What can neuroscience teach us about the first 30 days in a new job?

Congratulations on your new role!  Get ready to learn. You may have thought you won the role because you have the knowledge, skills and experience required but the reality is the next 30 days will be a time of massive learning of new knowledge, developing new skills and building new experience.

A new job means learning the new organisation - familiarising yourself, not just with the processes, the people and the past, but importantly the organisational culture.  You may also be learning a new location, possibly a new country culture.  And all this learning needs to take place while you prove yourself as the best person for the role by performing effectively. 

This level of learning challenge involves significant work for our brain.  While our brain is an amazing organ, with billions of nerve fibres working to fulfil an extensive array of functions, storing the equivalent of a petabyte of data; the pre-frontal cortex - the part of our brain responsible for conscious thought (learning, understanding, memorizing and remembering) - is a relatively small component and is very energy hungry. And a new job means the pre-frontal cortex is constantly stimulated by new information that needs to be noticed, recognised, understood, remembered or sometimes ignored.

The risk of focusing on novel but not helpful information is high, as is the risk of overwhelm from new information.  This can lead to low retention and to brain exhaustion depleting our ability to make good decisions as the day goes on.

So, what can we do to help and support our brain in the learning process?

Focus attention

Do one thing at a time.  Our brains can’t multi-task so instead of doing emails while listening to voice mail or talking on the phone, bring your attention to each task as you do it.  This will mean tasks will be completed faster and with less effort as your brain won’t be jumping from listening to reading to thinking.

There will be mental maps you need to learn – how to get to other offices, or to the coffee shop, or where the boardroom is located.  In your previous role, you could walk to these places while discussing a problem on the phone, or thinking about something else.  For the first few days, make a point of focusing your attention on the journeys you are taking.  This will quickly enable these mental maps to become part of your automatic learning embedded in your brain so navigating becomes easy.  

Write it down

Getting things out of our heads and onto paper frees the brain up to focus on one aspect rather than having to hold all the other aspects in conscious thought.  So, whether you are planning your focus for the day, outlining a project, or trying to remember names and titles, take notes, -write it down.  Carry a notebook or use a notes app on your phone so the means to write it down is always close by.

Take a break

The brain uses significant amounts of energy, more than any other organ in the body.  This energy is used for mental processing and for mental discipline.  (I’ve written about this before in Do Expats Lack Self-Control). 

Unless we take steps to replenish our energy, our ability to recall,- to process thoughts, to make good decisions- will diminish as the day goes on.  You can take a simple break by focusing attention on something that doesn’t require the pre-frontal cortex to work as hard.  Spend a minute listening to the sounds around you, or looking out the window and noticing what you can see, or focusing on your breathing. A walk or stretch will also enable the brain to replenish some of that energy and a cup of coffee with a healthy snack can also improve performance.

Sleep well

But watch how much coffee you are drinking as sleep is also critical for the brain.  Our brains work harder when we are asleep than when we are awake.  They flush out toxic chemicals developed during a day of hard brain work, enabling the brain to work more effectively on waking.  It is also thought that the brain replays and processes the information we have gathered during the day which may explain why we sometimes wake up with a solution or an insight to a problem.

A new role is a great opportunity for developing new habits - make these habits part of that process and you will learn faster and perform more effectively.