Saturday, October 8, 2016

Stepping Away From Your Work Skillfully Can Trick Your Brain To Be More Productive

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Do you work long hours believing it’s the most effective way to get your tasks completed? If you do, then you’re not alone – it’s a common perception held by many that ultimate performance is achieved through time and effort and often think this is how to be more productive in our work life.

Our productivity is like a rubber band stretching to its capacity. Working harder is adding extra stretch to the rubber band but it’s futile because the rubber band will only end up over-stretching and break. When we put so much effort and hard work in one sitting, as tempting and productive as that can seem, it is counteracting how our brains work and finally our productivity levels deteriorate over time because we do not take the necessary breaks.

Taking Breaks Is Good For Your Productivity

Vacations are something we often look forward to but how much do we take advantage of these much needed breaks? A recent study found that employees who took vacations displayed higher levels of productivity, morale and improved job satisfaction.

A real-life story that validates the finding: Mark Douglas, the CEO of advertising and marketing company Steelhouse, wanted to boost both his employees work life satisfaction and his company’s overall success by paying his workers $2000 a year to take a vacation.

Surprisingly, through this policy, he has not only cultivated a sense of trust and increased overall happiness within his company, but he also found that people who come to work recharged are more productive!

Focused Mode And Diffused Mode

The reason taking time out for vacations and taking breaks is so great for our productivity has much to do with how our brains work. We have two types of thinking modes: focused mode and diffused mode.

Focused mode is when we spend long amounts of time on a task. It may involve marathon sessions of work, studying, memorising and problem-solving. Our brains focus entirely on what we need to do but can often lead to cramming too much in and believing getting something done all at once is ultimately productive but can lead to counter-productivity due to us not working at our best capacity.

Diffused mode is when we’re doing something else entirely and vaguely, sometimes subconsciously, thinking about what you are trying to solve. This happens when we take breaks and go on vacation – in other words, it’s creating a space where our subconscious mind is open to inspired action and problem-solving.

So by switching back and forth between these two modes, we’ll be more productive when switching back to a focused mode after spending time in the diffused mode during our breaks.

How To Be More Productive Through Taking Breaks

To learn how to be more productive, we actually need to adopt both modes of thinking. Switching between focused and diffused modes is where the magic happens. While it’s important for our mind to be focused by spending time retaining details, learn and concentrate at a task, we also need the space for our mind to be more free and open to let the subconscious mind take over and allowing the information to be processed more effectively.

That means you should break down your work schedule into smaller, regular sessions and make sure you take breaks in between to take advantage of the diffused mode. This could mean just switching off and taking a walk, exercising, listening to music or the ultimate break – taking a vacation.

We mustn’t underestimate the benefits we reap from taking time out and relaxing. If we make it all about focused mode we don’t take advantage of our brain’s true potential and ability to be at its most productive. So don’t shy away or judge yourself for stepping away from your work – you are doing your productivity and, ultimately, your career a massive favour.

Featured photo credit: snapwiresnaps.tumblr.com via pexels.com

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Manage Your Time Like You Manage Your Money, Then You Can Work Much More Productively

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When it comes to time management most of us try to be efficient by getting tasks done quickly or focusing on the short-term benefits. Everyone has 24 hours in their day but how well do we utilise these hours? A better way of engaging our time management effectively is to look to the long-term rather than what we can achieve in the short-term.

Budget control is all about saving our money now in order to invest and assist us in the long-term. To utilise our time, and learn how to be more productive, we need to apply this concept to our time management and create a better and more efficient way to invest our hours so that we reap the benefits later on.

Time Assets vs Time Debts

James Clear describes the concepts of time assets and time debts. Just like assets and debts are applied to our finances, they can be applied to the way we manage our time to increase or decrease our ability to prioritise skills, create time and our overall productivity.

Time assets are the actions we take that impact our time positively in the future – in other words, the choices we make today that will save us time further down the line. Setting up automation systems to send reminders or publish blog posts is an example of investing time now to save time later on. Putting extra time and effort into covering all bases in an instruction document will save you annoyances and time explaining things down the line when your employees don’t fully understand it.

Time debts are the actions we do that will rob us of time in the future, much like a financial debt. A common example of this are emails. For each email we send out, we assume that we will receive an email back at some point that will need answering. Therefore, the more emails we spend sending out, the more time we are taking away from ourselves in the future. It seems productive at the time because we feel accomplished for emptying our inbox, but we don’t think about the inbox filling up again the next day.

Make sure the tasks you do today are saving you time in the long-run. Don’t just think in terms of what you need to complete in the coming work day and ticking off your to-do list because that will eventually become never ending and repetitive. It may feel like you’re being productive, but you’re not necessarily investing in that pot of free time you’ll acquire later.

How To Be More Productive Using Time Assets

There are many ways you can subtly implement time assets into your daily work life. Sit down and think of ways you can streamline your daily tasks. Are there ways you could do them differently?

  • Set up automation systems that send out emails, updates, blog posts, articles.
  • Set up scheduling systems that take out a lot of the back and forth dealings with colleagues and clients.
  • Make use of money tracking apps such as EasyCost to translate your work tasks into monetary terms so as to decide what you plan to do will lead to time debts or not.

At the end of the day, we all want to learn how to be more productive and so we must think of time assets as a system that takes away unnecessary work and works for us as an invisible assistant. If you constantly fill your day with time debts then no matter how productive you are or how hard you work, it’ll be the same every day.

So when it comes to your 24 hours, be smart and use those time assets to create more time, productivity and efficiency in your work life!

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