Do you feel overwhelmed with work, house chores, caring for the kids, school, and all the projects you want to get done in the day?
And on top of that, you aren’t feeling your best: you’re tired, cranky, you didn’t sleep last night, and the coffee isn’t helping?
Dr. Alison talks about how to prime your day and health with your ultradian rhythm.
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You probably know of the circadian rhythm and how that is a 24 hour cycle and how tuning to that natural rhythm can help you plan your work and sleep.
But most people aren’t aware of the ultradian rhythm, which is a 90-120 minutes cycle of the mind and body. This cycle is a focus on the shift of the brain between hemispheric dominance, where one side of our brain and nostril is more open, and then it shifts to the other side. This also correlates to the sympathetic/parasympathetic changes in the brain and body.
You can try it now, plug one nostril and take a deep breath in, then the other side with a deep breath in. Can you see the difference between nostrils?
If we break this down, it can look like a 20 to 40 minute cycle to rest and recover. This might mean a nap, meditation, breathing exercises, or movement.
This means for about 90 minutes you can be focused and productive, then you need about a 20 minute break. Our brains and bodies are not mean to sit and work all day long without a break. Most of us push too long and too hard so we can get more done, but that actually makes us less productive than we would be if there were breaks built in to our day.
What does this look like?
If you combine this with Pomodoro technique, which is centered on a work or productivity focus for 25 minutes, with a 5 minute break. Then set that into a cycle of 3 times before you take a 20 -40 minute break.
This smaller time frame does allow you to be sharper, more productive, and actually accomplish your task list. And allows your body to have a physical and mental break, which you desperately need and deserve.
I have been doing this for the past week, based around my patient and consultation schedule. The first day, I noticed that when I sat down to do my marketing schedule and creating, I was all over the place. It was an ‘if you give a mouse a cookie’ situation. When I had one project started, I realized that I needed to do another task to complete it, but that also required another thing to be done, and so on. Then, of course, I got distracted by having to do 20 things just to get this one task done.
It helped to have a piece of paper next to me to write down all the extra tasks and steps I had to complete.
When I started to get in the groove of the 25 minutes, I did find that the focus was very helpful. I would choose one task, like finishing a new patient report and didn’t allow myself to work on anything else. Or I would read my continuing education files. What was great about this is that I didn’t get carried away working, creating, or reading, leaving no time left for me to do all the other things I needed to do.
When I brought this to my family, it looked like homework was done in 25 minute sections. Which actually helped my kids work faster, because they wanted to be done and knew they got a break. Or night time chores like dishes, laundry had a 25 minute limit and break built in as well.
When it came to the big ultradian breaks I used that time for lunch, workouts, and meditation. My five minute breaks were used to just drink more water, play a game or scroll on social media.
To figure out your ultradian rhythm, you can keep track of the times of days where you feel most productive and energetic, and making notes of any circumstances that might have impacted that day. Like you had a great workout, not a lot of sleep, or felt sick that day. From there, you can find out when to focus on your most difficult and energy consuming tasks during these peak times, and focus on lesser or easier tasks during lower energy times.
Overall, I would say that I was much more productive and focused. I got a variety of work done instead of just a few things. And I was much less distracted and felt more accomplished at the end of every day. This also helped me focus in on what was important to accomplish in that 25 minutes, instead of having a huge to-do list with 100 things on it to get done that day.
The biggest drawbacks were having to hear my timer go off all the time and remembering to reset it. While some people do well with a full 90 minute session of work, I found for my smaller sections of work, the 25 minute block was most effective.
While I am working on writing my book “Functional Metabolism” that is coming out in January, I do find that the 90 minute blocks are better for my flow state of creativity than trying to do as much as possible in 25 minutes.
I would also recommend blocking out your time in your calendar for these breaks, or have a working time in your brain.
I’m excited to see overtime how my energy does throughout the day and then how this affects my sleep. If I am less stressed over the day, more focused and accomplished, I do feel that sleep will be positively affected.
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