In a meeting this week I admitted that I had placed an item into the proverbial Too Hard Basket. As a Senior IT Manager in one of Australia’s biggest organisations perhaps I shouldn’t be admitting to such things? I personally value open and honest conversations and my motivation behind this moment of truth was to teach my team about what an impasse is and how you can use Neuroscience to overcome one.
According to the dictionary.com, an impasse is a position or a situation which there is no escape: deadlock. When undertaking a difficult task if we reach an impasse, it is tempting to put that task into our too hard basket and move onto something else. If you are like me you will leave said task in your too hard basket until it either goes away or a deadline forces you to finally take action. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
David Rock of the Neuroleadership Institute has researched the Neuroscience of Insights and has advised on how to help generate insights for yourself and your team. David teaches us that it is an insight that will help you move beyond an impasse.
Here are a few tips you can try next time you find yourself at an impasse.
When you reach an impasse it can generate a threat state and trigger body’s stress response. Admitting to yourself that you are finding the task challenging and are not entirely sure what to do next will release neurotransmitters that will help calm that stress response and return you to a cognitive state to be able to think logically about what you need to do next. If you have read my previous articles you will be familiar with this concept which is called Labelling.
Get curious. Curiosity is a form of emotion regulation and will help you and your team to generate insights. Instead of focusing on “we have an issue and don’t know what to do”, start asking questions like have we seen this issue before and if so what did we do? Has this task been done before? Who can we seek help from? Has anyone else in our organisation/ industry solved this issue before? Curiosity will activate different neural networks in the brain and help move you from impasse to insight.
Switching activities may be key for you to move forward as focusing in on the issue at hand will not move you forward. Taking your focus away from the issue and switching activities by going for a walk or doing some meditation will quiet the brain and it is in this quiet state that the brain waves change and you are more likely to experience a pattern of gamma brain waves which are required to generate insights. Have you ever noticed that insights come in the strangest of moments and when you least expect them?
So for me, by simply admitting to a trusted few that I had put my problem into the too hard basket I was labeling my state of mind. When I asked them if they ever put tasks into a too hard basket and what they then did with them once they were in the basket, this was me getting curious about new ways to solve my issue.
Finally, me taking the time to share this information with you all here and now is my way of switching activities momentarily, shifting my focus before I return to my task in the basket where I will hopefully smash right through my impasse.
Alongside my deep passion for Neuroscience, I am equally enthusiastic about Essential Oils and I have been known to pull out various oil blends that help me to focus and concentrate when required. My team is now getting used to seeing me do this, even in meetings! In times of need, I will reach for oils which contain specific calming properties when a big limbic response does threaten to take hold to help support my cognitive rational brain staying in check.
What are your tips for when you are tempted to place something into the too hard basket, I’d love to hear from you as I might learn a new strategy to try next time I find myself at an impasse?