The average office environment has seen a lot of changes over the past two years, some objectively positive and others arguably negative. On the one hand, employees are being allowed to telework far more frequently, if not 100% of the time, with more flexible hours. On the other hand, this flexibility has come at a cost for many of us – that definitive line that used to exist between work hours and home/family/friends/life hours, that line has been blurred, if not completely erased. No longer do we feel justified in ignoring our email after 6:00 p.m., and squeezing in some work before dropping the kids off at school is completely normal now, if not expected.
For some of us, these blurred lines are an acceptable trade-off for working in our sweats or meeting the kids at the bus stop, but it has led to a marked decline in our collective ability to concentrate for any length of time. Many of us have shifted from being laser-focused at the office to being in a constant state of frenzied multi-tasking. Emails to fire off quickly before changing the laundry over? Check. Squeeze in a quick Zoom call with the boss before hitting that lunchtime yoga class? Check. Never before have we had so much flexibility to choose how to use every hour of our day. And yet, never before have we had such a short attention span.
Survey after survey shows that most of us are unwilling to return to the office full-time, so we must find a way to structure our days that will provide our beleaguered brains with some much-needed structure. But what can we do? The answer is perhaps right in front of you, literally check your dinner plate.
We all know that proper nutrition is essential for peak physical performance, and most of us are aware of basic nutritional guidelines: less processed food, eat your vegetables, and so on. But what you may NOT realize is the profound impact your diet can have on your ability to learn, retain, and concentrate. We are what we eat after all, and our brains can only function as effectively as our diet permits us to.
What does this mean in practice? How can we tweak our diets to optimize our brain power? Must we eat a diet that consists solely of kale, chia seeds, and quinoa? While foods such as kale and quinoa can certainly be a part of a healthy diet, the key in discovering the best diet for you is finding that balance, those foods that work for you. At the end of the day, as with all habits, if your diet truly makes you miserable, it won’t be sustainable no matter how healthy it is. Ask yourself a few questions to get started:
- What are my favorite foods? Create a list of the top 10 and be honest with yourself about which can be kept as part of a healthier diet. If one of your top 10 foods is pizza, for example, you don’t have to completely avoid this fan favorite.
- What foods can I absolutely NOT work with? If you have tried kale every which way and still just can’t stomach it, then don’t.
- What food makes me feel awful? Chances are, this list includes fried food and sugary desserts – again, add to that “occasional treat” list!
- What eating schedule works best for me? If you just can’t eat in the morning, then don’t. But do concentrate on small shifts in schedule so you aren’t eating the bulk of your calories late in the day.
- Eggs
- Avocados
- Berries (blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, etc.)
- Fish (salmon, cod, tuna, sardines, trout)
- Nuts (any type)
- Dark chocolate
- Popcorn (without butter)
- Beans (any type)
- Leafy greens (spinach, kale)
- Broccoli
It can be overwhelming to implement changes to your diet, but take a few minutes to write out a menu plan for the week, and make sure you are stocked up on the essentials that will enable you to make healthy choices instead of reaching for the processed snacks when hunger strikes! Learning a new language is hard enough in the best of circumstances, so let’s all focus on making the diet choices that will give our brains that boost!
Original source can be found here.
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