Success Advice
5 Powerful ‘Brain Hacks’ That Will Rocket Your Daily Productivity & Focus
If you’re like most people, you likely find yourself frequently wishing there were more hours in the day to accomplish all the important things on your To-Do list. It seems like no matter what you do there’s always more and more in life that calls for your attention, while many of the truly important things get put on the back burner when we run out of time in the day.
Does any of this ring a bell?
If so, then I’d like to offer you a few of the most powerful ‘mind tricks’ I know that can help you dramatically increase your daily productivity and focus so you can get more done in less time.
Read the rest of this article only if you’d love to learn how to sharpen your focus, be more motivated, and blast through your daily tasks so you have more time available to do whatever else you enjoy in life.
Brain Hack #1: Shrink Your Mental Deadlines
If you think something is going to take you an hour, give yourself 40 minutes instead. By shrinking your mental deadlines, you’ll be able to work much faster and with greater focus.
You should also schedule time on your calendar every week for focused, quiet concentrated “Golden Hours” or “Power Time” where you only work on your most important activities for a designated amount of time. To do this effectively, it’s important to close your email, silence your phone, and unplug from social media during these timeframes. That is, unless your most productive task happens to include any one of those mediums.
Brain Hack #2: Create a “Stop Doing” List
A “Stop Doing” list is as important as a “To Do” list. We use a To Do list to help us gets things done, but how many counter-productive habits, rituals and routines are we allowing in our lives to continue robbing us of the results and lifestyle we truly desire?
By creating a “Stop Doing” list, and committing to it, we can systematically purge out negative habits and replace them with better, more productive ones.
An easy way to do this is to get out a piece of paper and make a list of any/all the habits, routines or people in your life that are actually making you less productive and taking you farther away from your intended goals or desired quality of life.
Now, this requires you to be totally honest, truthful and transparent with yourself about what’s in your life that could be holding you back or stealing happiness in some way. But when you’re willing to step back and look at your own life and situation objectively, it becomes much easier to see the reality of our situation and be able to make rational decisions about what needs to be done in light of the bigger picture. Thus progress can be made where it otherwise couldn’t.
Brain Hack #3: Review Your Productivity at the End of the Day
Try this: Every night before going to bed, take the time to write down the top 3-5 highest priority items that you resolve to complete the following day. These should be tasks that directly move you or your business closer to your goals.
Then at the end of each day, before you create your new list for the next day, take some time to review your list from the current day and ask yourself what went well and what you could’ve done better. Celebrate in your mind what you did accomplish, but also apply a little constructive criticism to yourself for anything you may have slacked on. Then just rollover your uncompleted tasks to the next day’s list.
The most difficult aspect of being ultra-productive is you driving your day instead of your day driving you. Start your day by looking through your tasks each morning and making a conscious decision to allocate your time and focus on the most important and highly leveraged tasks before anything else. Then review your progress at the end of the day and make adjustments where necessary.
Brain Hack #4: Avoid Multitasking
Don’t multitask. Multitasking is something we all do these days. The problem though is that our brains just aren’t cut out for it. When you multitask, you’re actually interfering with your brain’s ability to perform at it’s full-capacity.
Yeah sure, we can all walk and chew gum at the same time. We can can fold laundry while talking to a friend on the phone. Clowns can also ride a unicycle while juggling brightly colored balls.
These are all role tasks that don’t demand a lot of brain power. But in most cases where brainpower and creativity are critical, multitasking is really lesstasking. When you make shifts in your activity from one context to another, you risk dropping things from your short-term memory. You also disrupt the mental flow needed to perform at top-efficiency.
Do one thing at a time, minimize context shifts, maximize brain power!
Brain Hack #5: Use “Brainwave Entrainment” Audios To Increase Focus & Productivity
Brainwave entrainment is a 100+ year old science that uses special tones and sounds to influence a person’s brainwave patterns, which have been proven scientifically to help change one’s state of mind, such as how focused they are.
Let’s briefly explore how it works.
Your brainwave patterns show what’s going on inside your head. Different brainwave frequencies show that you’re in different states of mind. For example, they may show that you are sleeping, or relaxed, or intently focused.
Brainwave entrainment can be used to tap into the frequencies associated with heightened focus and increased productivity, and brings your brain waves into harmony with them. The result is more clarity, more creativity, enhanced focus, and increased personal output.
You simply put on your headphones and play a special MP3 audio based on what kind of mindset you want to entrain. You can even do this while you’re working, writing, reading, doing chores, etc
Do you have any ‘brain hacks‘ that help you live better?
If so, share them with us in the comments below!
Over the years, many of the talking heads and pundits in the personal development and success science industry have talked about the immediate replacement of negative thoughts with positive thoughts. The logic behind that particular behavioral strategy seems to make sense on the surface. Think about it, when a negative thought rears its ugly head, we should immediately dive into the repository of positive thoughts that we have available to us so that we could immediately begin to dwell on it.
Even further, some gurus of the genre suggest removing any chance of having a negative thought by the constant repetition of affirmations. Again, tried-and-true motivational technology that is very workable and still useful. I would suggest, however, that you view the above behaviors as tactics more than strategies.
I will further suggest to you that you do not abhor your negative thoughts but rather embrace them, examine them, and place them under a spotlight. My reasoning behind this goes back over 100 years into psychology with stimulus/response, that is, the cause and effect of certain behaviors. Many individuals look at a negative thought as a causative driver. The negative thought exists as a cause, and our behavior toward that cause will determine the effect.
So, following this logic, if an individual has a negative thought which makes them feel sad, and that sadness causes them to binge drink, by removing the negative thought you’ll have removed the motivation for binge drinking. Doesn’t that sound kind of silly? The suggestion here is to turn off the negative thought so that it will turn off the consumption of alcohol.
Of course, this makes sense if we view the negative thought as a primal force in behavior. So, what if we started to think of the negative thought more as the result of something else? It means that the “something else” must change first. What if we took a different approach? What if we looked at a negative thought as an effect of some larger causal factor?
“You’re going to go through tough times – that’s life. But I say, ‘Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.’ See the positive in negative events.” – Joel Osteen
By reversing the cause-and-effect motion of negative thinking (saying that the negative thought is an effect), we now can ask a deeper, more penetrative question: Why are we thinking that negative thought? What is the underlying cause of that specific train of thinking? By reversing the cause-and-effect relationship of negative thinking, it allows the negative thinker to assume the role of diagnostician!
Below is a three-step process you can use to examine your negative thoughts, the role of it in your life, and how you can get rid of them:
1. Simply acknowledge the negative thought
Recognize the fact that there’s a negative thought in your mind instead of trying to go through a process of emotionally overlaying positive thoughts on top of it. Can you see how this exacerbates the issue? You have a negative thought, you immediately recognize that it must be changed, and you frantically scurry through the museum of your mind to find a positive thought to replace it.
In the meantime, while you are trying to find that positive thought, you’re feeling anxious, nervous, and guilty! When you finally find a positive thought to replace that negative thought, the normal process is to squash it. But you can’t! It’s like trying to get rid of weeds by covering them with rocks.
They will always find another way around the rock. It is the same with negative thoughts. Consequently, try acknowledging the negative thought.
2. Affirm the negative thought
It is a part of you. Instead of denying its existence, accept that it is there in front of you and that you are now willing to deal with it. If any of you reading this are dog lovers, you will know that the best way to get a dog next to you is by attempting to push it away from you. Every time you push the dog away it gets closer. This is the same with negative thinking because the harder you push the closer it gets.
“Always turn a negative situation into a positive situation.” – Michael Jordan
3. Acquit the thought
Give it permission to leave you. Thank it for its past importance in your life and allow it to be on its way! At this point feel free to replace the negative thought with a positive thought. What will begin to happen when you place the negative thought under the spotlight is that you will see how insignificantly small it actually is.
This is a process I’ve been using for quite some time, and it works! Oh sure, I still use affirmations on a daily basis; as a matter fact I have them right here in front of me. I find that affirmations are a tremendous way to stay positive because it doesn’t allow any room for bad things to grow. But since the average person thinks 60,000 to 65,000 thoughts per day, let’s face it, a few negative thoughts have to squeak in there!
The best advice that I can give is to not freak out over a negative thought. Acknowledge it, affirm it, and acquit it! This is magic. Watch what happens!
How do you handle negative thoughts? Let us know your tips below!
Image courtesy of Twenty20.com
I used to be a very anxious person.
I was embarrassed by what I couldn’t do and every day was a struggle. From the moment I would wake up to the moment I’d go to bed, everything felt impossibly overwhelming. It’s a battle I’ve dealt with most of my life.
This daily struggle with mental illness taught me that the satisfaction didn’t lie in beating it; the satisfaction was in helping other people beat mental illness through my success in fighting it.
Recently, I was at work. It was a pretty standard day — nothing too exciting. I then had a catch up with one of the leaders I worked with.
She said something that got my attention: “One of our colleagues is battling a mental illness.”
I really wanted to help. My eyes lit up. There was no need to uncover my plan with anyone else. I knew that staying discrete was fundamental.
I approached the person in question and asked for a few minutes of their time.
I didn’t ask them to admit their mental illness struggle; I just shared my story.
I talked about the anxiety stopping me from having a normal life, eating the right foods, going on dates with girls, having the career I wanted and traveling the world.
I wasn’t sure if any of it was sinking in or even helping. I felt compelled to go on. One thing I knew was that he was paying attention. I could see it in his eyes.
I then went on to talk about how I beat mental illness. Strategies such as:
- Creating fear lists
- Seeking professional help
- Working on myself
- Books I read
- Events I attended
Out of nowhere, he started opening up about his own struggle. I was shocked.
It wasn’t pretty. He had an extreme case of mental illness that I certainly couldn’t diagnose or give professional advice on.
“All I could do was show him through my own story that there was hope”
I offered him access to all the resources I had. I told him that he had my full support and I’d be happy to help in any way I could. He then said:
“What was your psychologist’s name?”
I told him I’d look it up and send it to him. I didn’t have the answer in front of me, but I was determined when I got home to find it.
At the end of the catch-up, he smiled. I don’t think he’d smiled like that in a very long time.
That smile gave me so much satisfaction. It made my own struggle with mental illness worth it. All those sleepless nights, times spent vomiting into the toilet and dark days where I didn’t want to go on made sense.
“It took more than seven years for me to understand that my own battle with mental illness actually had a benefit”
That benefit was the satisfaction in seeing someone beat their mental illness because I was able to defeat mine.
It’s probably the greatest satisfaction of my entire life.
That’s one thing I can teach you about life that will help you forever.
Everyone wants more time, that is something almost all of us share. Time is the most valuable resource and when you learn how to make your time work for you and how to get the most out of it – you experience life differently.
Improving how you manage your time is one of the biggest gifts you can give yourself – it’s a real game changer in your business and personal life. There are many ways that you can get more productive and get the right things done sooner; but not all of them are obvious or bring the same results.
Here are 5 productivity shifts you want to make if you are trying to make the most out of 2019:
1. Ditch your to do list
Productive people don’t keep to-do lists, they schedule everything they need to do in their calendar and work directly from their calendar! To-Do lists are just ineffective and they are impeding your productivity. A never ending list of items only leaves you overwhelmed and with a false sense of ‘productivity’.
If you schedule your To Do’s directly into your calendar at a time to get them done, you commit to it and you are more likely to get it done. Less is more – you don’t need a separate list to remind you what you need to do.
“Productivity is less about what you do with your time and more about how you run your mind.” – Robin Sharma
2. Give up on motivation
Productive people don’t always have to be motivated before starting something. They balance discipline with motivation and do what they need to do, regardless of motivation. When we come up with resistance to take action on what we have planned, we might tell ourselves that we are not motivated and we believe that we need to be motivated to complete any task.
If you want to increase your productivity, you need to challenge yourself more in the moment to take action and give up on motivation sometimes. Do what you need to in order to get the results you want in the future. Don’t make decisions based on how you feel now, make them based on what result you are really after.
3. Master your mornings
Wake up early and get yourself into the productive mindset with your routine and diet! Productive people start the day with some sort of routine, whether it’s meditation, exercise or visualization, etc. AND they have a healthy breakfast to fuel them for the day. Your health is everything when it comes to productivity, what you eat directly affects your productivity.
We can just no longer ignore the direct connection any more. Get in the right mindset to start your day and fuel your mind and body to get the most out of it. Starting your day off in any other way undermines your success – there is no doubt.
4. Schedule according to energy
Productive people know their energy cycles and they plan tasks around their energy levels. Why plan something at a time when you know it will be hard to rise to the challenge? Schedule tasks that require focus and concentration for those times of day that you feel the best and you will find it’s easier to follow through and you will be at your best to perform. Identify your filler tasks and complete those when your energy drops. Be more realistic when scheduling your tasks and set yourself up for wins.
“Productivity is never an accident it’s the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning & focused effort.” – Paul Meyer
5. Working backwards
Productive people always focus on those activities that will take them to the next level. They plan backwards, they look at their goals, then identify the tasks they need to do to support those goals. Those tasks get broken down into weekly actions. That’s how they plan.
Don’t only plan on tasks that come in or those which you ‘feel’ or ‘think’ you should be doing. Your day needs to consist of at least one activity that directly supports your longer term objectives, your big project. What sounds like common sense is definitely not common practice.
Create the right habits to achieve your goals, work on adopting easy tips and techniques so you can manage your time and yourself better to get things done.
We all have access to the most powerful computer ever created in the universe…our brain. Unfortunately, few of us have ever been taught how to use our minds efficiently, and even fewer have learned how to develop a fabulous memory. Thankfully, like any skill, memorising can be learned and using the correct strategies, your memory can be improved in only days.
One of the best coaches on memory is Dominic O’Brien the eight-time world memory champion. Self-taught after watching Creighton Carvello memorise a pack of cards on the BBC’s Record Breakers programme. Dominic, through his work on memory, has given us many tools and techniques for improving memory.
Below are 5 rules that will help you develop a better memory:
1. The Rule of Five
Probably seen as one of the most significant contributions to the body of knowledge on memory is O’Brien’s Rule of Five. This rule details how to remember things using a strategy of regular staged repetition.
These stages are as follows:
- First Review:Immediately
- Second Review:Twenty-four hours later
- Third Review:One week later
- Fourth Review:One month later
- Fifth Review:Three months later
Utilising stage repetition at these intervals ingrains the memory for the long term.
2. The Dominic System
The Dominic System is a system for remembering numbers. The system is a Person Action system where the association between two sets of paired numbers is the person with the action of the next person.
1139 would become Andre Agassi doing a roundhouse kick which is the action of Chuck Norris. This system combined with the journey method allows for long random numbers to be easily recalled without error. The fantastic thing about this system is that you get to customise for yourself with memorable people and unique actions which when combined really make it easy for you to recall numbers. The table below associates each number to a letter.
Number 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Letter O A B C D E S G H N
Creating a simple document with pairs of numbers in one column, the letter pairs in the next and an action column will help you learn this system quickly.
“Nothing can substitute for just plain hard work. I had to put in the time to get back. And it was a grind. It meant training and sweating every day. But I was completely committed to working out to prove to myself that I still could do it.” – Andre Agassi
3. The Link Method
This method relies on two essential elements of memory, association and exaggeration. Utilising these two elements, it is possible to link together unrelated objects to allow you to remember them.
Trying to remember a list of five separate words such as: balloon, papaya, gold, football and hat, might go something like this. You imagine seeing a giant balloon and inside the balloon you can see a small papaya, in bursting the balloon the papaya falls out and as it hits the floor a gold football bounces into a large sombrero.
4. The Journey Method
Using location has been a fundamental part of mnemonics almost since time began. Before humans, writing elders would pass knowledge to others using stories of journeys, with each piece of knowledge being associated with a location on the journey.
O’Brien’s system utilises journeys that you would undertake on a daily basis, like your commute to work or train stations on well-known line. Items are then associated and exaggerated along the journey, so for instance if you were trying to remember a list of ten random things you would associate each piece along with a unique ten stop journey and utilise exaggeration to make the items more memorable.
“You are well equipped with an incredible potential for absorbing knowledge…Anything’s possible.” – Dominic O’Brien
5. The Story Method
To remember groups of information, create a story that links them together. Remembering the planets of the solar system and their position relative to the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Imagine that Mercury was hitting the nineties as Venus tossed the tennis ball into the air, striking the ball it soared over the net striking the earth and bouncing high into the air, knocking the mars bar out of Jupiter’s hand, and so on.
Developing a good memory will assist markedly in all of your personal development goals as well as assisting greatly in your daily life. The methods above are tried and tested by one of the leading memory champions. Whether you want to become the next World Memory Champion or just improve your recall, the techniques outlined above will assist greatly.
Combining the various elements will create an exponential improvement in your memory that you will find hard to believe, and you will be kicking yourself for not applying them sooner. The best part about using these methods is that they are fun, so enjoy using them.
Which one of these memorizing methods sounds most interesting to you? Share with us below!
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5 Tips for Young People Starting a Business or Side-Hustle
The decision to start a business or any sort of “side-hustle” takes a lot of nerve, especially when you’re only in your 20s. Yet, the ability to power on and keep going – through all the ups and downs of business is a feat to be truly admired. (more…)
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attack your life with the 80/20 rule, think about it every day, revisit it constantly. Use lists, review them constantly. Develop a 5 year plan
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Wrong attitude prior going to sleep – note your accomplishments, and give credit to those whom helped you.
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Brainsync.com is great for audios also. I also use weekly & monthly planning over daily planning as its less stressful
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Great list. I use journalling to keep me on track. Writing down what I’m working or and struggling with help clarify things and focus my mind. Once something is written down and it doesn’t suck up all my mental power because I stop thinking about it. I try to write in my teamspir.it logbook at the end of every day!
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Hey Nash!
I love the clarity and easy to follow nature of this post 🙂 I’ve actually done up a “Stop doing” list and a “Keep doing” list hahaha. One thing I like to do every single morning is perform a morning ritual which includes a section where I instill beliefs that I will be productive and creative throughout the day. Prominently for school, I enjoy chanting to myself “I am acing school, I am, I am, I am”, it reinforces my brain to actively seek the activities that promote “acing school” and it helps a lot! For example I just received my marks for a PDH assessment task; 100% A +! So yeah hahah
Number 1 in your list is especially helpful to me because I find if I know I have time to procrastinate – I will. So if I challenge myself to complete homework or a personal project in under 30 minutes or whatever, not only does it make me feel satisfied about completing my work but my brain will become accustomed to these “Mental Deadlines” thus promoting more productivity and a faster brain start.
Thanks again for an amazingly helpful post!
Regards, Kamron
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I specially like number four because I do it most of the time! It’s same as “I would rather take 12 bags than taking two trips”. Number 3 I am missing also so I would save this text as a reminder. Thanks Nash
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Take short breaks every 40 – 50 minutes.
Exercise on a regular basis. It really helps with energy and concentration overall. And don’t feel like you need to hit the gym. Take a walk. Take the stairs. Do some jumping jacks for 5 minutes next to your desk. Any physical movement is better than none.
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Hi Nash,
Really good list of tips. Brainwave Entertainment is new to me. I will definitely be looking into it!
Thanks for the great read.
Naomi
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Some very good tips! I love the one about not multitasking. I now from my personal experience that doing several things at a time is very, very unproductive.
Doing one thing at a time gives you much more satisfaction and will get you in a flow.
Thanks for sharing this!
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My productivity nemesis was ToDo ‘Baggage’ The little jobs you put off that mount up, become a chain you keep dragging around until you’re confidence to achieve anything is at gutter level. All of the hacks above should help you avoid this scenario. Great post.
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I agree with the multitasking issue. I think we are all guilty of that. Focus on one thing and tear it up!
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Concerning Brain Hack #5: Use “Brainwave Entrainment”.. I’ve used Tibetan singing bowl sounds with success when I want to focus on a task.
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Great tips. Especially reviewing what you’ve accomplished. Every time I measure my results, my results improve.
Over the years, many of the talking heads and pundits in the personal development and success science industry have talked about the immediate replacement of negative thoughts with positive thoughts. The logic behind that particular behavioral strategy seems to make sense on the surface. Think about it, when a negative thought rears its ugly head, we should immediately dive into the repository of positive thoughts that we have available to us so that we could immediately begin to dwell on it.
Even further, some gurus of the genre suggest removing any chance of having a negative thought by the constant repetition of affirmations. Again, tried-and-true motivational technology that is very workable and still useful. I would suggest, however, that you view the above behaviors as tactics more than strategies.
I will further suggest to you that you do not abhor your negative thoughts but rather embrace them, examine them, and place them under a spotlight. My reasoning behind this goes back over 100 years into psychology with stimulus/response, that is, the cause and effect of certain behaviors. Many individuals look at a negative thought as a causative driver. The negative thought exists as a cause, and our behavior toward that cause will determine the effect.
So, following this logic, if an individual has a negative thought which makes them feel sad, and that sadness causes them to binge drink, by removing the negative thought you’ll have removed the motivation for binge drinking. Doesn’t that sound kind of silly? The suggestion here is to turn off the negative thought so that it will turn off the consumption of alcohol.
Of course, this makes sense if we view the negative thought as a primal force in behavior. So, what if we started to think of the negative thought more as the result of something else? It means that the “something else” must change first. What if we took a different approach? What if we looked at a negative thought as an effect of some larger causal factor?
“You’re going to go through tough times – that’s life. But I say, ‘Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.’ See the positive in negative events.” – Joel Osteen
By reversing the cause-and-effect motion of negative thinking (saying that the negative thought is an effect), we now can ask a deeper, more penetrative question: Why are we thinking that negative thought? What is the underlying cause of that specific train of thinking? By reversing the cause-and-effect relationship of negative thinking, it allows the negative thinker to assume the role of diagnostician!
Below is a three-step process you can use to examine your negative thoughts, the role of it in your life, and how you can get rid of them:
1. Simply acknowledge the negative thought
Recognize the fact that there’s a negative thought in your mind instead of trying to go through a process of emotionally overlaying positive thoughts on top of it. Can you see how this exacerbates the issue? You have a negative thought, you immediately recognize that it must be changed, and you frantically scurry through the museum of your mind to find a positive thought to replace it.
In the meantime, while you are trying to find that positive thought, you’re feeling anxious, nervous, and guilty! When you finally find a positive thought to replace that negative thought, the normal process is to squash it. But you can’t! It’s like trying to get rid of weeds by covering them with rocks.
They will always find another way around the rock. It is the same with negative thoughts. Consequently, try acknowledging the negative thought.
2. Affirm the negative thought
It is a part of you. Instead of denying its existence, accept that it is there in front of you and that you are now willing to deal with it. If any of you reading this are dog lovers, you will know that the best way to get a dog next to you is by attempting to push it away from you. Every time you push the dog away it gets closer. This is the same with negative thinking because the harder you push the closer it gets.
“Always turn a negative situation into a positive situation.” – Michael Jordan
3. Acquit the thought
Give it permission to leave you. Thank it for its past importance in your life and allow it to be on its way! At this point feel free to replace the negative thought with a positive thought. What will begin to happen when you place the negative thought under the spotlight is that you will see how insignificantly small it actually is.
This is a process I’ve been using for quite some time, and it works! Oh sure, I still use affirmations on a daily basis; as a matter fact I have them right here in front of me. I find that affirmations are a tremendous way to stay positive because it doesn’t allow any room for bad things to grow. But since the average person thinks 60,000 to 65,000 thoughts per day, let’s face it, a few negative thoughts have to squeak in there!
The best advice that I can give is to not freak out over a negative thought. Acknowledge it, affirm it, and acquit it! This is magic. Watch what happens!
How do you handle negative thoughts? Let us know your tips below!
Image courtesy of Twenty20.com
I used to be a very anxious person.
I was embarrassed by what I couldn’t do and every day was a struggle. From the moment I would wake up to the moment I’d go to bed, everything felt impossibly overwhelming. It’s a battle I’ve dealt with most of my life.
This daily struggle with mental illness taught me that the satisfaction didn’t lie in beating it; the satisfaction was in helping other people beat mental illness through my success in fighting it.
Recently, I was at work. It was a pretty standard day — nothing too exciting. I then had a catch up with one of the leaders I worked with.
She said something that got my attention: “One of our colleagues is battling a mental illness.”
I really wanted to help. My eyes lit up. There was no need to uncover my plan with anyone else. I knew that staying discrete was fundamental.
I approached the person in question and asked for a few minutes of their time.
I didn’t ask them to admit their mental illness struggle; I just shared my story.
I talked about the anxiety stopping me from having a normal life, eating the right foods, going on dates with girls, having the career I wanted and traveling the world.
I wasn’t sure if any of it was sinking in or even helping. I felt compelled to go on. One thing I knew was that he was paying attention. I could see it in his eyes.
I then went on to talk about how I beat mental illness. Strategies such as:
- Creating fear lists
- Seeking professional help
- Working on myself
- Books I read
- Events I attended
Out of nowhere, he started opening up about his own struggle. I was shocked.
It wasn’t pretty. He had an extreme case of mental illness that I certainly couldn’t diagnose or give professional advice on.
“All I could do was show him through my own story that there was hope”
I offered him access to all the resources I had. I told him that he had my full support and I’d be happy to help in any way I could. He then said:
“What was your psychologist’s name?”
I told him I’d look it up and send it to him. I didn’t have the answer in front of me, but I was determined when I got home to find it.
At the end of the catch-up, he smiled. I don’t think he’d smiled like that in a very long time.
That smile gave me so much satisfaction. It made my own struggle with mental illness worth it. All those sleepless nights, times spent vomiting into the toilet and dark days where I didn’t want to go on made sense.
“It took more than seven years for me to understand that my own battle with mental illness actually had a benefit”
That benefit was the satisfaction in seeing someone beat their mental illness because I was able to defeat mine.
It’s probably the greatest satisfaction of my entire life.
That’s one thing I can teach you about life that will help you forever.
Everyone wants more time, that is something almost all of us share. Time is the most valuable resource and when you learn how to make your time work for you and how to get the most out of it – you experience life differently.
Improving how you manage your time is one of the biggest gifts you can give yourself – it’s a real game changer in your business and personal life. There are many ways that you can get more productive and get the right things done sooner; but not all of them are obvious or bring the same results.
Here are 5 productivity shifts you want to make if you are trying to make the most out of 2019:
1. Ditch your to do list
Productive people don’t keep to-do lists, they schedule everything they need to do in their calendar and work directly from their calendar! To-Do lists are just ineffective and they are impeding your productivity. A never ending list of items only leaves you overwhelmed and with a false sense of ‘productivity’.
If you schedule your To Do’s directly into your calendar at a time to get them done, you commit to it and you are more likely to get it done. Less is more – you don’t need a separate list to remind you what you need to do.
“Productivity is less about what you do with your time and more about how you run your mind.” – Robin Sharma
2. Give up on motivation
Productive people don’t always have to be motivated before starting something. They balance discipline with motivation and do what they need to do, regardless of motivation. When we come up with resistance to take action on what we have planned, we might tell ourselves that we are not motivated and we believe that we need to be motivated to complete any task.
If you want to increase your productivity, you need to challenge yourself more in the moment to take action and give up on motivation sometimes. Do what you need to in order to get the results you want in the future. Don’t make decisions based on how you feel now, make them based on what result you are really after.
3. Master your mornings
Wake up early and get yourself into the productive mindset with your routine and diet! Productive people start the day with some sort of routine, whether it’s meditation, exercise or visualization, etc. AND they have a healthy breakfast to fuel them for the day. Your health is everything when it comes to productivity, what you eat directly affects your productivity.
We can just no longer ignore the direct connection any more. Get in the right mindset to start your day and fuel your mind and body to get the most out of it. Starting your day off in any other way undermines your success – there is no doubt.
4. Schedule according to energy
Productive people know their energy cycles and they plan tasks around their energy levels. Why plan something at a time when you know it will be hard to rise to the challenge? Schedule tasks that require focus and concentration for those times of day that you feel the best and you will find it’s easier to follow through and you will be at your best to perform. Identify your filler tasks and complete those when your energy drops. Be more realistic when scheduling your tasks and set yourself up for wins.
“Productivity is never an accident it’s the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning & focused effort.” – Paul Meyer
5. Working backwards
Productive people always focus on those activities that will take them to the next level. They plan backwards, they look at their goals, then identify the tasks they need to do to support those goals. Those tasks get broken down into weekly actions. That’s how they plan.
Don’t only plan on tasks that come in or those which you ‘feel’ or ‘think’ you should be doing. Your day needs to consist of at least one activity that directly supports your longer term objectives, your big project. What sounds like common sense is definitely not common practice.
Create the right habits to achieve your goals, work on adopting easy tips and techniques so you can manage your time and yourself better to get things done.
We all have access to the most powerful computer ever created in the universe…our brain. Unfortunately, few of us have ever been taught how to use our minds efficiently, and even fewer have learned how to develop a fabulous memory. Thankfully, like any skill, memorising can be learned and using the correct strategies, your memory can be improved in only days.
One of the best coaches on memory is Dominic O’Brien the eight-time world memory champion. Self-taught after watching Creighton Carvello memorise a pack of cards on the BBC’s Record Breakers programme. Dominic, through his work on memory, has given us many tools and techniques for improving memory.
Below are 5 rules that will help you develop a better memory:
1. The Rule of Five
Probably seen as one of the most significant contributions to the body of knowledge on memory is O’Brien’s Rule of Five. This rule details how to remember things using a strategy of regular staged repetition.
These stages are as follows:
- First Review:Immediately
- Second Review:Twenty-four hours later
- Third Review:One week later
- Fourth Review:One month later
- Fifth Review:Three months later
Utilising stage repetition at these intervals ingrains the memory for the long term.
2. The Dominic System
The Dominic System is a system for remembering numbers. The system is a Person Action system where the association between two sets of paired numbers is the person with the action of the next person.
1139 would become Andre Agassi doing a roundhouse kick which is the action of Chuck Norris. This system combined with the journey method allows for long random numbers to be easily recalled without error. The fantastic thing about this system is that you get to customise for yourself with memorable people and unique actions which when combined really make it easy for you to recall numbers. The table below associates each number to a letter.
Number 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Letter O A B C D E S G H N
Creating a simple document with pairs of numbers in one column, the letter pairs in the next and an action column will help you learn this system quickly.
“Nothing can substitute for just plain hard work. I had to put in the time to get back. And it was a grind. It meant training and sweating every day. But I was completely committed to working out to prove to myself that I still could do it.” – Andre Agassi
3. The Link Method
This method relies on two essential elements of memory, association and exaggeration. Utilising these two elements, it is possible to link together unrelated objects to allow you to remember them.
Trying to remember a list of five separate words such as: balloon, papaya, gold, football and hat, might go something like this. You imagine seeing a giant balloon and inside the balloon you can see a small papaya, in bursting the balloon the papaya falls out and as it hits the floor a gold football bounces into a large sombrero.
4. The Journey Method
Using location has been a fundamental part of mnemonics almost since time began. Before humans, writing elders would pass knowledge to others using stories of journeys, with each piece of knowledge being associated with a location on the journey.
O’Brien’s system utilises journeys that you would undertake on a daily basis, like your commute to work or train stations on well-known line. Items are then associated and exaggerated along the journey, so for instance if you were trying to remember a list of ten random things you would associate each piece along with a unique ten stop journey and utilise exaggeration to make the items more memorable.
“You are well equipped with an incredible potential for absorbing knowledge…Anything’s possible.” – Dominic O’Brien
5. The Story Method
To remember groups of information, create a story that links them together. Remembering the planets of the solar system and their position relative to the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Imagine that Mercury was hitting the nineties as Venus tossed the tennis ball into the air, striking the ball it soared over the net striking the earth and bouncing high into the air, knocking the mars bar out of Jupiter’s hand, and so on.
Developing a good memory will assist markedly in all of your personal development goals as well as assisting greatly in your daily life. The methods above are tried and tested by one of the leading memory champions. Whether you want to become the next World Memory Champion or just improve your recall, the techniques outlined above will assist greatly.
Combining the various elements will create an exponential improvement in your memory that you will find hard to believe, and you will be kicking yourself for not applying them sooner. The best part about using these methods is that they are fun, so enjoy using them.
Which one of these memorizing methods sounds most interesting to you? Share with us below!
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Corey Hinde
Apr 12, 2015 at 7:11 pm
attack your life with the 80/20 rule, think about it every day, revisit it constantly. Use lists, review them constantly. Develop a 5 year plan
G SCHWEI
Nov 6, 2014 at 2:33 am
Wrong attitude prior going to sleep – note your accomplishments, and give credit to those whom helped you.
Claire
Feb 23, 2014 at 11:47 pm
Brainsync.com is great for audios also. I also use weekly & monthly planning over daily planning as its less stressful
Casandra
Feb 15, 2014 at 2:51 pm
Great list. I use journalling to keep me on track. Writing down what I’m working or and struggling with help clarify things and focus my mind. Once something is written down and it doesn’t suck up all my mental power because I stop thinking about it. I try to write in my teamspir.it logbook at the end of every day!
Kamron
Feb 12, 2014 at 11:07 am
Hey Nash!
I love the clarity and easy to follow nature of this post 🙂 I’ve actually done up a “Stop doing” list and a “Keep doing” list hahaha. One thing I like to do every single morning is perform a morning ritual which includes a section where I instill beliefs that I will be productive and creative throughout the day. Prominently for school, I enjoy chanting to myself “I am acing school, I am, I am, I am”, it reinforces my brain to actively seek the activities that promote “acing school” and it helps a lot! For example I just received my marks for a PDH assessment task; 100% A +! So yeah hahah
Number 1 in your list is especially helpful to me because I find if I know I have time to procrastinate – I will. So if I challenge myself to complete homework or a personal project in under 30 minutes or whatever, not only does it make me feel satisfied about completing my work but my brain will become accustomed to these “Mental Deadlines” thus promoting more productivity and a faster brain start.
Thanks again for an amazingly helpful post!
Regards, Kamron
Nikola Gjakovski
Feb 10, 2014 at 12:06 am
I specially like number four because I do it most of the time! It’s same as “I would rather take 12 bags than taking two trips”. Number 3 I am missing also so I would save this text as a reminder. Thanks Nash
Kosio Angelov
Feb 6, 2014 at 7:23 pm
Take short breaks every 40 – 50 minutes.
Exercise on a regular basis. It really helps with energy and concentration overall. And don’t feel like you need to hit the gym. Take a walk. Take the stairs. Do some jumping jacks for 5 minutes next to your desk. Any physical movement is better than none.
Naomi@businessstart-ups
Feb 6, 2014 at 1:38 pm
Hi Nash,
Really good list of tips. Brainwave Entertainment is new to me. I will definitely be looking into it!
Thanks for the great read.
Naomi
Bastiaan
Feb 6, 2014 at 2:49 am
Some very good tips! I love the one about not multitasking. I now from my personal experience that doing several things at a time is very, very unproductive.
Doing one thing at a time gives you much more satisfaction and will get you in a flow.
Thanks for sharing this!
Rudi Middleton
Feb 5, 2014 at 12:22 pm
My productivity nemesis was ToDo ‘Baggage’ The little jobs you put off that mount up, become a chain you keep dragging around until you’re confidence to achieve anything is at gutter level. All of the hacks above should help you avoid this scenario. Great post.
Daniel
Feb 5, 2014 at 12:22 pm
I agree with the multitasking issue. I think we are all guilty of that. Focus on one thing and tear it up!
Aida
Feb 5, 2014 at 9:49 am
Writing down a specific goal and putting it up on my work desk always helps me ^^
Linda
Feb 5, 2014 at 2:04 am
Concerning Brain Hack #5: Use “Brainwave Entrainment”.. I’ve used Tibetan singing bowl sounds with success when I want to focus on a task.
Anita
Feb 4, 2014 at 6:04 pm
Great tips. Especially reviewing what you’ve accomplished. Every time I measure my results, my results improve.