Productivity Hacks for the Female Brain with Alisa Vitti

Today’s show is all about productivity hacks for the female brain—and we welcome back special guest Alisa Vitti!

Alisa is a functional nutritionist, hormone expert, and coach to women around the world. A best-selling author, Alisa is the author of The WomanCode System and has recently written a new book, In the FLO. On today’s show, she will be drawing on her years of experience coaching others to heal their hormone issues to tell us how women who learn to adapt to their hormonal cycles can change their energy and become healthier and more productive.

If you haven’t already checked out Jim’s earlier episode with Alisa, you can watch it here, or listen to it here!

In today’s conversation, Alisa will explain a new method of project mapping for women, and how women can leverage their hormones to get more done. She will tell us about the type of work that best matches each hormonal cycle, and how women can work with their patterns to deal with the external demands on their time with more happiness and less stress.

THE INFRADIAN CYCLE

• The infradian rhythm has important effects on women’s brain and health and should be taken as seriously as the circadian rhythm for women in their reproductive years.
• The female brain changes predictably during the course of a month in ways that can be planned for—so the infradian cycle can be used by women to hack their productivity.
• Many women are feeling stressed, sick and overwhelmed, and the solutions being suggested to them are not based on female biochemistry and ignore the infradian clock. This is disruptive to female neuroendocrine systems, and means many women are unable to create a peak state.
• If you understand and work with your neuroendocrine patterns, you can do more with less stress!

A NEW WAY OF PROJECT MAPPING

• Burnout is real—women are working more, getting paid less, dealing with invisible work.
• Women feel like they want to squeeze as much as possible into a 24 hour time frame—but there is a better time frame to work with, a 28 day time frame.
• If you try expanding your project mapping into a 4 phase cycle within 28 days to match the four hormonal phases, rather than a 24-hour cycle, you will get so much more done.
• None of us can make more time, but we can optimize our brain performance and maintain our energy that way we can consistently get to the things we want to do.
• Our hormonal levels change through each phase, affecting our metabolism, brain performance, stress levels, and health.

SUCCESS IN THE FOUR PHASES

• Alisa explains the effects of each hormonal phase on the female brain in more detail in her new book In the FLO.
• IDEATION

– Follicular phase: 7-10 days

– Great time to brainstrom, plan out your projects, ideate, start new things, and begin new projects.

• COLLABORATION

– Ovulatory: 3-4 days

– Great time to collaborate, get together with your team, do presentations.

• COMPLETION

– Luteal: 10-14 days

– Great time to schedule and complete deep work, and bring things to completion.

• EVALUATION

– Menstrual: 2-7 days

– The right and left hemispheres communicate maximally in this phase, so it is a great time to conduct evaluations and reviews, and complete anything involving data or analysis.

FITTING YOUR PATTERNS

• When external demands don’t match the timing of your hormonal phases, remember that you don’t have to change the world, you just have to change your self-awareness.
• Men have been doing things right for millennia, optimizing their workflow around their hormonal patterns: the male circadian rhythm exists within a 24 hour cycle, with a surge of testosterone in the morning that men can leverage to get work done, or do other important tasks.
• If you have to do a task at a different time of day than usual, if you have been looking after your specific hormonal patterns on a regular basis week over week, you can handle unusual demands on your schedule that don’t match your hormones without draining your energy too much because you will have energy in reserve.
• Women struggle with this because they do not look after their hormones barely at all.
• To start gaining energy and feeling better, women need to take serious care of their hormonal patterns and changing their lifestyle to match their infradian rhythms.
• Alisa has mapped out all the lifestyle changes you can make to match your infradian rhythm in her new book, which you can find at intheflobook.com!

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