Productive Lifestyle

I know that being productive is not something that tightly ties in to the subject of healthy weight loss at first glance. On the other hand, being productive can play a major role in being able to afford a healthy lifestyle – mindset-wise, time-wise and money-wise. When you’re  productive it takes less time for you to get things done. Also, it is shown to be less of a stress both on your body and psyche. So how to be productive? Now that sure is a complicated subject! But I will try my best to give you my insight on it…

I consider myself a fairly productive person. However, I am aware that there are a bunch of more productive people out there than I am. I recently did a small research on this matter. All I could find was “artificial” techniques and methods.

“These tips could never work for me!” – I said to myself in disappointment.

But the more I thought about it the more I realized: in one way or another, I have already been doing these techniques instinctively, on my own. Maybe, not even exactly like they were described but somehow similarly. Either way, here they are:

Get Started!

Getting started is vital if you want to get stuff done! It is also the hardest part for most. Why, you might ask?

In most cases, studies have shown, our brain might feel overwhelmed when looking at the total of the task at hand. For example, writing 200 pages may seem very daunting at first. Let’s say there are 250 words on one page and we need to write 200 of it! that is 50,000 words! It takes a lot of willpower to get a project like that going even if you’re a writer. But if you trick your brain into breaking down this seemingly huge job into smaller parts then it doesn’t look so bad after all!

How much willpower does it take to write a word? Not much, right? How much will power does it take to write a sentence? Or maybe even a page? I’m sure you agree you can do that, too! All you got to do is get started!

But the real curious thing will only happen once you’re already started. Your mind will keep on nudging you, poking you from the inside and you will want to finish! The phenomena of people remembering uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones is called the Zeigarnik effect.

Time Management

To me, personally, this is the most important! In my lifetime management means that I try to plan ahead. Every evening, I fill up my calendar with tasks I want to complete the next day. It is interesting how much more you can get done in a day once you do this! So when the morning comes I really feel prepared! The day starts and I hit the ground running! It is an amazing feeling because I know that my future self will thank me for it!

In my research I found, time management is more focused on working in bursts and taking short breaks between them. If something demands your full attention like practicing a very difficult music piece on an instrument it is vital to stay focused. On the other hand, staying focused for too long can really wear you out. So it is a lot more efficient to stay focused for 90 minutes then take a 15 to 30 minute break. If you do this you can rinse and repeat it throughout your entire day.

The opposite of this is when you do something unfocused, half assed. This is when you dilute your efforts and waste a lot of energy. Actually, on a daily level you waste a lot more energy than as if you were focused for short periods of time.

But if you are anything like me, you try to arrange your day so you don’t need many breaks rather switch the type of your tasks. There are certain things I do every day which require me to use the creative part of my brain. Other tasks use the motor part of my brain. I noticed, if I switch between these two types of tasks a very short break, or in most cases, no break is needed! I can get a lot more done in a lot shorter time! Yay for Brain, yay for Productivity! 🙂

Deadline

Setting a deadline ties back into our first point: Get started! When you set a deadline the Zeigarnik effect will hit you harder. Your brain will keep nudging you stronger as your deadline approaches.

Curiously, it also ties back into our second point of time management. Setting a deadline requires a calendar! (Well, OK, it doesn’t. You can set a deadline even in your head… But doesn’t it look a lot cooler when it is on a calendar?)

Stop Multitasking!

This last one too ties back into time management. Because what does doing two things at once accomplish? Defocus! It is impossible to do multiple things simultaneously. Even if the tasks use different parts of the brain ultimately the quality of the outcome will suffer. (I am not a multitasker, so let me know if I’m wrong with this one!)

I also shot a cool little video about this subject. Feel free to watch it, listen to it if you have nothing to do. Oh, and let me know what you think! Maybe there are other, better ways to be productive!

Stay healthy my friends!