I measured my brain during one of the hardest business trips of my year. Here’s what I learned about performance

During a recent business trip, I wore Neurable's EEG-powered headphones to monitor my brain's response to various factors like travel, sleep, stress, and recovery. Initially, I expected to see increased stress levels, but the data surprised me by often contradicting my intuition about cognitive performance. This reminded me that we tend to judge our brain's functioning based on subjective feelings rather than objective measurements.

This experience highlighted the gap between how our brains perform and how we perceive their performance. It's easy to fall into the trap of assuming we're performing at our best when we feel ready, even if our brain data suggests otherwise. After spending a few days on the trip, my cognitive measurements largely returned to baseline, but I realized that feeling ready and being cognitively ready aren't always the same thing.

Recovery plays a crucial role in sustained performance. Professional athletes understand this, prioritizing recovery to maintain peak performance. However, many business leaders tend to push through without giving proper attention to recovery. We often celebrate working hard and treating recovery as something to be done later. In reality, misdiagnosing performance can lead to decisions made under cognitive fatigue, which can have serious consequences.

To optimize our performance, we should treat recovery as a necessity rather than a luxury. We should ask ourselves if our brain is in the best possible state before making critical decisions. By doing so, we can ensure that our important business decisions are made with the clearest thinking possible.