be precarious, what is one piece of uncommon advice in your toolbox—a tactic or strategy—that most people can experiment with to improve their productivity?
My favorite generic strategy is time-tracking, retrospectively accounting for how your time was spent. To be really clear, this is not planning how you want to spend your time, but instead looking back each hour or so, and writing down how you actually spent your time.
The reason this is effective, it’s like working with a nutritionist. What is the first thing a nutritionist is going to ask you to do when you go there? They’re going to say do nothing and just track what you’re eating for the next week or two.
People are generally unaware of what they’re eating and by accounting for it, taking an honest audit, they can see opportunities to intervene and change behavior. We are all generally poor estimators of how we spend our time. So by tracking it, we can see patterns and opportunities where we can make small changes that have a big impact.
4) High achievers are always trying to maximize. What’s your process for helping someone who is clearly overprescribed figure out if they need slack in their system? And, what (if any) is a good ratio for unstructured time?
The first thing I would encourage anyone to do is to use the time-tracking strategy we just discussed to give them insight into how they’re actually spending their time. A lot of high performers don’t realize how much time they’re spending doing things until they complete this exercise. They’re going, going, going, and lack useful insight. That said, I don’t have a standard amount of time that I recommend for structured activities versus unstructured activities because different people really have different thresholds for what works.
Instead, I encourage people to assess their own level of what I’m going to call “overwhelm.” When someone’s doing the time-tracking, I’m going to also have them track how overwhelmed they felt that day on a one to 10 scale. Over time, they’ll be able to see patterns that reveal which activities are overwhelming and find balance that way. Then I coach people to make small adjustments in their routines based on this insight. If they continue to measure how overwhelmed they felt each day, this will provide additional insight until they can find the right balance for them.
5) In addition to Brain Power Advisors, for those looking to gain a richer understanding of the crossroads of neuropsychology and productivity, what are three additional resources you recommend (e.g., books, podcasts, websites, etc.)?
One, I just discovered a time tracking app. You know, paper and pencil work just fine, but some people like something more technology-based. Somebody recently showed me the app Toggl, which does a good job. It will actually send you reports about how your time was spent and you can get some detailed insight that way. Two, the book The Myth of Multitasking by Dave Crenshaw. I’ve always found it to be a really easy, very quick read, simple concept, but has a huge impact. People can relate to it so easily and it’s got a great message. Three, Indistractable by Nir Eyal. I know he is somebody that you’ve interviewed before, and the concepts in his book are great. He’s got a lot of useful hints sprinkled throughout the book.