Jaderson Costa da Costa - Covid-19 brought the fear of catching the virus, the fear of how we will be treated if we need health care and isolation. These ingredients have created a sum of factors that affect our brain. In the first phase of isolation, the feeling was of relief, of being protected at home and perhaps having the chance to read that book that we wanted so much. But gradually, very similar days, this sensation of successive Sundays, made the brain begin to feel that something was wrong. Of course, he has resilience and adapts, but not everyone succeeds and the result has been an increase in cases of anxiety, sadness and depression.

Costa - We made a mistake in the trial. We thought that working from home would have more time, and it didn't, generating frustration. The paradox is that we work more at home office because we eliminate steps that were part of our day, such as commuting to the workplace, coffee time, the conversation with someone we received in our room. Not to mention that when these situations in which we stop for a drink of water or look up to talk to someone are very important, including, for productivity, as they give us mental agility and relaxation. And we don't have that in the home office.

Costa - Yes, and that is because work, at this moment, is invading the home. When conducting a video meeting, for example, in addition to having to stay focused all the time, we have to have peripheral attention, that is, take care so that no one passes behind the camera, so that we are not called at home and not to have noise . There is still wear and tear on the screen. The image is smaller, the sound is not perfect, we need to be more attentive to capture everything. When we are called to a digital meeting, we never know when we will be prompted to speak, so we must always be on the alert. The human being has the ability to maintain sustained attention for a while, and when we go into fatigue in a face-to-face meeting, we deal with it in several ways to mitigate it, such as when looking to the side, talking to someone, moving around a little, responding a message on WhatsApp. But, if you stay focused, face to face with the camera, it's even more exhausting. The home office is like a live program. Always in the air. It makes people feel, sucked, drained of energy and feeling that they are running out of time to do everything they need.

Costa - We get up, drink coffee, work, have lunch, work, shower and sleep. Before, it was as if we had half a dozen files; now it’s like our routine at home is coming zipped up. This makes us understand our routine very strongly. The simple fact of going out to work, looking for a place to park, meeting someone on the way and leaving work and going to the supermarket took away the perception that we do everything the same in our lives. When we are at home all the time, the routine gets condensed and the brain doesn't like it because we start to think mentally of life as small.

Costa - We need to be strict with our agenda in order not to leave a meeting by computer and immediately enter another one. There must always be time to get up a little, have a cup of coffee, breathe, change positions in the chair. Looking out the window and breathing in the air, observing people gives us time to reestablish our connections, otherwise we will go into exhaustion. Another interesting path is that of meditation, developing our ability to isolate ourselves from sensory perception, this bombardment of activities and information, and staying just to restore our mental energy.

Costa - The requirements are different. 40 years ago, we had to know Latin and Greek, studied trigonometry, cube roots, equations and memorized poems. This took up space in our head. But today we change the mindset. Now what matters is the ability to solve problems. I don't need to know the height of Mount Everest, as I can quickly go to Google and get the answer.

Costa - The brain has something wonderful that is that it does not record everything. If two people are listening to the same conversation, each will report differently, without lying. Our brain's search engine is over fragments. When we set a limit, that is, that something interested us, then we read the full text. We are increasingly multitasking, and having to deal with these two worlds, for generations that are not digital, is really very exhausting.

Costa - The brain's processing capacity is still superior, but we lost in speed and storage capacity. The ability of a supercomputer to perform calculations is greater than human, but this is not surprising. There is a limitation of our body to perform functions in volume, speed, strength and quantity. On the other hand, we are unbeatable in our ability to make associations and make decisions regardless of prior knowledge. Another fantastic ability of ours is the ability to make mistakes. The machine cannot make mistakes, algorithms do not allow it, and sometimes wisdom is in error, which leads to new discoveries. The tendency is for these two intelligences to coexist.