Unlock Mental Clarity and Boost Productivity: The Surprising Benefits of Brain Breaks You Need to Try Today!

Mental Speed Bumps

On any given day, so many of us live below our optimum potential. That’s why we ask parents and teens to challenge their attention and the way they spend their time during the day with the use of mental speed bumps.

Mental speed bumps are momentary pauses between the tasks we are currently doing at any given time of the day to check where we are with our short- and long-term goals. They give us a chance to course correct if what we’re doing at that moment is not really adding value to our life’s bigger mission and purpose.

Drawing, doodling, scribbling, it doesn’t mean you’re off task. In fact, it can help your cognition, memory and even help you relax.

Get More Done When You Work Less

“The critical thing to recognize is that when we are letting our minds wander, when our minds don’t have any particular thing they have to focus on, our brains are pretty darn active. When you do things like go for a long walk, your subconscious mind keeps working on problems. The experience of having the mind slightly relaxed allows it to explore different combinations of ideas, to test out different solutions.

And then once it has arrived at one that looks promising – that is what pops into your head as an aha! moment. The people I looked at are able to construct daily schedules that allow them to draw on that process in little increments.”

~ Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Author Of Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less

Bored Meme

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The Power Of Unstructured Play

Free play is what the name suggests. It gives our children freedom to take initiative, imagine and explore possibilities. Our communication is becoming linear day by day, so skills like understanding nonverbal cues and emotions in others is vital for survival, especially when children engage in play with friends.

Free play has many benefits. Personally, its crucial for developing self-regulation. It’s also helpful in learning something new, overcoming our fears, solving problems and making friends.

The downtime that the brain gets during unstructured play helps children with critical thinking, divergent thinking and consequential thinking. That is because, when the brain is under stimulated, it looks for stimulation thereby boosting creativity. That helps them solve problems and understand the sequences of their actions and subsequent results in a better way.

No wonder some of our best ideas come when we’re in the shower or when we go for walk in the woods. So, even for adults, a little existential boredom is good in a lot of ways! Remember, technology will always be there, and distraction is a choice.

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Quote from Margaret Atwood in her poem: Variation on the word Sleep. She says this about air.

I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary. 

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Charge Forward

Are you checking on yourself with a few mental speed bumps every day? Not yet? Start today and see how you begin to prioritize for the better.

Read more on How Boredom Leads To Brilliance.

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