Is your brain blocking you? Here's how to hack it

Are we our own worst enemy? Those who take an interest in our brains have seen how, for a variety of reasons, the machine that sets us in motion can sabotage itself, leading people to procrastinate, stop themselves from doing things, and so on. However, it is possible to "hack" our brains so that they're at their best, as youtuber Fabien Olicard, who has a passion for neuroscience, talks about.

In this clip, he recounts five ways to get closer to your goals.

• The first is the "ugly sentence". Our brains generally have two modes: creative and critical. Perfectionism is the ever-open critical function that inhibits creativity. So, the idea is to start a project by accepting that what's being achieved "sucks", so as to get into action and stop the critical mode. After all, there's usually a chance to correct, edit and revise later.
  
  
• The second is self-anchoring. Sportsmen and women are very good at using actions, music and the like before going into competition. These anchors enable you to define your desired mental state. You then need to create one with a stimulus of your own, one that's easy to repeat and always the same, to build up the association in the brain.
  
  
• The third is an exploitable brain bug: open tasks. Like tabs on a browser, the brain stays more focused and remembers an interrupted task more than a completed one. It may therefore be a good idea to start a project with the simplest of chores, and then leave a short period of time in which to pick up the slack. In general, the individual will eventually return to it and continue. Be careful, however, not to do this with too many projects at once.
  
  
• The fourth is "cognitive batching". Basically, the brain is not the multitasking machine we think it is. In fact, it's at its best when it categorizes what needs to be done, and takes care of one at a time: for example, messages to send, essays to write, accounting, etc. Finally, beware of overloading your brain. It tires faster than we think, which explains why, at the end of the day, we often make poorer decisions. The idea is to choose three tasks in the day and carry them out, selecting the most "urgent" and prioritizing them. This way, we'll trigger a dose of dopamine from having succeeded in completing them.
  
  
• Last but not least, there's a final one: self-compassion. In fact, neuroscientists have noted that self-criticism can do more damage to our brains than a real punch in the face, as it generates the stress hormone cortisol. So, gentleness will help us feel better and soothe our gray matter.

Running time: 21min35

Image: Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay