In Another Round, one of my favorite films from the last few years, a quartet of high school teachers decides to drink a little bit of alcohol each day. The goal is to maintain a BAC of 0.05% in order to feel more relaxed and assured as they navigate various midlife quandaries. And the experiment actually kind of works. Each character experiences a series of personal benefits and breakthroughs, for weeks in a row.
It’s an intoxicating idea in itself: What if you could feel sharp, free, witty, motivated and [insert your adjective of choice] for a sustained period of time? What if your peak could settle into a plateau instead of crashing back down to earth?
In the end, unsurprisingly, the movie doesn’t affirm an inebriated existence. (You’ll have to watch it to find out what happens.) Instead, it probes at a different idea: We’re probably not supposed to feel good all the time. Crises of confidence or creativity are healthy and essential.
A recent study from the University of Toronto brought Another Round front of mind for me again. The research offers scientific context for a similar question: Why does “cognitive precision” come and go? Why do you feel like you could conquer the world one day but can barely get out of bed the next?
The authors mapped how mental sharpness fluctuates from day to day and determined it isn’t a failure of will. They also offered suggestions for rediscovering your edge when it’s hard to come by, without raising your BAC above 0.00%.
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The authors measured “daily fluctuations in cognitive function, goal setting and goal progress, mood, sleep, and motivation” among college students during a 12-week period. The team wanted to understand why our collective relationship to intention and progress is “often frustratingly fickle.”
They concluded that “within-person upswings” were able to predict high-achieving days. When participants felt sharp, they tackled more tasks and were generally more ambitious. They got the equivalent of 40 extra minutes of work done. On the flip side, not-so-sharp days were “roughly like losing 40 min of work that day.”
So 80 minutes (more specifically, 80 minutes of concentration) separates a good day from a bad day. I don’t know about you, but I can get a lot done with a chunk of time when I’m actually feeling decisive and inspired. Those are the days I come up with far-future article ideas, give sound advice to friends, pump new life into my workout routine or reimagine the crappy organization of my closet.
You Can’t Outgun Bad Days
How can we get more days like that? First, it helps to accept that low-quality days are unavoidable. The authors tested for qualities like “conscientiousness, self-control and grit” to see if a participant might be able to outgun bad days with discipline.
No dice. “Everybody has good days and bad days,” Cendri Hutcherson, associate professor in the Department of Psychology at U of T Scarborough and lead author of the study, said in a release.
You know those aspirational “celebrity/CEO routine” articles that people love reading? (I’ve published a fair share of them, I’ll admit.) Or influencers sharing their aspirational mornings? That content does a decent job of broadcasting healthy habits worth stealing, but it rarely accounts for the steady application of those habits. Some days you just don’t have it. You’re going through the motions, if that.
That’s because “mental sharpness,” as the authors call it, “is a fluid, measurable state that waxes and wanes with sleep, workload and mood.” You can sense the wanes on days in which even simple tasks feel insurmountable, where you’re procrastinating or avoiding decision-making.
Our lives are complicated and in flux. Think about how hard it is to feel productive when you’re weathering a breakup or grieving a loved one. Think about how energized you feel by the first thaw of spring. It makes sense that mental sharpness is no guarantee, as much as that might irritate the optimization army. Still, there are some things you can do to close that 80-minute gap more often than that.
A Few Ideas for Staying Sharp
Rebrand the Bad Days
As I was getting at above, it really helps to come to terms with low-production days. Try to embrace them as natural and necessary, and consider rebranding them as “easy days.” In fitness parlance, for instance, we’re well-acquainted with the “recovery runs” and “light lifts.”
The creative world has its own spin on this concept, too. The author S.J. Watson gave us some great advice recently: “I have ‘resourcing days’ when I write 100 words then give myself permission to go see an exhibition, take a walk, watch something I’ve been meaning to see or, sometimes, do nothing at all. These are the days that feel free, and that freedom allows ideas to percolate.”
Don’t Overdo the Good Days
On days where you’re firing on all cylinders, you have to be cautious about grinding too hard. “That’s the trade-off,” Hutcherson said. “You can push hard for a day or two and be fine. But if you grind without breaks for too long, you pay a price later.”
I am so guilty of this. I get in a groove and by the end of the day, I’ve turned my brain into pudding. Whoops. Try to ride the wave early in the day, take a walk after lunch and then conduct an honest self-appraisal of how much juice you’ve got left before committing to cooking dinner from scratch.
Keep Showing Up
Even when concentration and motivation are completely MIA, try to put a few pennies in the piggy bank. I recently read an essay from Arnold Schwarzenegger that really resonated about his belief that “non-negotiable” sessions are more important than intense training days. Those are the sessions where your will wasn’t there, but you still showed up and tried anyway.
Unlike “rebranding bad days” above, which is about taking some of the pressure off, this is a good way to keep your effort alive. It’s about laying tracks for the day you wake up feeling like the Energizer Bunny.
Get Lots of Sleep
It’s the answer to everything, I know, but it’s extremely relevant here. This is the single easiest way to maximize your sharp-to-foggy ratio. Here are a bunch of my tried-and-true sleep tips, compiled in one place.
Meet your guide
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