How To Charm the Brain Snake

In the jungle of your brain, the animals run wild.

The lioness is hunting for ideas while the camel carries a mental load. The lark is singing. The sloth is sleepy. The flamingo balances thoughts while the bees are busy building.

Each of them play a part in how we do our work. Tapping into each of these animals can help us understand how our brain works.

Let me introduce you to the snake.

The snake always is sticking out its tongue, looking for the predator sneaking through the dense jungle to jump out at any moment. It's listening for any snapping branches or moving leaves to avoid getting eaten. It’s an incredibly useful animal in your jungle, but it is constantly on high alert but it's easily and constantly distracted.

This is the same part of our brain that jumps at a buzzing phone and has to look up when someone walks by or shuffles papers. Hissssssss. What was that?

The brain snake begins its work in our amygdala. The almond-shaped part of our frontal lobe is the stimuli-seeking area that triggers fear responses. According to neuroscientists Arash Javanbakht and Linda Saab at Wayne State University, this alert-zone creates that fight-or-flight reaction. Fear can be a good distraction like when a lion is chasing you. Of course you should not be thinking about anything else.

The difference between seeing a wild lion hunting you and a lion at the zoo is your hippocampus and frontal cortex. These are the rational parts of our brains that can read context. We can use this part of our brain as a snake charmer.

Here are three ways to quiet the snake and stay focused.

First, take the snake out of the jungle. Remove any potential distractions. Close tabs. Hide phones. Turn wifi off. Shut your computer if that's possible. When there is less going on, there are less things to get distracted by.

Second, create awareness of thoughts. Quieting the snake means reminding it that there is no panther in the jungle (there's not even a jungle!). There is no urgency to change tasks. This may take a bit of meditation practice. In the Cave, our spint planners have a space at the bottom to write down anything that might come up and catch the snake's eye. Check my bank account? Call grandma? Send invoice? Write it down on a notepad to remember it, do it later, and stay on task right now.

Lastly and maybe most importantly, the snake loves hearing its own sound. Turning on some white noise or brown noise causes it to be charmed into falling asleep. The hiss of the white noise is enough to keep the snake busy and let the lioness hunt, the beaver build, and the ox to push.

Charm that snake and focus your brain with a little hiss.
You are the king of your jungle.

Reference:
Psychology Today, Smithsonian

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Caveday is a company aimed at improving your relationship to work. We write regular posts on Medium and send out monthly newsletters with productivity tips, life hacks, and recommendations. Sign up for the mailing list here.

Jake Kahana is a cofounder of Caveday. Sign up for his personal emails, called “The Email Refrigerator” here.