Disconnect and allow Your Brain to Process
Go for a walk, stare out of the window, listen to music, or take a hot bath. Basically, you are just being, not communicating. Disconnecting, and letting your mind wander, reflect, and process information, creating space in your head. And of course, please turn off your mobile phone!
Disconnect to Archive
The harder you work, using your executive functions, especially your working memory, the more your brain will need breaks to recover. While you are thinking and focusing on your task(s), you are not only burning tons of energy, but you are also flooding your working and temporary memory with information. Your brain is happy to deal with all this information, but it needs time to process and store it in your long-term memory as well, if you want to be able to use any of it later on.
Disconnect to Reflect
You may feel that you don’t have the time to sit back and reflect on what you are doing. Bear in mind, that doing so will improve your ability to think and be creative. That’s why it’s so important to disconnect regularly and reflect, preferably every day. Instead of obsessing about all the extra things you can fit in the tiny free spaces in your agenda, the objective is to ‘waste’ more time reflecting. And being ‘unproductive’.
Worried or Stressed?
When you are really worried about something or feel overwhelmed, when negative thoughts and feelings can occupy your mind in such a powerful way, you are ‘not really there’, sitting in a meeting at work or at lunch with your friends. You might hear their voices, but you just do not register what they say. Your mind is constantly returning to the thing that is worrying you. If you ever had a hard break up, a seriously ill partner or child, or went through another high impact life-event, you may recognize this. It’s in these situations that letting the mind wander is exactly the opposite of what you want to do. When your mind is constantly racing, and occupied with negative thoughts, you need a powerful tool to stop your thinking.
