Mind Performance Hacks

Hack #69. Don't Neglect the Obvious: Sleep, Nutrition, and Exercise

You know as well as we do that you need to sleep well, eat right, and exercise for your brain to be in peak condition. We're not going to scold you, but we are going to present some information you might not have known about your brain's relationship to your body.

Many tips for mental performance concentrate on extending productivity for a short while after tiredness kicks in, or aiming for a slightly higher peak during a work period. Importantly, all of these increases in performance are relative to your normal or baseline level of functioning. You can often obtain more substantial and more widely effective gains in mental ability by making sure that your baseline performance is at an optimum. Tuning sleep, nutrition, and exercise is one effective way of doing this.

The brain, like any other organ in the body, works best when it is optimally fueled and is given adequate time to recover after periods of extended exertion or effort. Here, fuel does not mean energy in the form of only those foods that are broken down into glucose, but also those that provide essential nutrients needed for a wide range of complex functions. Neuroscience research has now identified a number of brain nutrients that can result in varying degrees of mental impairment if a deficiency exists.

On the other hand, sleep is still a bit of a mystery. Despite the fact that it takes up about a third of our time, we know surprisingly little about why ...