In this episode, I’m joined by cognitive strategist Natalie Mackenzie to talk about something we often overlook in business: cognitive health and how your brain influences the way you work every single day.

Natalie explains what cognitive health actually means in simple, practical terms, and how things like memory, attention and focus affect your productivity, energy and decision making. We also talk about how modern life impacts your ability to concentrate, why some tasks feel harder than others, and how becoming more aware of your own thinking patterns can completely change the way you run your business.

If you have ever felt foggy, overwhelmed, distracted or mentally tired, this conversation will really help you understand what might be going on and how you can support your brain long term. Natalie also shares simple strategies to protect cognitive health for entrepreneurs so that you can work in a way that feels more sustainable and enjoyable.

What you will take away from this episode

• What cognitive health really means and why it matters

• How your brain function impacts your business

• Why focus and memory sometimes feel harder than they should

• Signs of overwhelm and decision fatigue

• Practical ways to support your brain while running a business

Chapters

00:00 Welcome and introduction

03:30 What cognitive health means for entrepreneurs

09:20 Memory, attention and everyday brain function

16:45 Focus, habits and why strategies work differently for everyone

25:10 Leaning into strengths and outsourcing

36:40 Overwhelm and decision fatigue

47:30 Supporting long term brain and business health

Find Natalie Here:

Website: https://thecognitivestrategist.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecognitivestrategist/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-mackenzie-15a66235/

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Welcome to the bring your product idea to life podcast. This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd like to create your own product to sell.

I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses. Let's get started.

Today on the podcast I'm Speaking to Natalie McKenzie. Natalie is a cognitive health expert for business owners with a background in psychology, neuropsychology and business strategy.

She works with founders, leaders and entrepreneurs to optimize their cognitive performance, overcome decision fatigue and avoid burnout through blending cognitive science and practical business frameworks to also look after brain health for later life.

Natalie is a sought after media expert, regularly sharing her expertise on cognition publications such as the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Independent and many others. I was so excited to get to talk to Natalie.

We haven't spoken about cognitive health or brain health on the podcast before, but as business owners, it's actually something that's really, really important.

And I had lots of realizations while I was talking to Natalie about things that I hadn't considered about how we run our businesses, about how we take care of ourselves, about how we make decisions, about how we avoid burnout and stress. This is a really great conversation and the more we go on, the more practical takeaways there are for you as well.

So I really think you're going to enjoy this conversation and I would love now to introduce you to Natalie. So hi Natalie, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

Can we please start by introducing yourself, your business and what you do?

Yep. So I'm Natalie McKenzie, also known as the Cognitive Strategist.

So I work with business owners to help them understand their cognitive health and work on business health so that they can fully understand what it is they need in their business and maintain brain health over the long term as well.

Amazing. So can you explain what that means in simple so cognitive health for business owners, can you explain what that means in really, really simple steps?

Yeah, basically it's how you do things, how your thought processes work, how your cognitive domains, what we call so your memory, attention, executive functioning, all of that, how it actually impacts business, how you work every day and ultimately what I put into that as well is around brain health. So how your day to day business practices affect your mind and your brain health and how to look after them long term.

Because people aren't thinking about things like their cognitive and brain health until it's a bit too late or if someone gets ill in their family or they get to a certain time of life and start realising that they may be a bit foggy or they start to notice a little shift.

So I'm bringing it into day to day business practices so people can understand more about their strengths and weaknesses and how to make things more efficient.

That makes a lot of sense. And I'll come on to central weaknesses in a moment. Natalie.

But coming back to brain health, how do we know or can we know if we have a healthy brain or not?

This comes down to a lot of self awareness and self reflection. So if we take two halves. So my main background is brain injury. I run a brain injury rehab service.

So I know very much about what happens when a brain doesn't work optimally or when things go wrong. But often a lot of people don't really look at how their brain is working day to day and monitor it. So there's different ways of doing it.

So you might be aware of more of your mental health and your mood and your tiredness, but you're not really, as I say, monitoring it.

My scientific side comes in where we do actual cognitive health assessments, so we get a really scientifically measured backed way of looking at how you're performing across domains. Like I said earlier, working memory or decision making, your impulsivity.

And they're really important for me because they give people a baseline of function. So we all have a different cognitive profile, like we do a body profile.

We have our strengths and weaknesses, we've got one side of our body that tends to be a little bit stronger than the other, more dominant side, etc. It's the same with your cognitive profile, your brain profile.

So there will be some things that you're good at at and some things that you won't be good at, depending on how reflective and in tune you are with your own behaviours.

You may or may not be aware that, say you're rubbish at attention whether or not you've got a diagnosis of something or not, or you're not very good at long periods of focused attention, or you're not very good when you're not structured, or you might notice that you struggle when you jump from task to task, but you might not fully understand why, what it really means in terms of cognitive performance and cognitive function. So one way to answer your question is just to have more awareness of that. What are your patterns?

How do you think, how do you carry out your day to day business or tasks? But the other one is the more scientific way and the more evidence Based way of doing things like the cognitive health assessments.

Perfect, thank you. And so does memory come into this or not? Is memory something separate?

100%. So memory is quite a complicated thing. This is why I love brains.

Everyone just thinks there's, you know, you've got your memory and your retention, but they all break down into much smaller parts.

So you have your working memory, which is a very, very short period of time, you have your short term memory, which is slightly longer then you have your long term memory and then you have other things like semantic memories, episodic memories, all sorts of different things. So memory is a very big umbrella.

So often people will say that they've got issues, oh, my memory is terrible, when actually it's the attentional processes that are under pressure, as it were. Which doesn't necessarily mean that you have adhd. It's not as simple as that.

But often people will say, oh, I'm terrible at remembering X, my memory must be really bad.

When actually what's happening is there's potentially a cognitive overload or a fatigue or something else there that's affecting your attention to a particular piece of information. So you were never doing anything with it in the first place, you weren't putting it into the memory stores.

So the memory is not the problem, it's the attention to the information that's the issue.

Oh, that makes a lot of sense and I can definitely see why it'd be useful to know that. So like you say, I do speak to people, my husband for example, will always say, I've got a memory problem, I can never remember anything.

But it sounds like it could be that the things that he doesn't remember are just simply things he not attaining, whether through choice or.

Well, that's the classic, that's the classic men's selective attention that we talk about.

Yeah, but it also sounds like there could be something cognitive where for whatever reason certain things just aren't going in in the first place. It's not like they're not being retained.

They'Re not there, they're not, they're not being attended to, which means they don't go through the encoding and consolidation process.

But often what we see a huge impact on attention now because the world is so busy, our brains weren't designed to be in a world that moves as quickly as it does, that has as much tech as it does. Whilst tech is brilliant, it's not great for our brains in many ways because it means that we're jumping from thing to thing.

We're constantly on, we're constantly looking at something else and that impacts our attention.

It's really easy to be distracted, isn't it?

So easy. I mean, you know, I, I teach this and I'm easily distracted because it's there constantly.

And this is where people have to put be stricter with themselves about strategies and boundaries and things because the, everything is there to take our attention away.

You know, certain social media platforms are designed to pull you in, to take your attention and to give you bursts of dopamine through new things that take your attention to keep you on the platform for long periods of time. They know what they're doing.

Oh absolutely. And you're right. It just feel like everyone's competing for your attention all of the time.

And particularly if you are prone to struggle to concentrate, it must be really hard to just remain focused. So I guess knowing this kind of thing about yourself can be really helpful.

And do you think that knowing cognitively what your strengths are and some of the things maybe you need to work out, do you believe that can help with the running of your business as well?

100%. I always think that you. We need to have a really big, very rounded way at the look at how we do everything.

So up until the last few years we never really. People didn't even really talk about mental health and how it impacted business and mood of business. And you can see more of that coming up.

You now see more of the nervous system regulation work and about how understanding that can make can improve your performance. It's the same with brain health, but obviously for me, I've worked in Neuro for what we now 24 years.

So I've always had literally brain behavior at the forefront of my thinking.

So it's good to see now that we're starting to think about adding in these things because again, if you understand what it is that helps you perform better, you can lean into your strengths.

And as I say, we all have strengths and weaknesses, but people spend an awful lot of time trying to do things that they're naturally not very good at potentially. Is it because they see lots of things online that you've just got to embrace it or try harder or implement a system, whatever it may be.

But people spend a huge amount of time trying to do things that they're not very good at because they feel they have to or they don't have the money or the understanding to know how to outsource it or anything like that. But if you lean far more into the strengths that you have, you're going to be Much more effective.

You're going to be more motivated because it's not going to be so hard.

And we even look at that, you know, in children in terms of, you know, schooling and getting them to do, you know, kids that aren't very good at maths, they're forced to do it and spend a huge amount of time and effort cognitively on something that they're just naturally not very good at.

And it's that balance between trying to improve and we know that doing things that you find hard and are challenging are good for your brain for a brain health perspective. But there's some things that you literally just don't need to waste your time on.

Yeah, that makes sense. What about sort of how your brain, in terms of how your brain works? So let's say you're someone who struggles to concentrate.

Is that something that you can work on and can be improved or is that something where, if that's how your brain is, that's how your brain is. That's what I'm not sure about.

Yeah, so absolutely there's always ways of improving cognitive function.

And as I say, my background in brain injury is great evidence to that, you know, neuroplasticity, which means the brain's ability to adapt and adjust to any experience where it's, whether it's a trauma to the brain or it's a life event, burnout, stress, all of that. So long as you're implementing strategies, your brain is plastic and it will learn how to do new things.

But it comes down to understanding what it is that you need and the willingness to implement it. So often a lot of strategies are quite simple.

So things like if you struggle with concentration and attention, looking at things like time clocking is a really, really effective and evidence based way of getting more done because you know, you're only having to focus for a certain amount of time. Having days where you delegate particular things like a marketing day or a production day or a finance day.

Knowing what's coming so that your brain knows that you're not having to jump between tasks which impacts attention and focus is a really simple way. But people often don't think they need to do it. So they don't. It seems too simplistic. I don't need to do that.

So they don't do it or they start it and maybe do a few days of it and get distracted and stop doing it and then say that it didn't work. But anything that you do from a habit formation or strategy implementation has to be repeated and compounded. For it to be habituated.

But often people give up before that point, which is normally about 30 days, 90 days if you've got a more inattentive brain, which is a really long time. So you have to have quite a lot of. What's the word?

Willpower, really.

Willpower. To stick with it and want to do it. And that's often what I see. People will say, oh, I tried that, it didn't work.

I'm like, well, how long did you do it for? A few days. Same with supplements. Oh, I tried so and so, but it was rubbish. How long did you do it for? 10 days. That's why. That's what you see a lot.

And again, that's kind of because our brains are working so quickly now and so distracted and there's so much out there that they're just working at such speed that we expect answers and change so quickly because our brains have become used to getting that so quickly from other means.

That makes a lot of sense. And then I guess on the other side of that, when a habit is embedded, you do it every day without even thinking about it, don't you?

So like supplements. I take supplements every morning. It's just what I do. I eat my breakfast, I take my supplements. There's no.

So where there is thought behind it, but there's no conscious thought. It's just like that's what I do. And I guess that's because I've been doing it for a long time and now that's a habit.

And I'm sure like lots of us have these things. So is that the point we're hoping to get to, where something's just, just the way we do it? Is that what we're aiming for?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think when you first started doing it, you, you may or may not have been brilliant and done it every day.

There might have been a couple of days where you forgot, but by the sounds of it, because you said you did it with breakfast, you've habit stacked it on top something else you're already doing, which has made it easier for you because presumably you eat breakfast every day. So you've hooked it onto something else that you're already doing. And that's a really clever way of building habits.

Anyway, often people will try and come up with some, you know, really complicated way of doing something new and you're like, just add it to something else that is already so embedded and ingrained in your day to day practice. You don't have to think about it. That's the fastest Way to habituate to something.

That's brilliant advice. Thank you. And while we're on habits, are there any other ways that we can that are good to sort of ingrain new habits?

Like I said, there's the habit stacking, so doing it already on top of something you already do. But again, honestly, I think people really overcomplicate things. This is where understanding how your brain works is important as well.

So for some people, they need all the external prompts. I'm not going to say it because she'll. Mine would be an Alexa. She will shout at me if she hears me, things like that.

Some people really rely on those. If that's, if that's what you need to do, use the external prompts, use the tech that's available.

Some people like to have reminders on their phones so it's set every hour that they need to have a drink, for instance. Some people need the bottles that tell them where they are in the day. Gamification for different brains is quite helpful. So if it's.

If you have to do something to fulfill something and you know that your brain works well on that, on reward, do that.

If your brain is better knowing that it's simply at the end of the day doing a review checklist and checking off all the things that you were meant to do as a habit that day, that works best for you. It's really. Brains are so individualized and I think again, this is where the online world can confuse people because there's so many options.

If in doubt, simplify it, take it back to basics, just write a list, simple.

This is what I'm getting for this actually, is that our brains are so individual. And you're right, what works for someone won't necessarily work for someone else.

And that makes a lot of sense because you do read all this advice about. This is the best way to start a new habit or effort, particularly at this time, you know, coming closer into the new year.

But you're right, I mean, I know for myself, I've tried so many things that don't work, like I don't care what my streak is on duolingo. I really don't. Don't care. It doesn't interest me at all.

However, I think as you said, for me, doing something at the same time as something I already do, kind of, that does, that does work because I don't have to think about it. So I think you're right, it must be very individual. And I suppose it's just a matter of working out what works for you?

Yeah, 100%. You see, I'm a streak lover.

I was devastated yesterday, was it yesterday morning I woke up and I went, oh, my husband woke up like stark out bed and he's like, what's the matter? And I'm like, oh, lost my four year peloton streak. I was so upset because that was what was keeping me motivated.

Even though I wasn't necessarily doing the exact thing that I needed to do the workout. You know, occasionally there was a cheat one that was like a mindfulness or something. But that for me works. I like seeing something visual.

That works for me. And again, when we look at people's cognitive profiles, we're far.

You know that that whole people are either visual or auditory learners is a bit old school and a bit debunked really.

But there are people that work better from a visual processing perspective that need to see things in a particular way or, or there's depending on people's reward based circuits in their brain.

Some people will need to see those streaks or to see the stars or there's even apps out there now that you can build a forest or you can build a village based on how many tasks you get done in a day. That really, really, that gamification element can really work well for some people. Yet I.

What you've then got to be aware of is how that impacts your productivity because if you're working on reward and getting that dopamine from things, you can be very easily distracted into another world of reward based stuff which is where you see people have poor productivity because they focus on that too much and don't put the boundaries in place to say stop now. And those boundaries again might be an external aid or a prompt, like an alarm to bring you back on task and things. So yes, widely individualized.

So it sounds like coming back to what you said right at the beginning. So knowing your own cognitive profile is going to be the key here.

You mentioned on your website building that when you're building a team in your business about building a team around your skill set gaps, what does that look like in practice?

Again, this is for people that are kind of scaling and it can always be a difficult thing, can't it? Like when to expand, when to get a team member in. And that can be really overwhelming in itself.

So if people have got issues with decision fatigue or decision, you know, overwhelm because they're cognitively overloaded, often looking at what it is that your cognitive gaps are.

And back to what I was saying earlier, if you're not if you're not great at, you're an ideas person, so you're great at kind of visual processing or executive functioning or something like that, but you're not so great at the operation side of things, the organization or the sustained attention, then you need to be outsourcing that to somebody else that does have that skill. Like you said earlier, in terms of you're not motivated by your streaks, someone else that isn't so gamified or looking for the reward based.

Things that is more process based and more structured and evidence based actually will be great to have as kind of a part time or a consultant ops director, for instance, someone that's better at systems. If that's not where your cognitive strengths lie.

If you're an ideas person, but you can't get it to fruition, outsource that to somebody else or build your team based on what their cognitive strengths are and how. What you basically want is, you want a team that is a whole orchestra of the brain.

You want to have people that, you know, you see it in successful companies all the time. You have, you know, the C CEO who's the ideas person, but literally ask them to do a spreadsheet or a funnel or a strategy plan. They fail.

You bring in someone that's better at. Let's have a.

If we had someone that had really, really good intact working memory and better sustained attention, you would put those into the more rigid, structured tasks that take longer and need more attention to detail and need more focused attention. You'd bring those in if it's somebody that's better.

Spatial awareness, if you were, if you were say working in a, a shop or building something or something that was more visually required, you would need someone that has good spatial. Visual. Spatial awareness to see how that looks pleasing or how that fits in literally better from a spatial awareness perspective.

Because you might not be good at it all. And often people aren't.

Like, you'll hear all the time that the entrepreneurs are just good at everything because they're the head of marketing, head of finance, head of strategy, everything. Just because they're the head of everything doesn't mean that they're brilliant at it all. There will be things that they're not so good at. But.

Yeah, yeah, no, sorry, you go.

I was gonna say and things you enjoy less as well.

Because I can say for my own business, things that I outsource, and I'll be very honest here, I outsource the things that have to be done constantly over and over and over, the things that are the regular tasks that don't take a lot of thought that need to be done because I find that I'll be really honest. So boring. Yes, I can do it. There's no reason that I can't.

But I just find it hard to motivate myself to do certain things because yeah, they're boring and I feel very vulnerable saying that. But it's, it's true. Whereas some people absolutely love, you know that love doing those sorts of things and that's the thought really excites them.

So I think that is that part of your cognitive profile as well as you enjoy and the things you don't enjoy.

Yeah, 100%. And again that, that's what you've done and I think it's brilliant you've done that because again, it's that self awareness.

I don't like doing them so I'm not going to do them. Because if you do them, you will waste so much time doing them because you won't do them quickly.

You'll procrastinate, you'll find something else to do, they won't get done. So you already have that understanding. This actually isn't something that motivates me. So my brain isn't.

Isn't primed to do it because I find it uninteresting, tedious, boring, whatever it may be, outsource it. And that can be difficult for people when they're just looking at scaling or they've got. Not got the funds to do it yet.

But, but that's why you've got to kind of look and think, right, this is where I put kind of like my business goals into place. I don't want to have to do this long term.

So it's a priority that I have a plan and a strategy around building the business to a point where I can outsource it, whether it's to automation. And there's so many automations now, isn't there? They're confusing because there's so many or you outsource it to a another.

Thank you. If it's okay, I wouldn't mind talking a little bit about some of the things that can affect us as business owners.

So obviously outsourcing is one thing, but something that can often lead to that is overwhelm. What are some. And overwhelm and decision fatigue.

I don't know if there's the same things or separate things, but I sometimes feel like for myself, if I'm feeling overwhelmed, I feel like I can't make decisions. So I don't know if There is a link. What are some signs that this might be something where this is setting in?

And how can we recognise it before it leads to something a bit more serious? Because I think all of us who run businesses have these times where it's just everything feels a bit too much.

Yeah, it's classic, isn't it?

You know, we all get really overwhelmed running businesses because we don't, we don't take enough time to be out of the business or do the rest and recharge because we're doing everything for the business. Quite often other people will tell you that it's a problem before you notice it, so it'll turn up.

Like you might find that people say that you're being a bit more snappy or you're being a bit more moody is often one of the first signs that you're in cognitive overload. So cognitive overload is effectively overwhelmed.

You then add in what it does to the body and the nervous system and everything, which is all intrinsically linked, and that's when you see your behavior start to shift.

So one of the first markers also behaviorally will be changes to things like your sleep and mood, how you're waking up, even like coming much further forward to actually how it shows up in your business. It will start showing up in you earlier than it will in your behavior.

And that's again where you need to be really aware of what your patterns are on how you're feeling, rather than just going, oh, I'm really tired, actually looking at that and taking time to reflect on that and do something about it. But the decision making stuff is down to that cognitive overload.

So some bright spark out there has decided that we make about 35,000 decisions a day, which is an enormous amount. Goodness knows who went and tabbed all those up, but it's a huge amount.

And that's why, you know, leaders, you know, people like Steve Jobs, Barack Obama wore the same clothes every day because it reduces the need to make a decision about small things like that. And whilst that sounds ridiculous, why on earth would I wear the same outfit all the time? It's just one less thing to think about.

And again, going back to what we're talking about earlier with that habit stacking, if you can reduce things like that, deciding what you're going to have to break. I have the same breakfast every day because I can't be bothered to think about what I want at that time of day.

Some people lay out all their clothes on a Sunday, knowing what they're going to wear for the week because it just reduces that load. And when it comes to decision making in business, I often say to people, big decisions should not be made impulsively.

If you are faced with a big decision quickly, you need to kind of have a 24 hour rule on it. Because if you are fatigued, if you are overwhelmed, your executive functioning.

So the front part of your brain that deals with all the weighing up information, making a judgment, seeing how it will impact forethought, actually seeing what's going to happen as the outcome further down the line based on experience before it becomes impaired.

The first thing to go in nervous system dysregulation, sleep deprivation, or not even deprivation, just not great sleep and generally not taking breaks is that frontal function. So you need to start to put boundaries in place.

And again I say to people, don't make decisions at the end of the day, no decision should be made past 3 o' clock when we have a natural depletion in cortisol which impacts our cognitive function function.

Or as simple as no more than three decisions a day, which sounds ridiculous, but again it's putting those boundaries into place and putting those strategies into place to reduce that decision fatigue. Because there's just too much to think about. And often people say, well, if I can't make a decision on that, then things have to wait.

That comes back again to you looking and planning and prioritizing what is important.

And really you shouldn't be at a point that if you have to make a decision immediately without something going terribly wrong, it means that your kind of planning isn't great anyway.

Yeah, thank you. And on that I'm just thinking, so I like the examples you gave of ways you can reduce the decisions you have to make in your life.

So like laying out your clothes, planning your meals, whatever it is. Are there similar things we could be doing in our businesses to reduce the amount of decisions we have to make?

I would say when it comes to business, again it goes, I think I said earlier, if you plan your weeks based on your business needs, as I say, like delegating particular days for different parts of your business, that really helps because then you're only focusing on the decisions in one domain, as it were. So if it's product purchases or as I say, another day, it's marketing.

If you reduce the task switching, which I can never say, I've got to find a better way of saying it, and put them into different delegated days, you naturally reduce the amount of decisions you have to make across a broader topic. If that makes Sense.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So we're speaking about this on a Tuesday because Tuesday is my podcast day. I only do podcast things on a Tuesday because it's just easier.

Yeah, but your brain likes that because it knows today is podcast day. All I need to think about and make decisions about is this genre or this area. And I do that myself.

I have two different days of the week where I work because I have three businesses. I work on different businesses on those days. And then I break down that day into.

It might be that the morning is finance, depending on where we are in the year, and the afternoon is social media, say. So. Yeah.

Grouping together your areas of business will naturally reduce the amount of decisions you're having to make, because in each area there are reduced numbers of decisions.

So you're kind of just funneling it down naturally, rather than having a day where you're jumping from one area to another with area A having five decisions, area B having five decisions. And you can just see how that funnels it down when you're doing different days for different things.

Yeah, I think so. And I mean, also, my brain really likes knowing in advance. Like, okay, wake up. Today it's Tuesday. Tuesday's podcast.

Say, I'm doing podcast things today. It kind of likes. No, I think me, my brain, probably the same thing, like knowing, okay, this is the day I do this.

I don't have to think about this thing today because I do that on a Friday. So today's Tuesday. I'm not thinking about Friday's things because they're for Friday.

Does this work for every type of cognitive profile or are there people who. This absolutely wouldn't work.

Because coming back to what we were saying before about there being lots of advice and people trying to follow the same things.

Yeah. So there'll be people listening that like, oh, my goodness, I couldn't think of anything worse than doing the same thing all day. Fine.

But you have to understand there is a consequence of that. So you may not be as productive or you may find that you get more frustrated because things aren't getting done. I truly believe.

And again, I work with all sorts of different brains in my brain injury work. I specialize a lot in ADHD as well. So I know how to. Different brains need more stimuli.

Now, when that's happening, what you then have to look at is you go back to the things like the time blocking and breaking down your day.

So even if you were, say, let's say we're having a marketing day, so you're Doing the thing where you're focusing on one domain, you then just have to make it so that you've got more rewards in that day for you.

So when I work with ADHD brains, we often look at, okay, so you can do 40 minutes of the boring stuff, the marketing stuff, but then you have a reward of doing something that fills your bucket, as it were, for 20 minutes. Then you're back to the 40 minutes.

So, and making sure that within that marketing day, you're still got the variety of tasks rather than just blanketing that it's all the same thing. So again, it's being aware of what the tasks are and actually planning them in, almost like a roller coaster of fun across the day.

Whereas some other people prefer the monotony of the same thing all day.

And if you're someone that, that needs hyper focus, say, or needs deadlines, which I'm sure a lot of people listening will say, I only work well under pressure.

So me just saying I need to do a day of say, marketing, unless there's a goal or unless there's a need, often an external one, they won't be motivated to do it. So they'll end up procrastinating or doing something else.

That's when you need to set your own or get somebody in your team or an external VA or whatever to give you that deadline to give you that must do to get you motivated to initiate these things.

Even if you are being able to bring that domain into one day, sometimes you need to bring other things in to give you that motivation and drive to do it.

And again, that comes down to taking responsibility to knowing how your brain works and what it is you have to set into place to reach the goals that you need to, both personally and in your business, rather than just saying, well, my brain doesn't work well like that.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you. And are there any other things we haven't touched on, so habits or practices that can help founders maintain their cognitive health?

Because we spoke right at the beginning, didn't we, about how your cognitive health could potentially be in decline or your brain might not be super healthy. So what are some of the practical things we can do to keep our brains healthy?

Back to basics. The thing that I always teach people about is, and I probably said it about 10 times, sleep is God. Honestly.

And I think people, it gets me really frustrated when you see a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners online basically saying you just got to go hard, hard, hard all the time and you have to sacrifice sleep or you have to work 15 hours a day to get to where you want to be. If you do not sleep well, or you curb your sleep, or you don't understand the sleep that you need, you will impact your brain health long term.

And there is absolutely no point in you building these brilliant businesses that make you Money if in 20 years time or 30 years time, you have no idea what is going on.

And you can't enjoy the fruits of your labor because you pushed your brain too hard or you didn't look after it 20 years ago because things like dementia show up about 20 years after they're already happening in your brain. So sleep. Back to my point, sleep is when we consolidate everything.

It's when we take those 35,000 decisions that we made in the day, we decide what to do with them, we decide whether to encode them and store them, or we decide to get rid of them. But also it's when the brain flushes out all of the toxins and all of the plaque and all of the bad stuff that builds up.

And if you don't sleep well, you don't filter everything out. So you wake up foggy, you wake up with 20,000 decisions still in your mind because they haven't been filtered, encoded and stored.

And it's just one of the real basics.

And I think when people are in overwhelm, they're dysregulated, they're worried about their business, whether that's financial, they're making decisions when they go to bed and ruminating, if that's all happening at night, you will not perform well at all. You'll make bad decisions. We know that one night's poor sleep can impact decision making by a huge percentage, almost 40%.

And if I told you that tomorrow, if you wake up, you're going to be 50% less able to make a decision, you'd be like, crikey, why? I'm not making any decisions. Because what if one of them is a really bad one? Sleep, honestly, is God.

And one of the biggest things that people can do and they don't do because some people spend eight, nine hours on a computer or on zoom calls back to back or in a room kind of creating things. People aren't getting outside enough.

We need to be outside underneath the sun, sunlight for about 20 minutes a day, whether that's four, lots of five minutes, or, you know, ideally you want, you want a block. But what that does is it stimulates the pineal gland, which, that's where melatonin is produced.

And it's Melatonin, that helps you sleep, it helps you fall asleep quickly, it helps keep you asleep and it gives you good quality night's sleep so that the next day you are cognitively functioning at a good level to perform in your business. But people don't do it.

I've seen, I've worked with people who've had chronic sleep problems and on sleep medication, and within three months of them getting outside for 20 minutes a day, they're off sleep tablets because they've gone back to what nature does best. And it's again, people over complicate things. Get outside, be outside, move, eat well, all those things.

But you need to do those basics because otherwise all these other things that we're talking about, they'll be helpful, but they won't really be impactful. And if you want to keep your brain working well now and in old age, you have to be thinking about it now and doing the things now. Not.

I think we're at 1 in 3 people born now are expected to have dementia. And there's an awful statistic that currently potentially one in two women are expected to get dementia, which is huge.

And some research that you look at is at 80%, some's at 99% in terms of the amount of dementias that are preventable. So you've got the kind of heritability that has an impact, but it's what we're doing daily and what we're putting in our bodies that is the problem.

Wow, that's really sobering, isn't it? And is there a reason why it's one in two women? And I presume the statistics aren't quite, quite as high for men.

Is there a cognitive reason for that?

So women are more, there's slightly more increased prevalence in women anyway. The argument of course behind that is we tend to be more at risk of things, medical conditions anyway, so things like autoimmune disorders, cancers.

The jury is still out in terms of what the, the real reason is, but the, the, the research kind of posits that women tend to be more stressed.

I was wondering if that was it, because I think, yeah, we talk a lot or we hear a lot now about the mental load, don't we?

It's something that you hear people talking about and I would agree that not, not in all cases, but in a lot of cases, that a lot of that does fall on the woman. Not, not always, and I know it would be difficult, but just generally, from speaking to colleagues and friends, it feels like a lot of it does. Yeah.

And Again, if you, if you look at the research around chronic illnesses, migraines, women are much more prone to migraines. There's, of course, as well, there's the hormonal link.

There's a big change in what happens in our bodies and therefore our brains around menopause, perimenopause. You know, we know that estrogen is a neuroprotectorant, so when that drops, that impacts, you know, our brain health.

But it's, it's high and it is, it's really sobering and, you know, it's. But these things are preventable and there's some great research out there now. There's some new biomarkers.

You know, we're just waiting for the NICE guidelines to come out about more generalized, what's it called, screening for early dementias much earlier on in men and women that, that they're going to roll out. So we're catching it earlier.

But again, as I say, if we're thinking that things are happening inside your brain at potentially 40, 45 that are going to show up at 60, 65, you really need to be thinking about it. And ideally, I say to everybody, people need to think about their cognitive health much sooner, like in their 30s.

So as I say, those basics around sleep, exercise, if you're slightly, you know, probably more my age, you need to start thinking about constantly learning. Learning is the best thing that you can do for your brain health.

And my goodness, entrepreneurs and business owners have to learn at speed all the time. So that sort of thing is really good for your brain.

So all the things that I'm saying about what's bad for your brain in business, there's a lot that is, is good. You know, the fact that we have to adapt, the fact that we have to learn is really, really good.

But learning random things like go and learn taekwondo or tai chi or the trumpet, even learning is one of the best things because the area of the brain that deals with learning also deals with memory, also deals with neurogenesis. And that's what will keep your brain active. And the other thing as well.

And this is important for people that are maybe business owners that work on their own. You have to be around people that again, we are social beings. Our brains need social interaction.

They need to be around people, to have conversations, to have debates, to have fun, to laugh, to communicate. All of those things are what keep our brain sharp.

So I'm always saying to people that work, you know, solo, get to events, go into masterminds, get into communities, don't have that as a nice to have. It's an absolute imperative, not just for your business, but for your brain health and your general well being. You have to be around people.

And is there a difference between being face to face in a room of people and networking, let's say on zoom. I'm asking this because I know that both options are around now and is one better than the other or do you still get the same?

For me, I mean, it's about balance. And again, let's talk realistically, it's about finances as well. For many, you know, going to a networking event costs money.

You're out of your business, that costs money. Popping onto an hour community Zoom with the membership you might be part of is great. Absolutely.

But what I often see is that when people go onto these more online ones, they're also checking their emails at the same time or they're checking their phones at the same time. They're not actively present in the thing that they've shown up to. So I would always recommend more in person things, you know, and again, if we.

If you want to look at the science of it, when you're around people, the body releases different chemicals when you're physically around people as well. And those chemicals are better for your brain.

But if you can't do that, turn up to the online stuff, but make sure you're not tasks, you're not switching between things that you are fully present and that you're engaged. And if you're somebody that's maybe more introverted or finds it difficult to be around people, it might be a safer space for you to be online.

But even push yourself in those online settings come off mute, go onto video, be present. Because again, one of the best things you can do to your with your brain is, is push to do the things that you find uncomfortable.

When you do things that you're scared of, your prefrontal cortex kind of goes, it loves it. It fires all the neurons off.

So if you're thinking that you'll find that, oh no, I couldn't possibly do that actually, if you can reframe it and say this would actually be brilliant for my brain and my long term brain health doing something that I find difficult, do it because again, that's. And when you do things that you find difficult, you get that reward. Your brain goes, oh my God, this is brilliant, I want to do it again.

So that's for people who maybe are a bit kind of reluctant to go into those sorts of social settings online might be a bit safer, is a Nice easy entry. But my preference would always be getting in the rooms with people.

Thank you.

I thought that would probably be your answer, but I thought it was worth asking because like you say, the reality is we can't always all be going off to fingers all of the time. Benefit of being online.

Yeah, definitely there is 100%. And again, especially for those people that are more reserved, more introverted, maybe find those things difficult. I fully understand why.

But I would say try and factor in financially when you're kind of doing financial planning, at least like one in person event a quarter if you can, because it does have huge benefits. And not only does it have benefits for you cognitively and for your confidence, it does have.

We know getting in the rooms with people is better for your business. People. Like, we're kind of coming out of the. Oh, we can just do everything on zoom. People are zoom fatigued.

People like to see people the whites of their eyes in person.

Oh, definitely. Before I ask the final few questions, can I just go back to sleep? I'm sorry, because it feels like we were talking about 10 minutes ago.

But one thing I didn't want to ask is if there is an optimum amount of sleep we should be getting or if it varies per person. Because you will always hear people who say, oh, I only need four hours sleep, that's all I need. I'm great on that.

Whereas others will be like, oh, no, I need nine. Is that true? Do we need different amounts or.

Yep, it's all different amounts. So the whole eight hours thing is rubbish. Some people do need eight hours, some people need nine, some people are fine on seven.

I'm kind of like six and a half, seven. Research suggests that anything under five is terrible. So I've qualified in CBT for insomnia.

And the sleep specialist that I did it with, he works with haulage companies and their recommendation, the sleep specialist recommendation is that no, no haulage drivers drive with less than five hours sleep because you're unsafe. And certainly I remember from having my, my kids when they were younger, I, I was not safe driving.

There was days when I had to pull over because I knew that I pulled out too quickly in front of a car and my decision making was impaired and I'm unsafe. But it goes by how you wake up.

So if you're waking up feeling groggy, you haven't had enough sleep or you've had too much sleep just to confuse everybody. Too much sleep has the same impact as too little sleep. Lots of people as well are stuck on you know, I'm guilty.

I've got a watch and a ring that monitors my sleep. But they're absolute rubbish. But people believe what they or not believe.

People take a lot of stock in what these wearables say, when actually the research suggests that they don't really tell you very much other than when you're in bed. But what happens is people wake up and they look at their sleep score and they go, oh, I've had a terrible night's sleep.

When actually they may not have done, but it impacts their performance. So there's a marathon runner.

In his autobiography, he maintains that he would never on a race day check his watch for sleep because if it told him that he had a lower score, he knew that he would perform worse because he knew exactly what the impact would be. But in answer to your question, everybody's different and you're, you know, we have our chronotypes in terms of sleep.

Some people are owls, some people are larks. You tend to match and mate with the opposite, because evolutionary speaking, it meant that someone's around all the time to look after the young.

But some people, as I say, some people are eight, I'm six and a half, my husband needs less sleep than I do. Depending on your age as well, you need different amounts of sleep.

Obviously, younger people up until teenagers need more sleep for consolidation, but as you get older, after a particular age, your sleep needs reduce.

So older people tend to sleep less because they're not having to deal with so much information, they're not having to encode things as much, they don't need as much sleep. But interestingly, there's a lot of evidence around the impact of sleep on dementia.

If you take someone like Margaret Thatcher, she famously slept for four hours a night, she got dementia. Take that as you will, because again, you're not, you're not flushing everything out, but go by how you feel.

The key is, though, that you need to keep your routine the same every day. So some people, you know, go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time every day, even on the weekends.

Now, of course, life gets in the way. If you have the odd late night, it doesn't matter, but get up at the same time anyway.

If you go to bed a couple of hours later, just get up at the same time, you'll be fine. But go by how you feel and it could be that you're waking up just at the wrong time of your circadian rhythm.

So we run in 90 minutes, 90 minute cycles. And sometimes people Wake up at not quite the right time, which is what leads to the fogginess.

That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. So I guess again, it's just working out what works for you.

Yeah, 100%.

So, Natalie, if someone's listening and they're already feeling they're really mentally overloaded, they're really stressed, is there one thing they could do right now that was help.

Them simplify, Just go back to basics, you know, actually look at what the real priorities are right now for you. What's a now, what's a not now, and what's a later? It's kind of like the. Almost like an Eisenhower matrix type thing.

Just peel it all back, set aside the time to sit down and do that. Don't do it as a, oh, I really need to do this. But I can't because I'm overwhelmed again.

I feel everyone, when they get to that point, has a responsibility to take action and do something about it, rather than just saying, I can't because I don't have enough time.

If you're in that overwhelm, you have to, for the sake of your own mental health, brain health, and the business, set aside the time to just peel everything back and simplify it and look at what the priorities are right now, and then work from there, and then plan those from there.

Thank you.

And get your sleep in check.

But you might have an opportunity to say that again, because I'm actually going to ask you the very last question, Nasi.

I promise this is the last one, because you've given us so much of your time, which is if listeners take just one thing from today, because obviously we've covered such a lot, what would you want the key message to be? Yeah, and you can say sleep.

Yeah, it is, honestly. And I bang on about it all the time. Get yourself outside. What people don't do is they don't plan in breaks. They might go, oh, I'll have my lunch.

But then you're working through your lunch plan in breaks throughout the day. Get outside, get some fresh air, move your body, check your sleep. Oh, and one other thing I will say, I haven't said it yet.

People often, and this is linked to sleep, to be fair, they wake up in the morning and they reach for coffee or caffeine straight away. Try and stop doing that. Because what it does is it teaches your brain to skip the natural waking cycles and to. And.

And it skips the processes, the clever processes that it does, which means that later on in the afternoon, when you have a natural cortisol drop at about three o', clock, half past three, you have a massive drop off the cliff cognitively. And then you reach for the caffeine again, which then impacts your sleep because you're drinking caffeine too late.

Try and reduce that in the morning because again, what that does is it, it kick starts your brain into the natural processes that it needs which impacts executive function, decision making, problem solving, cognition generally. And it makes you more cognitively focused.

Caffeine is good cognitively, just not about an hour after waking up, which everyone always hates me for because they're like, but I need my coffee in the morning now. Well, that's because you change your brain to need it, try and push it and actually you'll see that you're probably more productive.

That's really interesting. Thank you and what a great tip to leave us on. Thank you so, so much for everything you shared. Natalie really enjoyed it.

You are more than welcome. I will talk about the brain all.

Day long and I will put links in the show, notes to your socials, your website and everywhere everyone can find you. And thank you again.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening. Right to the end of this episode.

Do remember that you can get the full back catalogue and lots of free resources on my website, vickywineberg.com Please do remember to rate and review this episode if you've enjoyed it and also share it with a friend who you think might find it useful. Thank you again and see you next week.