Keynote #1 Boost My Brain!
The Brainscience of Workday Mental Wellness and Peak Cognitive Performance
The Working Brain - Optimize Workday Performance
“How to Build an Antifragile Brain”
You’re in for a Maelstrom of Challenges: Fear, uncertainty, and doubt plague the North American workforce as a result of the WFH pandemic hangover and volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous geopolitical and socioeconomic circumstances - all contributing to worker distress, disengagement, disorder, negative emotions, negative work experiences, unprecedented sick days, absenteeism, silent quitting, low morale, and a growing mental health epidemic (Gallup, 2024).
You Must Deliver Growth & Profit Through it All: The coming marketscape is poised to create much bigger winners and losers than ever before. By all accounts we can expect a continuation of what we saw through the pandemic - “the rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer”. You and your business will be asked to grow, innovate, deliver margin, and profit amidst all of this - the labor shortages, AI disruption, economic downtown, runaway inflation, a recession, supply chain issues, trade wars, worker disengagement, a continuation of the great resignation, more disorder, disaster, and disease.
The Only Way Out is Through…Your People: The answer must be found in your greatest asset and greatest expense to date: your people. Your employees need to be poised to do more with less, take on more and win, and thrive through adversity. Operational tools, closer management, new tech, schedule flexibility, new workspaces, one-on-ones, listening sessions, boxes of cookies, and mailed care packages only go so far, and don’t tackle the challenge head-on (low worker engagement, low mental wellness, fixed and fragile mindsets) - they merely bandaid some explicit symptoms (e.g. loneliness, worry, sadness, anger, negative work experiences, Gallup 2024).
Mindset Makes the (Hu)Man: Workers won’t take endless hits and strive to succeed because they’re told to do it; they’ll strive when they are trained to do it. Specifically, trained in how to use their brains better and differently to foster an antifragile mindset - one that grows, develops, and flourishes through challenge, shocks, strife, and adversity.
This keynote explains the workday from your brain’s perspective. From your internal physiological and neurochemical schedule to the activities that create ideal worker performance and unlock an antifragile mindset required.
Part 1
The Ultradian Cycle: Understanding Your Brain’s
Work Schedule
To make use of their full potential workers must first understand how their activities should be scheduled to match the brain’s natural in-built cycles. In this part of the keynote, attendees will learn:
The physiological and neurochemical cycle your brain operates on
How to schedule your daily activities around the four phases of this productivity cycle so that your workday and your brain are in sync
How to know when your brain is in different phases of the basic rest-activity cycle (BRAC) throughout your workday
What activities and work are best to do in each phase and why
Part 2
The MERIT Framework for Peak Cognitive Performance
Many things affect your workday (and career) performance, and most of them are not under your control - things like culture, politics, laws, peer influence, past experiences, and genetics, to name a few. In good news, there is a subset of five collectively exhaustive things that are typically under your direct, consistent, and near-absolute control, that arguably affect your workday performance even more - these are what you eat (and don’t eat), if (and how much) you move, who you spend your time with, how much rest and sleep you get, and the thoughts you allow your mind to think and believe.
Together these form the levers of Dr. Brynn’s ‘MERIT Framework’ for Peak Cognitive Performance: Move, Eat, Rest, Interact, Think. These levers are based on the established pillars of mind-body and lifestyle medicine. Attendees will come away having learned:
An easy-to-remember framework for all activities that will help improve cognitive functionality, mental wellness, and performance at work
Brain-based best practices for exercise, nutrition, sleeping, socializing, and mentality unmarred by myths or falsehoods of yesteryear
How to move beyond fixed and growth mindsets toward building an antifragile brain for even greater resilience, performance, and success
Part 3
Beyond Growth: Fostering an Antifragile Mindset
Having learned how to align their workday and activities to the brain’s ideal conditions for cognitive performance attendees are ready to learn how to foster the anti-fragile mindset. In this part, attendees learn:
How Post-traumatic growth is just as possible and way more valuable than post-traumatic stress
How to turn strife, friction, and crisis into learning, growth, opportunity, and becoming a winner
Understand how the current landscape is the best environment to create bigger winners and losers - your mindset) will determine the difference
Understand why volatility, uncertainty, complexity,
Why Dr. Brynn?
As an expert in applied neuroscience and positive psychology, Dr. Brynn has consistently received 5-star feedback and continues to inspire audiences. As an expert in the subject, she’s best suited to deliver keynotes on anti-fragility for the following reasons:
Latest Research - Dr. Brynn is engaged in ongoing research with multiple faculties, including Harvard University, allowing her to keep up-to-date on the latest neuroscience and positive psychology findings. This ensures the content is based on the most current and evidence-based practices.
Deep Understanding - Dr. Brynn has spent years researching and studying the brain, which gives her a deep understanding of the complex mechanisms and processes involved in brain function, learning, and performance. This expertise provides a more nuanced and comprehensive explanation of the brain-boosting methods presented in the talk.
Credibility & Authority - With research backed by the country's top institutions, the science delivered is not anecdotal but based on multidisciplinary research, not just a single field such as sports or psychology alone. This can be especially important for convincing employees who may be skeptical about the effectiveness of the brain-boosting methods and is key in dispelling misinformation, which can be counter-productive.
Practical Tips - Trained to communicate complex scientific concepts clearly and understandably, Dr. Brynn can bridge the gap between theoretical study and practical application, giving participants actionable tips and tricks they can immediately implement daily.
Answer Questions - Participants in the keynote program may have complex questions about the brain and the methods presented. With Dr. Brynn’s years of combined academic and industry practice, she is well-equipped to answer these questions accurately and in-depth.