April 18, 2013
Both the One Minute To-Do List system and the MYN system enable an important thing: getting tasks out of your head. This is incredibly important because if you try to carry all of your to-dos in memory, you’ll add to your sense of anxiety, which leads to physical stress and health issues—and it can even lead to weight problems. Why weight problems?
Cortisol Leads to Weight Gain
When our brain loses track of what tasks are due it enters a general state of overwhelm, and the primitive part of our brain called the reptilian brain actually interprets that as being under attack. As a result, the brain releases the neurochemical cortisol in an attempt to heighten our ability to sense and respond to danger. Cortisol is a good in the short term if you really are under physical attack because it can increase your reaction time and your ability to dodge physical danger. But in the long term, high and prolonged levels of cortisol have a long list of problems. For example cortisol impairs cognitive performance, it suppresses the immune system, and it raises blood pressure. And it also increases abdominal fat—meaning people under constant stress tend to gain weight.
So Maybe Task Control Can Lead to Weight Control
I am listing all of these physiological details to encourage you to start using a system that keeps tasks inside incoming e-mail and from other sources well managed and under control. And that’s what both the 1MTD and MYN systems do for you. So get on a program of task control and you may just find that weight control is a secondary benefit!
Michael Linenberger