Seven Habits for a Happier, More Productive You

Most successful men and women have one thing in common: they start their day early as it gives them time to sit, think, and plan their day.

When you get up early, you are more calm, creative, and clear-headed.

As the day progresses, your energy levels starts going down which affects your productivity and you don’t perform as well.

Waking a few hours earlier has been linked to a slew of benefits.  Taken from http://zenhabits.net/10-benefits-of-rising-early-and-how-to-do-it/ let’s look at just four:

1. Early birds are more proactive than evening people – and so they do well in business, says Christoph Randler, a biology professor at the University of Education in Heidelberg, Germany. To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, “the morning people are different from you and me” 

2. "When it comes to business success, morning people hold the important cards," Randler told the Harvard Business Review of his research, some of which originally appeared in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. "They tend to get better grades in school, which gets them into better colleges, which then leads to better job opportunities.

3. Morning people also anticipate problems and try to minimize them. They're proactive”Not that evening people are life's losers: They're smarter and more creative, and have a better sense of humour, other studies have shown. Source: https://www.inc.com/news/articles/2010/07/research-says-morning-people-are-more-proactive.html 

4. Waking up earlier also means your body is more in tune with the circadian rhythms of the earth (i.e. sunset and sunrise), which leads to deeper restorative sleep. I speak more about this shortly.  

Which brings me to my next tip which links beautifully to this one...

How many of you read emails or take calls during your commutes, then go right to your desks where you move back and forth between projects and communications for hours at a time?

Sound like your day?

Well, the truth is we are not designed to work this way. Our bodies and minds follow a daily cycle called a circadian rhythm – “physical, mental and behavioral changes that follow a roughly 24-hour cycle, responding primarily to light and darkness in an organism’s environment”. (sunrise and sunset)

During the day, we cycle through ultradian rhythms. These are periods where we are more and less-focused.

The ideal rhythm is to work four or five 90-minute chunks throughout the day, with breaks in-between. 

A good practice is to schedule three important tasks a day that you can fit into these segments, and set a timer (not on your phone!) to manage your rhythm. Or if you are tuned-in to your body’s signals, just notice when you get restless, groggy or lose focus. That means it’s time for a 15-minute break.

Watch the video below which reinforces this message.

How many times have you opened a piece of regular mail—a bill perhaps—and then put it down only to deal with it again later? How often do you read an email, and then close it and leave it in your inbox to deal with later? Highly successful people try to “touch it once.” 

If it takes less than five or ten minutes—whatever it is—they deal with it right then and there. It reduces stress since it won’t be in the back of their mind, and is more efficient since they won’t have to re-read or evaluate the item again in the future.

Watch this short, simple technique that Dan Pink asks author of the book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, David Allen to hear how to make it work for you: http://www.danpink.com/pinkcast/pinkcast-1-8-the-power-of-the-2-minute-rule/

My personal experience to get the most out of my days in the office are 20 minute naps.   I go and lie on the bed with the curtains closed and door shut and set my alarm for 20 minutes. I notice that I am still “aware” of my environment so it’s a light sleep. But, when I “wake” I find that I am much more alert and am able to get productively through the rest of my day.

Just under 30 minutes will refresh you, without sending you into deep sleep mode. Any more than that and you may be at risk for an early death, according to a recent study.

Did you know? 

1. Leonardo da Vinci took multiple naps a day and slept less at night.
2. The French Emperor Napoleon was not shy about taking naps. He indulged daily.
3. Though Thomas Edison was embarrassed about his napping habit, he also practiced his ritual daily.
4. Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, used to boost her energy by napping before speaking engagements.
5. Gene Autry, “the Singing Cowboy,” routinely took naps in his dressing room between performances.
6. President John F. Kennedy ate his lunch in bed and then settled in for a nap—every day!
7. Oil industrialist and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller napped every afternoon in his office.
8. Winston Churchill’s afternoon nap was a non-negotiable. He believed it helped him get twice as much done each day.
9. President Lyndon B. Johnson took a nap every afternoon at 3:30 p.m. in order to break his day up into “two shifts.”
10. Though criticized for it, President Ronald Reagan famously took naps as well.

Source: 5 Reasons Why You Should Take a Nap Every Day — Michael Hyatt

The reason why we want to minimize our decisions is due to what psychologists call decision fatigue. It’s the act of making exhausting our decisions, which prevents us our ability to make better decisions later on.

Obama takes it even further by receiving simple “decision memos” on his desk with three check boxes:

• agree
• disagree
• let’s discuss 

Rather than expressing his decision through a complicated essay, this simple process speeds up the feedback loop to get things done faster.

Did you know? Most people are more easily distracted from noon to 4PM.

Source: Robert Matchock, an associate professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University.

Most successful men and women have one thing in common: they start their day early as it gives them time to sit, think, and plan their day.

When you get up early, you are more calm, creative, and clear-headed.

As the day progresses, your energy levels starts going down which affects your productivity and you don’t perform as well.

Waking a few hours earlier has been linked to a slew of benefits.  Taken from http://zenhabits.net/10-benefits-of-rising-early-and-how-to-do-it/ let’s look at just four:

1. Early birds are more proactive than evening people – and so they do well in business, says Christoph Randler, a biology professor at the University of Education in Heidelberg, Germany. To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, “the morning people are different from you and me” 

2. "When it comes to business success, morning people hold the important cards," Randler told the Harvard Business Review of his research, some of which originally appeared in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. "They tend to get better grades in school, which gets them into better colleges, which then leads to better job opportunities.

3. Morning people also anticipate problems and try to minimize them. They're proactive”Not that evening people are life's losers: They're smarter and more creative, and have a better sense of humour, other studies have shown. Source: https://www.inc.com/news/articles/2010/07/research-says-morning-people-are-more-proactive.html 

4. Waking up earlier also means your body is more in tune with the circadian rhythms of the earth (i.e. sunset and sunrise), which leads to deeper restorative sleep. I speak more about this shortly.  

Which brings me to my next tip which links beautifully to this one...

How many of you read emails or take calls during your commutes, then go right to your desks where you move back and forth between projects and communications for hours at a time?

Sound like your day?

Well, the truth is we are not designed to work this way. Our bodies and minds follow a daily cycle called a circadian rhythm – “physical, mental and behavioral changes that follow a roughly 24-hour cycle, responding primarily to light and darkness in an organism’s environment”. (sunrise and sunset)

During the day, we cycle through ultradian rhythms. These are periods where we are more and less-focused.

The ideal rhythm is to work four or five 90-minute chunks throughout the day, with breaks in-between. 

A good practice is to schedule three important tasks a day that you can fit into these segments, and set a timer (not on your phone!) to manage your rhythm. Or if you are tuned-in to your body’s signals, just notice when you get restless, groggy or lose focus. That means it’s time for a 15-minute break.

Watch the video below which reinforces this message.

How many times have you opened a piece of regular mail—a bill perhaps—and then put it down only to deal with it again later? How often do you read an email, and then close it and leave it in your inbox to deal with later? Highly successful people try to “touch it once.” 

If it takes less than five or ten minutes—whatever it is—they deal with it right then and there. It reduces stress since it won’t be in the back of their mind, and is more efficient since they won’t have to re-read or evaluate the item again in the future.

Watch this short, simple technique that Dan Pink asks author of the book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, David Allen to hear how to make it work for you: http://www.danpink.com/pinkcast/pinkcast-1-8-the-power-of-the-2-minute-rule/

My personal experience to get the most out of my days in the office are 20 minute naps.   I go and lie on the bed with the curtains closed and door shut and set my alarm for 20 minutes. I notice that I am still “aware” of my environment so it’s a light sleep. But, when I “wake” I find that I am much more alert and am able to get productively through the rest of my day.

Just under 30 minutes will refresh you, without sending you into deep sleep mode. Any more than that and you may be at risk for an early death, according to a recent study.

Did you know? 

1. Leonardo da Vinci took multiple naps a day and slept less at night.
2. The French Emperor Napoleon was not shy about taking naps. He indulged daily.
3. Though Thomas Edison was embarrassed about his napping habit, he also practiced his ritual daily.
4. Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, used to boost her energy by napping before speaking engagements.
5. Gene Autry, “the Singing Cowboy,” routinely took naps in his dressing room between performances.
6. President John F. Kennedy ate his lunch in bed and then settled in for a nap—every day!
7. Oil industrialist and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller napped every afternoon in his office.
8. Winston Churchill’s afternoon nap was a non-negotiable. He believed it helped him get twice as much done each day.
9. President Lyndon B. Johnson took a nap every afternoon at 3:30 p.m. in order to break his day up into “two shifts.”
10. Though criticized for it, President Ronald Reagan famously took naps as well.

Source: 5 Reasons Why You Should Take a Nap Every Day — Michael Hyatt

The reason why we want to minimize our decisions is due to what psychologists call decision fatigue. It’s the act of making exhausting our decisions, which prevents us our ability to make better decisions later on.

Obama takes it even further by receiving simple “decision memos” on his desk with three check boxes:

• agree
• disagree
• let’s discuss 

Rather than expressing his decision through a complicated essay, this simple process speeds up the feedback loop to get things done faster.

Did you know? Most people are more easily distracted from noon to 4PM.

Source: Robert Matchock, an associate professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University.