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Your mental health toolkit, part 3

March 31, 2021 By Alyssa Naley, iSchool Online MA student and guest contributor

How bendy is your cognitive flexibility?

According to the Handbook of Behavioral Neuroscience (2016), cognitive flexibility is “the ability to adapt behaviors in response to changes in the environment.” Or put another way, it is the “ability to revise your plans in the face of obstacles, setbacks, new information, or mistakes” (StudentCaffe). Cognitive flexibility involves mental abilities such as creativity, logical reasoning, adaptability, and productive efficiency, all of which are useful skills in school and work contexts. Moreover, cognitively flexible leaders are more empathetic and able to mentally switch between different tasks, concepts, or perspectives. These skills and abilities prove especially important for LIS professionals who interact directly with patrons or the public.

Cognitive flexibility helps you cope with stress and be more mentally resilient. There are other benefits as well, such as higher fluency and comprehension in reading, heightened sense of awareness, ability to see and understand different perspectives empathetically, and interact successfully with a wide variety of people and their diverse ways of thinking and working (StudentCaffe; EY). It also means you can more easily approach tasks, solve problems, and learn information from an interdisciplinary standpoint (C8Sciences). You can use these abilities in all kinds of situations, including coursework and your professional life. If you’re curious about strategies on developing cognitive flexibility, check out the following:

  • 7 Ways to Develop Cognitive Flexibility by Marianne Stenger provides suggestions on how you can expose yourself to new experiences and ways of thinking.
  • 10 Keys to Cognitive Flexibility by Saga Briggs discusses a few challenges to cognitive flexibility (e.g. memory, confirmation bias, information bottleneck, etc.) and offers reflective questions and holistic strategies to deal with these specific issues.
  • Executive Functions: Cognitive Flexibility by Shannon Whitney (StudentCaffe Blog) offers strategies that more specifically apply to learning in school contexts, but a few strategies are transferable to work and daily life settings.

Cognitive flexibility allows you to remain open-minded as you evaluate different opinions and perspectives and consider multiple ways to solve problems. Because cognitive flexibility encourages discovery and adaptability, it primes you to think creatively, innovate, and look to new perspectives when solving problems or learning something new. In the dynamic fields of library and information science, being adaptable and resourceful is integral for our professional success.