Hacking Your Brain to Boost Productivity.
“Productivity is less about what you do with your time. And more about how you run your mind.” – Robin S. Sharma
Are you busy or productive?
We all know somebody who is always “on the go”; always busy and stressed out and who is parading their busyness with pride as a badge of honour. This phenomenon is so wide-spread, that it even has a special name – “busy bragging”.
According to the 2023 State of Work report by Salesforce which surveyed 18,149 desk workers, managers, executives and leaders across a range of sectors in 9 countries, on average, employees spend 32% of their time on “performative” work that gives the appearance of productivity.
This article about performative productivity will give you helpful ideas for dealing with this problem in the workplace.
What about you? Are you busy or productive? You can find out by answering these questions:
- Do you prioritise shallow (low value) tasks over more important tasks?
- Do you constantly shift your attention from one thing to another instead of giving your undivided focus and attention to important tasks, one task at a time?
- Do you continuously do shallow tasks rather than batching and scheduling them throughout the day?
- Do you attempt to do several tasks at the same time (multitasking)?
- Do you say “yes” to almost anything by default?
If you answered “yes” to all or most of these five questions, then the chances are that you are just being busy rather than being productive. You can do many simple yet effective things to boost your productivity.
First thing first: Get motivated!
The 2023 State of Work report mentioned earlier revealed that the top barrier to productivity faced by desk workers in the UK is their inability to stay motivated, while the top barrier to productivity faced by managers is helping their teams stay motivated.
You can use the following brain hacks to help yourself and your team to get motivated and to stay motivated:
- Use your imagination and reconnect with your purpose. Visualise achieving your goals by completing your tasks successfully. Imagine how great it will be for you and for people important to you, as well as for your team and the wider community.
- Remind yourself about past achievements to lift your mood, reduce stress and to build your confidence and motivation for the future.
- Use self-care to motivate yourself. An old saying goes, “If you have your health, you have everything.” Physical and mental wellbeing help us to feel more energised, focussed and optimistic.
Prioritise your tasks
Our time and energy are limited. Prioritising helps complete our tasks the right way (even if it is not the fastest one) while increasing our sense of control and reducing stress.
- Start with a “brain dump” – write down everything that you need to do for the day. By getting all these things out of your head and on to paper (or computer screen) you will reduce your mental load and increase mental clarity.
- Make decision making easier for your brain by using special techniques to prioritise tasks. These techniques will help you to make informed decisions about scheduling your tasks based on their importance, deadlines and efforts required to complete them.
Maintain your focus and minimise distractions
A poll of 1,600 people conducted by Crucial Learning in 2022 revealed that two out of three respondents struggled to fully focus on a single task. Some 68% of respondents found it difficult to focus at work and 62% also found it difficult focusing at home. Almost one in three survey respondents reported that they could only focus on a task for 10 minutes or less before getting distracted. This lack of focus resulted in:
- 73.2% feeling overwhelmed by their tasks;
- 72.6% dealing with frequent stress;
- 71.7% feeling slow or inefficient at work.
The following hacks can help you to maintain your focus:
- Split each complex project or task into small chunks. Large projects can make us feel overwhelmed and can lead to procrastination. When you break down such projects into bite-sized steps, they become less scary and more manageable. You can use the Pomodoro Technique to optimise your cognitive resources when working on the small chunks of large projects and tasks.
- Consider using apps to help you focus, to block out distractions and to work more efficiently.You can find an overview of 17 top apps in this article. Have fun testing them out to find the best ones for you.
Plan for productivity
- Use time blocking and task batching to reduce the mental load of switching tasks. Divide your day into blocks of time with each block dedicated to a specific task (for example, writing an article) or a batch of similar small tasks (for example, checking your emails). You can also go one step further by having different themes for each day. For example, my Wednesdays are dedicated to research, learning and development.
- Scheduling your most difficult task first. A recent survey found that the most productive working hours are between 9am and 11am. Your brain is more alert in the morning which makes it easier to focus. In addition to this, completing a challenging task in the morning will motivate you for the rest of the day.
- Use ultradian rhythm to boost your productivity. This will involve alternating high and low-focus tasks and aligning them with your natural periods of high-frequency and low-frequency brain activity.
- Take frequent breaks. Our brains need periodic rest to maintain optimal performance, so have a short brisk walk outside or do some aerobic exercises, meditate or have a chat with your colleague to re-energise your body and mind. You can find some useful tips on using short breaks to enhance productivity in this article.
- Reward yourself for reaching small milestones and completing tasks. Your brain will quickly learn that it gets rewards for working, especially if you are rewarding yourself for small achievements early on. Celebrating small wins activates the brain’s reward system, which releases dopamine and reinforces positive behaviour and boosts motivation and productivity. You can celebrate the “overall win” too when you complete your complex project or difficult task.
You can learn how to become super-productive by focusing on cognitively demanding tasks without distraction and burnout by reading books Deep Work and Slow Productivity by Cal Newport, a computer science professor and bestselling author.
Just reading and learning is not enough though. Peter Drucker, the champion of management as a serious discipline, described productivity as “knowledge applied”. It is now up to you to make your step from knowing what to do to doing what you know to become even more productive.
Want to know more about brain hacking? My next article will follow soon!
Editor’s Footnote
Zoryna O’Donnell is a Featured Columnist and you can read her articles by clicking below:
