If only there was a guide book that would enable us to make the most out of our brainpower. But what if we told you that you could actually hack into your brain to make yourself more productive and creative? Here are some of the most surprising things our brain does and what we can learn from it:

A tired brain is good for creativity

Being tired makes it difficult for the brain to filter out distractions or focus on a particular task since it's less efficient at remembering connections between ideas or concepts. But it can also be a good thing if it involves creative thinking.

Stress can shape your brain

A study involving stressed out rats found that the hippocampus regions in their brains actually shrank, which is integral in forming memories.

It's impossible for the brain to multi-task

You might think you can multi-task, but what your brain is actually doing is 'context-switching' meaning that its quickly switching back-and-forth between different tasks, rather than doing them all at the same time. The problem with multi-tasking is that we’re splitting our brain’s resources. Not only are we giving less attention to each task (which makes us more likely to make mistakes), but it also takes longer to accomplish them. You can learn more about this here

Naps can help improve your brain’s day to day performance

These short bursts of sleep can benefit the brain by helping to improve our memory and learning capabilities. This has to do with the right side of the brain being far more active while you nap, while the left side gets to take a break and recharge.

Meditation can rewire your brain for the better

Meditation doesn't just help to improve your focus for work. It's also been linked to increasing compassion, decreasing stress, improving memory skills and even increasing the amount of gray matter in the brain.

Exercise can reorganize the brain and boost your willpower

Exercise is not just good for your body but also your brain, specifically when it comes to mental alertness. At the same time, exercise can also make us happier by releasing more endorphins to the brain.

You can trick your brain into thinking time is going slowly

When we receive lots of new information, it takes our brains a while to process it all. The longer this processing takes, the longer that period of time feels.