Your brain is the bottleneck in your knowledge business
Two weeks ago, I realized I needed to get better at managing myself.
I researched different management methodologies/systems, e.g., Eisenhower Matrix, Ivy Lee Method, Scrum, Kanban.
Then I took parts from each and put together a composite system that fits my workflow. I wrote this post that describes the system in detail.
While writing that post, I stumbled upon this idea …
“It’s like having a well-organized external brain that isn’t connected to my somatic experience. The ideas can progress along in the external brain without causing stress in my body.”
Being able to process lots of information (quickly and effectively) is a business advantage.
“Knowledge work” is the driving force of the modern economy.
But is it healthy for human minds to do this work?
Thinking for a living
Most of my work is thinking.
If I want to get better at my work, I need to think more, faster, better.
This isn’t unique to me as a founder/solopreneur.
There are over 100 million knowledge workers in the U.S. and over 1 billion globally.
Consultants, designers, writers, salespeople, marketers, lawyers, engineers, etc.
All of us trying to think more, faster, better.
Most of us using our human brains to do so.
My experience as a stressed solopreneur
I’ve been stressed, and I believe it’s due, at least in part, to the large volume and high rate of thoughts I’ve been storing and processing in my brain as I build a business as a solopreneur.
Which is why I’m implementing an improved self-management system.
Instead of having sticky notes on my desk and open windows on my computer, my thoughts will be stored and processed in a Notion database.
I expect this will relieve some of my stress.
But now I’m wondering if I can take it even further …
Limits of the human mind
There are two questions:
What can your mind do?
What do you want your mind to do?
From a mechanical perspective, your mind is a machine.
Input experience, imagination, sensory data. Output thoughts.
If you’re trying to achieve a goal, you can focus your thoughts on a specific purpose (e.g., growing a business), increase the volume/rate of thought, and employ quality assurance measures to make sure each thought is making efficient progress toward the goal.
With these standards in place, you could turn up the dial to increase thought production.
But do you want to?
Your brain is connected to your lived experience
How you use your brain for work impacts how your brain functions in your personal life.
If you stay up late working on the computer, your sleep quality will suffer.
If you’re distracted by work thoughts, you’re not present at dinner with your family.
If you’re checking notifications on your phone, you can’t focus on what you’re doing.
Thinking too much or too quickly can cause anxiety, overwhelm, burnout, fatigue.
Certain thoughts like deadlines, upset customers, legal/financial issues, etc. can cause stress, depression, panic, irritability.
From a purely mechanical perspective, your brain might be capable of outputting thoughts at a certain volume, rate, and quality level.
However, you might not want to because achieving that output would negatively impact your lived experience.
But what if you could build an “external brain” that could achieve greater thought output than your human brain and have minimal impact on your lived experience?
Your brain is the bottleneck in your knowledge business
Your brain is already limited, mechanically speaking.
But then it’s limited even more if you put protections in place so that you’re not forcing your brain to operate in a way that makes your life crappy.
At which point, you might be thinking you have to choose between:
Have a successful business but crappy life.
Have a happy life but unsuccessful business.
But shouldn’t it be possible to have a successful business AND a personal life that’s not made worse by the crushing demands that a knowledge business places on your mind?
I think so.
But how?
By building an external brain.
I’ll be writing more about how to do this in upcoming posts (I’m still in the process of figuring it out myself) …
have you read the para methodology? i think that was where the term external brain was coined, AFAIK