How can we be more productive?
There’s a lot of ways: Use the pomodoro technique, break the project down into smaller
pieces, drink coffee, remove distractions from your workplace, listen to classical music
(specifically this song), and just don’t procrastinate.
Okay- Wha, What about that last bit?
You know how you’ll have everything ready to do your work, you know exactly what to
do, but you just can’t start?
Sometimes for me it’s like there’s this physically painful forcefield between me and
action- and I just can’t…
do anything...
Then I’ll open up Netflix and the pain will go away.
That’s the thing you don’t want to do.
So what can we do in those difficult moments to get stuff done without needing an approaching
deadline to finally kick us into gear?
I’ll tell you: Do two pushups and take a shower.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
OK I know that doesn’t sound like much, but give me a couple minutes to explain the
process and the 5 concepts behind why it’s so effective.
The very first step in this is to notice what is going on in those moments when you are
having trouble getting started or when you are getting distracted.
This is something I picked up from Psychiatrist Judson Brewer.
He gave a talk called “a simple way to break bad habits” where he talks about how you
can use mindfulness to stop cravings that lead to bad habits.
Judson described an incredibly successful experiment designed to help people abstain
from cigarette smoking.
People were instructed to simply be curious about their smoking cravings when they appeared.
The point was to analyze and understand that craving.
To not focus on “oh my god, I need a cigarette.”
but to focus on “Oh I suppose I’m a little tired or irritated with this slow internet,
so I am expecting a cigarette would make me less uncomfortable.”
Just by taking a moment to really understand the craving, the participants had unprecedented
success with abstaining from smoking.
So I started trying this when I was working and analyzed what was going on in my head
when I was having trouble staying on task.
Usually it was something I could put my finger on: I was irritated with how slowly I was
progressing in the project, or I suddenly started wondering when Saturn was discovered,
or I just really wanted to watch an episode of the Simpsons.
Taking notice of the craving to get distracted helped way more than I expected.
It was enough to be able to say “That’s a stupid reason to stop working…” and
the craving would pass.
Unfortunately it didn’t work all the time.
This is where part 2 comes in.
The second part comes from human behavior master BJ Fogg.
BJ describes in his TED talk how there are 2 very effective ways to create new positive
habits: 1 you can Change your environment or 2 you can tack the habit you want to create
onto an existing behavior.
With the second method, BJ talks about how he was able to get in about a 100 pushups
a day by simply pairing a new behavior – pushups, with an existing behavior – going to the
bathroom.
So every time he got up to pee, he would do two pushups.
You might say “Why not 10 at a time, he could do 500 pushups per day” – actually,
the small number is important to the likelihood of him actually doing it.
For example, if you’re trying to get yourself into the habit of jogging every day, you’re
more likely to commit and make a habit- if your target is 200 meters per day rather than
5 kilometers.
No matter how tired you are, a jog up and down the street is do-able.
And, you’ll probably end up doing more than 200 meters, but the point is that day by day
you’re making it into a habit.
You can do all sorts of things with this concept like get yourself to start flossing everytime
you brush your teeth.
I chose to make the habit of doing pushups when I caught myself procrastinating.
I successfully made it a very regular habit by starting with 2 pushups, but now I regularly
do more like 10 or 15.
When I first started this, my idea was just that “If I’m gonna slack off, I might
as well get some exercise” but this exercise helped me in a way I didn’t expect- it was
giving me a small boost in willpower so I just would go back to work instead of opening
up netflix.
Richard Branson has claimed that working out gives him 4 extra hours of productive time
each day.
Several studies have shown that exercise increases BDNF (brain derived neurotrophic factor),
which stimulates the production of new neurons.
BDNF is very important to learning, memory and higher thinking.
While a couple quick pushups isn’t going to grow me a whole ‘nother hippocampus,
it will increase blood flow, getting more energy and oxygen to the brain, making it
perform a little bit better.
Better performance also means increased willpower, which is usually enough to get control of
myself and stay on task.
. Another thing that might happen is my desire
to get distracted and stop working will be less than my desire to not have to get up
and exercise.
These two situations alone are usually enough to keep me from procrastinating.
And, this small practice is reinforcing my ability to be mindful of my actions.
In another video I talked about how sites on the internet like facebook or twitter use
a “Hook” to keep you constantly using them.
This mindfulness practice makes it easy to get yourself out of this hook say “I don’t
even know this person, why am I looking at their wedding pictures?”
And then close Facebook
So What do you do when you have the willpower to work, but you need to come up with new
ideas to continue?
If the task at hand only requires the will to do it, you can continue using the exercise
trick to boost your willpower.
But What if you’re at the point where creativity is necessary?
This is where the shower comes in.
Surely anybody has had the experience of being in a shower and having a good idea suddenly
hit them out of nowhere.
8.2 million subscribers to the subreddit /r/showerthoughts shows how universal of a phenomenon that is.
The key with the shower is not necessarily the action of washing yourself- the key is
actually being isolated in a usually quiet room where you’re not working or watching
TV or checking your phone.
When Salvador Dali needed creative inspiration, he would relax on his sofa with keys in his
hand and when he dozed off, the keys falling would wake him up.
He would then quickly jot down whatever ideas he had in that moment.
Thomas Edison did something similar with ball bearings and relaxing in his chair.
Albert Einstein supposedly had one of his insights about the nature of light when he
was rowing on a boat in the middle of Lake Geneva.
The common theme here is... they’re not doing much.
Their minds are relaxed and not straining on a particular task.
So it doesn’t have to be a shower - you can replace it with a distraction free walk,
relaxing in a chair, just something slow and quiet to keep your mind relaxed.
However, If you do happen to be able to take a brief shower or bath the warmth of it cause
you to release dopamine, and increased dopamine flow is linked to better creativity.
So what’s going on here?Engineering professor Barbara Oakley has a good explanation for
what’s going on.
She says there are two modes for the brain: a “focus mode” where you are focused on
a particular task, and a “diffuse mode” where you are relaxed.
You can think of these states as your brain being two different types of pinball machines.
The focus mode brain has many bumpers, so once the pinball takes off it’s easy for
the ball to get stuck in a certain area.
The diffuse mode brain has less bumpers, so the pinball bounces much farther around and
more parts of the brain can be accessed.
In his book “Originals,” Adam Grant says that this sort of productive procrastination
is actually one of the traits of creative people who take truly original ideas and turn
them into multi million dollar companies
The last part of this has to do with the flow state
Steven Kotler, the author of The Rise of Superman, talks about something called the “flow state”,
a state he describes as an optimal state of consciousness where you feel totally absorbed
in the task at hand and all aspects of performance, mental and physical, go through the roof.
If you’ve worked on a paper with only 3 hours left until the deadline and you were
typing continuously at double your normal pace and you didn’t notice 2 hours passed
until you had to pee, you were probably in the flow state.
A common trigger for going into flow is high stakes moments like “finish this paper or
I fail” or “make this jump or I die.”
Steven says that in order to put yourself in the flow state, you need to be aware of
a 4 part cycle that starts with working through a phase of struggle where you are focused
and working hard at a challenging task.
The next step is to go into a “release” phase where you take your mind off of the
problem.
The third part of the cycle is being in the state of flow.
After you’ve focused really hard and then taken your mind off the problem, you come
back to it and (if you’re really lucky) your brain will start to release a bunch of
performance enhancing chemicals and you’ll work or perform incredibly effectively.
The fourth part then is a recovery phase which is sort of like a hangover.
The chemicals that enhance performance are also the feel good chemicals, so you go from
this amazing kind of “high” when in flow to feeling pretty crappy once those chemicals
are used up.
So it’s also important to be able to deal with that neurochemical hangover by getting
the proper vitamins, minerals and some sunlight so you can get back into cycle again.
Of course actually getting into the flow state isn’t easy.
For me, I notice I can sometimes get into it if I’ve cycled between grinding really
hard and getting my mind off the task say 2 or 3 times in the span of 2 hours.
So that is the 5 part anti-procrastination process.
And The good thing about this process is that you get better and better at it.
The more you practice mindfulness, the easier it is to be in control of your actions.
Every time you successfully do pushups after getting distracted, it becomes more of an
unconscious habit.
Steven Kotler says you can even learn what triggers put you in flow and then learn to
more consistently put yourself into that mega performance state.
One thing that is really important is making sure you’re taking the right kind of breaks.
If you are hoping to get into flow, one of the things that you can’t do during the
release phase is watch television, because it will actually change your brain waves in
a way that blocks flow.
And, It took me a while to notice that taking a break by watching Netflix, I didn’t get
many creative ideas appearing in my head.
This kinda thing makes me wonder how many creative insights may have been lost by people
being constantly stimulated by their smart phones.
Most of us can’t even cross the street without replying to a text or scrolling through the
Twitter feed.
It makes you wonder if Einstein would have had those insights about the nature of light
if instead of the clouds, he had a smart phone to look at while he was on his boat.
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Here are two of my other videos: One on How the internet makes us less productive and
another on how the low fat eating guidelines made us a lot less healthy.