Neuroscience: How can it help your professional life?

The teacher, writer and neuroscientist Pedro Calabrez closed the ME B2B Summit event. In his presentation, he gave tips on how neuroscience can help in our professional life. And, of course, overcome daily difficulties too.

We listed below 6 neuroscience-based advices that can be applied in your routine right now. Check out!

1. The prefrontal cortex

It’s already known that reason is what differentiates man from animals; in fact, our species, although physically fragile, managed to overcome the adversities of history and contribute to the evolution of this planet.

Advances in the areas of health, education, science and technology are examples of human brain’s power.

But a specific part of the brain impart us this rational advantage: the prefrontal cortex, an area that controls the ability to refrain emotions, to have a vision for the future and to establish ongoing attention.

An interesting curiosity is that alcohol inhibits the prefrontal cortex action; that’s why alcohol consumers become more impulsive and sincere (or without self-control, in other words).

2. Self-control on Friday afternoon?

According to Wikipedia, “self-control is the capacity of people to manage their future”, and – like reason – it’s also an exclusive human feature; its absence can put many people in bad situations.

Considering that self-control has a limit, Mr. Calabrez explained that holding an important meeting on Friday afternoon is a big risk. After all, as the week goes by, the level of self-control lowers, and any annoyance can lead a person off the tracks.

This event can be also called ‘ego depletion’. To regenerate it, we must eat correctly and have good hours of sleep.

A daily example of our depletion regards food. In the morning, you resist the desire to eat sweets, but in the afternoon, around 4:00 PM, you no longer have the strength to escape temptation.

3. Psychological detachment

Another focused issue was how psychological detachment can negatively affect our interpersonal relationships.

Mr. Calabrez made some analogies to show that when we detach from a situation, decision-making will become easier. However, in a world where soft skills are as important as technical ones, this is no longer appropriate.

A good example is an app called Tinder, where you can find a soulmate almost instantly, while it would take much more time to find someone (or, perhaps, to have the courage for that) in a face-to-face situation.

In the corporate scenario, this occurs when a difficult and delicate subject is addressed by e-mail rather than face-to-face.

4. Collaborative intelligence

We have already mentioned, at the beginning of this post, that intelligence is the distinguishing point of our species. But it’s important to remind that what brought us here, in the era of the fourth industrial revolution, was collaborative intelligence – that is, several people working together, in order to build evolution for our society.

Anyone who is unwilling to join teamwork, and to act with other thinking minds will probably have difficulties to adapt to the current and (especially) the future job market.

It’s vital to remember that we are here only because we have been moving forward together.

5. Trust is prosperity

As good Brazilians, we are often suspicious. But mistrust is a hindrance to advancement, because it generates selfishness, fear and dissonant leadership.

The result of it, in addition to widespread dissatisfaction, is higher costs. It isn’t by chance that we live in a country where most of us have the sense of working hard and earning almost nothing.

So if you are a manager and have the possibility to change this scenario, please strive to promote trust and honesty. In this way, you can create an environment open to transformation, and then become a respected leader, who isn’t simply obeyed.

6. Negative thinking is outdated

Our attention is very limited. If we spend many hours thinking negatively, we won’t have time and disposition to think positively.

Additionally, it’s important to remember that this habit heads no one to progress, because a negative attitude can prevent a greater good from happening. And some researches show that people with negative tendencies are more likely to have a heart attack.

So if you have identified yourself with this text, it’s perhaps time to change this behavior.

Suggested sources to go further in the subject:

• Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect – Matthew Lieberman
• The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity – Paul Zak
• Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High-Performance Companies – Paul Zak
• Flow – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Mindset – Carol Dweck

With this post, we’ve closed our coverage of the ME B2B Summit 2018. The event (which lasted more than 8 hours) yielded several posts, with plenty of information, history, behavior and trends in the B2B e-marketplace.