Mental Nutrition
Much like how our food and drink choices determine our body weight, so too does our mental nutrition determine the health of our minds. Put simply, our bodies are systems. The inputs affect the outputs.
The big difference between mental and physical nutrition is that we are not primarily in control of our mental nutrition. Much of it is beyond our control.
However, too often we give up what control we do have of our mental nutrition not realizing its impact on our cognitive performance and well-being.
Physical Diet
Body weight is mainly determined by a simple formula of calories in vs calories out. Of course this doesn’t tell the whole story. Some bodies will respond quite differently to a caloric deficit vs a caloric surplus.
The broader principle holds, however. If we take in more calories than we burn, we will grow. Now we can do things such as weight training and consuming sufficient protein to maximize lean body mass gain. In this way we can shepherd our weight growth towards a desirable outcome, i.e. more lean body mass and less body fat.
If however we consume more calories than our activity level requires, we will gain primarily body fat. We also open ourselves up to a litany of health problems such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes to name only two.
In short, the inputs affect the outputs. This is not controversial. Yet we often overlook a closely related analog, our mental diet.
Mental Diet
Our mental diet on the other hand is not primarily within our control. While we can voluntarily choose how many calories we ingest, we rarely choose what mental stimuli we encounter. Given this high proportion of involuntary stimuli, it’s extremely important to mind the parts we can control.
For example, we often can’t control with whom and where we work. At least for the majority still stuck in the in-office corporate culture. These environmental factors unleash a deluge of detrimental stimuli upon our minds whether we like it or not.
This is ultimately what I mean when I refer to mental nutrition. That is, the mental stimuli we experience. One part of which is voluntary and the other part is involuntary.
I contend it’s in our best interest to increase the proportion of voluntary mental stimuli. Of course then it’s incumbent upon us to choose wisely what stimuli is beneficial and what is not.
How to Improve our Mental Nutrition
One of the most straightforward things we can do is to avoid attention rabbit holes. Spending significant time on social media, politics, or office gossip are guaranteed ways to sabotage your mental health.
Social media is one of the most egregious offenders. There are few easier ways to waste hours a day on an activity that is both unproductive and likely to make you feel bad. It’s too easy to compare yourself, warts and all, to the curated versions of others found on social media platforms.
Politics and office gossip too can easily swallow up huge chunks of your attention and time. They’re also sure to cause unnecessary problems in the workplace at some point and pollute your mind as well.
But enough of what’s out, what’s in? My shortlist would start with spending time with family, exercise, reading, writing, and working on projects. Your shortlist may well be different, but these are all things that are likely to increase your happiness, health, and mental acuity.
Moreover, it will be no surprise to readers of this blog that working remotely can also greatly improve mental nutrition. Recall the aforementioned involuntary environmental factors from working in-office. Those largely vanish or at least become voluntary when we work remotely.
This is a big reason why remote work has such enormous potential for our productivity. It shifts a large chunk of mental stimuli from the involuntary category to the voluntary. It empowers each of us to better optimize for productivity based on our individual characteristics.
Summary
Our bodies function better with proper nutrition. So too do our minds function better with proper mental nutrition.
We have less control over the mental stimuli we experience than our calorie intake. Therefore it is important that we consciously choose our mental nutrition well for the parts that we can control.
We should be mindful of where we spend our attention. Social media, politics, and office gossip are attention rabbit holes that are largely net negative activities. Engage in them sparingly and with caution.
Working remotely puts us in greater control of the mental stimuli we experience. This allows us to optimize our mental nutrition much better than an in-office worker ever could.