I started to hear people talking about this idea of cognitive flexibility. Whew! Fancy pants. What the heck is cognitive flexibility? Why does it matter?! And how do we make it better if it’s so important?
Cognitive flexibility is your brain’s ability to shift, hopefully relatively frictionlessly or seamlessly, between different scenarios, demands, and ways of approaching a situation. It’s a measure of how cognitively and intellectually adaptable you are, and it’s important in our world because it correlates with how open you stay to different situations and possibilities. For example, can you learn from one environment and apply it to a different and unique environment? It’s part of a whole cluster of skills we call executive functioning. We call them executive functioning because that helps us think about it as something senior, something that’s a little more rare, that helps us plan and execute our time.
Is Cognitive Flexibility Something Worth Developing?
Cognitive flexibility is a good thing. It’s the opposite of us being stuck: falling for biases, getting in a rut, resisting things, applying the same strategy to situation after situation. If you think about people who, because they’ve got a hammer, everything is a nail — that’s an example of somebody with low cognitive flexibility. “I’ve just always done it this way” or “This worked for me before,” as opposed to understanding how the situation is evolving or changing or different and how they need to apply a different mindset, a different set of skills to that novel situation.
It’s worth trying to get better at cognitive flexibility, because when you’re better at it, you’ll probably problem-solve more effectively. You’re going to be perceived as more strategic and agile — all sorts of things that are worth investing in.
You’re looking to do a better job of integrating new information and adjusting from one situation to another. We haven’t talked about this one yet, but you also want to inhibit your default response. That’s another big part of cognitive flexibility — we have those knee-jerk reactions or defaults or things we say without thinking. Part of cognitive flexibility is your ability to inhibit that.
So, how do you get better at it?
1. Break Your Routines
Do old things in a new way. The silliest but simplest example is driving home from work or to the grocery store exactly the same way every time. Try doing regular things you do all the time in a different order or in a different way. For example, do your morning routine in a different sequence. See how that changes things. Just practice mixing things up. That’s helpful.
2. Expand Your Network
Seek out new experiences. Can you meet new people? Interact with people who have a totally different perspective on the world, especially at work. Can you network with people from an adjacent or completely different industry? Engage with people from other departments in your office who are paying attention to different things — ask them questions and watch what they pay attention to. How are they seeing the world? What choices are they making?
It’s not just relationships. Have novel experiences. Try things that make you uncomfortable. Many people work on this by doing something like joining Toastmasters to put themselves in an uncomfortable position so that they have to integrate information in a new way.
3. Practice Mindfulness
Once you’ve done that, spend some time recording and reflecting how you were thinking about it, what you noticed, where you were uncomfortable. Certainly, mindfulness is another strategy for understanding your cognitive flexibility, because when we become mindful, we can figure out, “Oh, what am I defaulting to?” and “How am I reacting to this situation?”
The more in tune we get with our default reactions, the more able we are to say, “Whoa, I’m going to choose to behave differently,” to inhibit that knee-jerk reaction and choose a different option because I’m in a situation that demands something different.
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Cognitive flexibility is something valuable and important, and it’s also set in us fairly early in our lives. We have to be deliberate about trying to build it later in life, but it is worth it.
Make sure you pay more attention to what’s going on in your head, what’s going on in your body, and seek out experiences — whether doing an old thing in a new way, engaging in new activities, or meeting new people. Take time to reflect on what was different. What did you learn? What might you choose to do in a new way this time? All of this will start to support greater cognitive flexibility, which will be good for how you can solve problems and how you’re perceived.
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