Use These 4 Hacks to Skyrocket Your Productivity!
Adam Scott Murad, MSc.
Professionals hire me to lose 15-50 lbs of fat & improve their health without restrictive diets ??
You're at your desk, and you need to complete your slides for a presentation.
Your mind keeps drifting from thought to thought and task to task. It's been a few hours and you've made no progress.
You go grab a second coffee...
Still no luck, in fact, this may have made things worse.
We've all found ourselves in a similar scenario at some point, if not, multiple times a week.
When wearing all hats of my coaching business, I know I do, and that's exactly why I have a tool belt of hacks to help keep me focused.
Now it's time to share my lesser known and underutilized hacks with you.
Before I give you the solutions, let's identify the problem
First, what actually stops us from concentrating?
Your LinkedIn notifications are going off, and they are joined by Slack, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.
Your latest dance video just went viral...just kidding.
While this is happening, your emails keep piling up and, damn it, now you have meetings from 3pm-6pm.
We live in a world where there are many versions of productivity. 12hrs straight in the office – that is very unlikely going to be 12hrs of productive work. You'll struggle to convenience me otherwise.
If fact, the human capacity for focus, seems to be between 4-6 hours and is said to have peaked in our 20s.
To make matters worse, Vouchercloud conducted a survey on close to 2,000 office workers, 18 and based in UK. They found that the average office worker amongst this sample size were only productive for 2 hours and 53 minutes out of the working day. Not in one go, throughout the entire day!
Before you go monitoring your entire office Big Brother style, like I said, I come bearing solutions.
A study carried out in 1993 found that the human brain is capable of 90 minutes of concentration before needing a break.
So, we are not doomed, we just require the tools and knowledge to help maximize productivity.
My 4 Productivity Hacks
The key key to increasing productivity is improving concentration - maximising the time we are doing focused work.
So now it's time for me to give you what you came for, the main course, the meat, and potatoes. Any of these productivities hacks on their own, will noticeably improve your productivity, and if you combine all four, it will skyrocket.
1. Break it up
I am not just pulling it out of thin air, or a random Google search. The 90-minute attention span concept has made regular appearances throughout my research and throughout history. In Neurophysiology, this 1981 paper found that our focus comes in cycles of around 100 minutes.
As I went a bit deeper into the research, It seems as though our brain can only focus for 90 to 120 minutes before it needs a break. It’s to do with the ultradian rhythm, a cycle that exists in both our sleeping and waking lives.
There's a lot more research into this topic, which I won't go into in this newsletter. Yes, there will be individual differences too. But, it's not a bad start to implement 90-minute blocks of focused work with 20-minute breaks.
Yes, it may be a bit difficult to always time 90 minutes. I did stumble across an app that looks to be great at tracking work activity. If you haven't used it already, here is Timely (let me know how it is).
Any of the following activities are great break options:
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2. Nourish your brain
You probably thought I was going to go down this route. As always, I will back up any claims I make. Not many people know this, but a diet made up of ultra processed foods can cause neurotoxicity, inflammation of the brain. This can significantly impact your ability to focus and, generally, perform mentally.
So, am I suggesting a diet that completely avoids these foods? Nope!
Instead, eat more of the following ''brain foods'':
All these foods are high in antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals which will support blood flow and brain health. You don't have to eat all of these foods in one day, that would leave you feeling pretty sick..
Instead, over the course of a week, mix these foods in.
Staying hydrated is also crucial here, as that enhances blood flow around the body, which will also mean more blood to the brain. Aim for 2-3 litres of fluids daily: Water, tea, unsweetened drinks and even coffee (I personally limit that to 1 cup per day).
3. Variety is Key
There's no doubt you've experienced this yourself, pure task fatigue. You're working on something, it starts to bore you and your attention goes to something more exciting.
Instead of this naturally happening, and your productivity taking a nose dive, you can split tasks into blocks to avoid any fatigue. Not multitasking, which I won't touch on here, but in short, don't try to multitask.
Research suggests switching up the presentation modality of the task. There are three key modalities that are associated with your work and specific brain areas: light and sight (visual cortex), hearing (auditory cortex) and physical feeling, touching (somatosensory cortex).
What's key here is to switch up the task modality. Say, for example, you're a sales professional (a lot of you reading this are according to my analytics). Your job has three main areas:
Drawing out proposals has a visual modality, and speaking with prospective customers has an auditory modality. The first half of your day you may decide to speak with customers and the second half, drawing out proposals and updating software.
4. Exercising first thing in the morning
Look, exercising in general will boost productivity, whenever you slot it in. But, so long as you're not going ''too hard'' exercising in the morning is one of the best things you can do for your productivity and focus.
Firstly, you get blood circulating with exercise, which will boost blood to the brain. Secondly, you give yourself a natural mood boosting high which, can't really be topped.
Charlie Sheen disagrees....
Those endorphins, the increase in BDNF (Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor) which has been shown to increase brain performance and focus. BDNF is basically, fertiliser for the brain.
Exercise will further increase levels of cortisol (which are highest when you wake up) - this is your ''awake hormone''.
It will also help you structure your day and let's face it, when you get in that morning session, you're more likely to make better decisions throughout the day.
Without getting too technical and sciencey (not a word apparently), exercise also releases endocannabinoids, which have been shown to improve mental focus.
If you're not a morning person, have no fear, that will change. But, you want to start small, just a 20 minute resistance training workout, a jog, 20 minutes rowing or cycling.
You choose!
There we have it, my 4 top hacks when it comes to improving productivity. Sure, there are many more. But, if you implement these, you'll see your productivity at work, or whatever you're working on, skyrocket!
Which, if any of these, are new to you?
Have the best day ever and we'll talk soon!
Adam