Your brain on Productivity: Thinking & Doing modes

When we think of productivity, we often think about productivity habits, focus, and getting work done efficiently. There is enough good and bad advice on productivity, but there is one key detail that we often miss – aligning productivity routines with how different brain networks function to enable productivity. Since everyone’s productivity needs are different because of different work tasks, leveraging these brain networks that I will talk about can uniquely help you refine your productivity.

The brain has 100 billion neurons^[1], and each of these neurons connects with up to 10,000 other neurons. These connections form a complex city with multiple industrial sections. These sections – smaller areas of the brain – collaborate with each other much like different industries collaborate in a thriving city. These collaborations between industries like the textile industry supplying cloth to manufacturers and teeshirt designers going to those manufacturers to print their merchandise at different factories become a specialized network. The brain has similar networks (circuits) of closely related brain regions that serve specific functions.

Specific parts of the brain and clusters of neurons form a network with other brain regions to serve a specific purpose like paying attention, thinking creatively, etc. These brain networks are the main theme of this blog. Of the many networks in the brain, I’ve selected 5 networks that serve different purposes that affect productivity directly. And knowing what these brain networks do can help you manage your own productivity. Whether it’s a habit problem or a focus problem or any other productivity issue, letting these networks do their job can help you fix those issues.

Most of our productivity happens via these networks that spread across the brain and not just 1 single brain region or a few neurochemicals like dopamine. Brain regions and neurochemicals enable the network to function well because they are the components of the network. But, the networks as a whole? They are what you can leverage to improve productivity.

Everyone’s work is different, so, different aspects of productivity matter to them, and in turn, different brain networks get utilized specifically & uniquely for their work. Step one is to understand what productivity means in your domain, and which of these networks are relevant.

Let’s look at the networks now, which I’ve classified as Thinking modes and Doing modes of the brain.

Thinking modes

The 3 networks below – the default mode network, the central executive network, and the salience network form a whole system that enables our thinking and mental processing during productivity. By thinking, I mean everything from recalling ideas, remembering personal experiences, zoning out, intrusive thoughts, and daydreaming

1. The Default Mode Network

The DMN is highly active when our attention is not engaged in a task^[2], or we are sitting idle or mindlessly doing some activity without focusing on the outside world. During that high activity, the brain is re-configuring and accessing little pieces of personally relevant information stored across the brain (autobiographical memory). Through random activity of this mode, the brain pulls out random thoughts and triggers mind-wandering. Occasionally, your to-do list also pops up. And quite often, a creative insight emerges along with some unexpected perspectives. This mode, in high activity, is needed for the brain to digest and incubate things you are working on. A lot of good ideas emerge when this mode is on.

The DMN activity dramatically reduces when we are engaged in a task. The brain suppresses it and increases resources to deal with the task at hand. For the DMN, high and low activity has productivity benefits, so being constantly engaged in a task, or never being engaged doesn’t leverage the dual benefits of this mode.

When a person is engaged in a routine or mundane task, the DMN activity is high, and it becomes the birthplace of unexpected productivity.

2. The Central Executive Network

The CEN works opposite to the DMN. It is activated when a person gets goal-directed toward some thought process^[3] that requires attention – like active thinking, evaluating and analyzing, decision-making, etc. Since productivity requires thinking, this mode is essential. An important aspect of the CEN is recalling memories like instructions, problem-solving techniques, domain knowledge, etc. while working. The core of human cognition is considered to emerge from this network.

The way to leverage this network is to set some time aside to think about your work before you begin. So, you need to plan, mentally rehearse, make crude decisions, and bring attention to the knowledge in your domain. But this process depends a lot on the salience network (next section).

3. The Salience Network

The salience network is a switch between the DMN and CEN^[4]. It monitors the environment and thoughts within oneself to prioritize salient stimuli – important things, distracting things, emotionally relevant things, powerful sensations, etc. The SN selects these stimuli and switches gear from DMN to CEN or CEN to DMN and integrates other thought processes into it. The SN typically looks at emotion-centric things and behaviorally significant things – like hearing bad news, noticing a toilet when you have to go, etc.

DMN to CEN – the salience network will prioritize important things and put the brain into an active thinking mode. This is typically how people remember a task and pause their idle behavior like scrolling Instagram to get back to work.

CEN to DMN – the salience network will prioritize a distraction in the form of emotions from people, emotions from the contents of a notification, etc. This then slowly slips into abandoning work or zoning out into some habitual activity like reading, googling, responding to people, etc. In such cases, having habits that are also productive in some manner – hygiene, cleaning, organizing, housekeeping, etc., can help. They free up the brain for the DMN to get back to incubating ideas and letting the mind wander while still getting some important tasks done.

Doing modes

Productivity is essentially doing something, but it needs thought (previous section). Since actual actions are needed for work, we can leverage the power of 2 other networks that are general-purpose action-oriented.

4. The Multiple Demand Network

The MDN is a wild-card network because it can accommodate a lot of complex cognitive activity^[5]. When people code, compose text, logically work through a business problem, and recall task-relevant memories and past learnings, the MDN is activated. This network is very relevant when we perform complex tasks that need multi-tasking, regular shifting of attention, accommodating people’s conversations while working, responding to email and chat, planning while jotting down minutes of the meeting, and simultaneously solving a complex problem.

The multiple-demand network works under pressure and during challenging tasks, especially when a task gets multi-faceted and complex^[6]. So one way to leverage this mode is to work with some form of pressure and temporary stress – like a deadline, a hyper-busy environment, and signing up for a complex task. Without the pressure from something difficult, the brain would likely resort to habit-based approaches and not engage in complex problem-solving. But, with the pressure, the brain will activate the MDN and leverage its extra resources to get work done.

It’s easier to leverage this network by artificially thinking deeply about a task, or considering its impact, or noticing its nuances, or finding out related problems. Let’s say the task is gardening – you could optimize for time and water the plants. But if you begin thinking deeply, you notice some plants that are lacking sunlight or have a major pest issue. Processing that will leverage the MDN and begin treating a simple task of water plants as a complex gardening problem and still manage to provide the resources to solve the problem.

5. The Dorsal Attention Network

The DAN is closely related to goal-directed behavior, concentration, and motivation^[7]. Since our brain is paying attention to the external-world and prioritizing things, there is a mix of useful and useless stimuli that show up. There is a lot of noise served on a platter to our attention systems. The dorsal attention network prioritizes those things that matter – things directly related to the task or the goal you’ve set. This is different from the salient mode network that prioritizes things that are emotional or pronounced and dramatic, which may not be related to the task or goal at all.

Manipulating this network is relatively easy and fits well with the classic productivity advice – make your environment favorable to the work you do. When the environment is well structured and has things you need – say charging cable, a notebook, a multi-pin plug, a scratch pad, a good desk, people doing similar work, informational nudges about your domain, charts about skills you use, etc., the DAN has more opportunity to focus on relevant things.

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So, these are the 2 modes – the thinking and the doing.

My goal to outline these modes in both categories is to give you a holistic insight into how the brain gets things done and how your purposeful productivity aligns with it.

Needless to say, everyone’s productivity needs are different. Some people have to write a lot, some people have to talk and maintain communications, some have to code and fix bugs, some have to creatively work on different brands, some have to do specialized physical skills like prototyping products and creating toy architectural models, etc. Different brain networks add value to different types of productive work. Knowing what these networks do and how they are leveraged can help us tailor our everyday routines for productivity and not waste effort on irrelevant productive habits.

These networks have slightly but reasonably similar activities for most people. But there are differences. For example, for a highly sensitive person, emotional stimuli can be very powerful (high salience network activity). Someone doing creative work may engage a lot in habitual routines that let the mind wander (high default mode network activity). Someone doing complex cognitive tasks may be used to it and already in that mode (high central executive network activity). A person who likes pressure, like active procrastinators, may find it easier to trigger the multiple demands network.

The point, is that people are different, and their productivity needs are different. So these networks/circuits will be uniquely relevant or irrelevant to them.

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