Jann’s Jottings - August 2025

Newsletters

Aug 1

“The most practical pages for perusal on the web”

Jotting (defn): short details of significant events, behaviours and conversations about wellbeing, growth and education/career.

Wellbeing Jot: Food as Fuel

Much research has established that what we eat directly affects the structure and function of our brain and our mood. In the winter months it is easier to seek high sugar, processed or refined foods like cronuts, energy drinks, pastries etc., when it is cold and miserable weather and we are tired and stressed, for that quick energy pick-me-up.

Seeing food as fuel for our brains helps us skip the empty calories and instead choose higher nutritional value foods like hummus and crudites, an apple, a handful of nuts. Like an expensive car requires premium fuel, how much more important is it to fuel our all-important brain well? Your wellbeing depends on healthy food choices.

Ponder this: How do you view food?

Coaching can help with that.

Growth Jot: Prioritising our best ‘yes’

This is a yes and scenario. Yes, saying yes makes us feel good, complete tasks the way we want it done, help colleagues and it drains our energy, causes us stress and means our own work is left undone.

What if we did not equate doing more with our own sense of achievement, importance and being needed?

What if we said no to the many small things that pull our focus and said yes to the best things that enable us to have greater impact on more of our colleagues?

Ponder this: How are you going to practice giving your best ‘yes’?

Ref: Craig Groeschel – Multiply your time

Career Jot: Multi or Mono?

How are you at multi-tasking? Many of us pride ourselves on our prowess in this area. Turns out it is not as effective at getting through our to-do list as we imagine. Prof Earl Miller, neuroscientist from MIT, has confirmed that multitasking causing distraction fails us when we need to complete an important task or find the end of our to do list. What we need is traction to complete our tasks. Earl’s team found two effects:

Switch cost effect which means each time we switch between our task and our phone/email/to answer a ‘quick question’ from a teammate, our ability to focus is degraded and our brain needs to reconfigure to the task at hand.
Screw up effect happens when we constantly switch between tasks as our brains need to backtrack, reset and figure out where we left off, which means more errors happen.

If you spend your time swapping often, evidence suggests you will be slower, more error prone, less creative and remember less. So put away your phone, turn off Teams messages, emails and chats and focus on completing the task at hand well and completely. Your sense of satisfaction will increase I promise.

Your challenge: Mono task for a week and notice the difference in your energy levels and the length of your to-do list.