I Followed My Own Productivity Advice For A Week
When
you write about the way people work a living, it affects the way you
work. Having written hundreds of posts about productivity, it's started to
pervade my life: I go analog when I need to
concentrate, I follow coffee meeting protocols, and I'm literally squatting at my desk as write these
words.
But
what if I formalized this unconscious process? What if, for one week, I fully
practiced what I preached? Would the productivity hacks become home?
Here's
what happened when I spent a week following my own advice:
An
alarm is a jarring way to get out of bed, and using the snooze button confuses your system. Mobilization hormones
shoot through your body upon waking--and laying your head back down sends a
message of further relaxation. Sending those mixed signals to your body leaves
you with a groggy, rather than clearing, head.
Yet
despite dispensing this advice, I still use one to wake up every weekday
morning around 7:45 a.m., while on the weekends I allow myself to sleep until
10:00 a.m.
In
order to awake unassisted research shows, we have to awake at the same time every day which means we also have
to train ourselves to go to bed at a consistent time that allows us to get
enough sleep.
The
Results: I
still set an alarm every morning so I wouldn't risk sleeping too late and
missing the day's commitments. But I set it consistently (both weekdays and the
weekend) for 8 a.m. in hopes that I wouldn't need it.
While
I wasn't up before the alarm every day, my eyes started opening around 7:30
a.m. or 7:45 a.m. most days without electronic supervision--and with a greater
sense of spaciousness. The key was following the findings of Tony Stubblebine, the founder of
habit-shaping app Lift. He told me a crisp wakeup requires knowing exactly what
you're going to do once you're out of bed--any ambiguity can be a distraction.
With that in mind, my morning gained a regularity of bed, bathroom, yoga
mat--allowing my mind to reacquaint itself with consciousness while my body
took care of brushing my teeth. Now the mornings have more momentum.
Mindfulness
meditation has been linked to a boost in concentration and better stress
resilience, among a myriad of other health benefits. Mindfulness meditation is also
awesome because it trains you in gaining a sense for when you’re distracted--a big problem for
journalists who have to constantly juggle a lot of incoming information while
trying to stay focused enough to write a cohesive story.
While
I’ve been meditating on and off for nearly four years, I thought I’d see what a
week of just-after-awaking sitting would do for my workflow.
The
Results: I
sat for five to 20 minutes every morning. Interview questions, chapter
headings, and other worries would pop into my mind, and after chasing the
thoughts for a bit, I’d realized that I forgot to keep breathing. Then I'd say
"thinking" to the thoughts racing in my head--labeling each as a
thought, though neither good nor bad--and refocus on the breathing.
The
longer I sat in the morning, the more crisp my thinking felt throughout the
day.
The
difference between a 20-minute and five-minute sit is pretty remarkable. My
mind often feels like a snow globe: whenever jostled, thoughts start flying all
over the place. That's why the longer sessions suit me better: the
thoughtflakes have more time to settle down to the bottom. Correspondingly, the
longer I sat in the morning, the more crisp my thinking felt throughout the
day.
We
all fall victim to the sad desk lunch, and the croissant flakes embedded in the
cushion of my office chair can attest to my frequency of desk breakfasts too.
While it feels efficient: "Look, I can put pizza into my mouth and do
research at the same time!" It's not good for you. If you don't have
slices of not-work within a workday, you'll get burned out.
As
a freelancer, I’m not surrounded by my colleagues; they’re on the other side of
a chat window. I need some sort of socialization to feel like I’m highly
functioning, so stepping away from my desk for a midday meal needed to become a
priority.
The
Results: On
some days I would pop out to the yoga studio in what would otherwise be the
workbreak--getting physical activity and human contact in one fell noontime
swoop. Other days I went for a long, snowy walk. But I found that with all the
deadlines, interviews, and other to-dos, eating lunch with another person was
hard to put together. I only managed to make time for lunch with a friend once.
Setting
aside my social deficiencies, thinking of lunch as less a meal than as a midday
break is really quite key: if I walked away from my desk around noon, I had way
higher energy into the evening than if I "powered" through the lunch
hour.
Even
though productivity guru Tim Ferriss told me that "you need
stimulus and recovery in mental work in the same way that you need stimulus and
recovery for sports," I didn't always recover.
Since
I spend the whole day writing, reading, and interviewing, my mind often feels
like mush by the end of the day--and the quality and clarity of my writing and
thinking slumps lower than my slouch.
So
maybe interrupting my day with a little physical activity would help.
The
Results: I
decided to add a midday yoga class to my schedule. Every day after meeting the
day’s immediate deadlines I ran over to the neighborhood yoga studio--and I
felt fresher in the afternoon than in the morning. Though a phone interview did
superseded the downward dogs more than once, I was able to make it to the
studio for three of five times.
University
of Illinois researcher Neha Gothe helped me to see why. She's found that people have greater
cognitive performance after yoga than cycling or walking.
“It’s
not just about physical movements," she says. "(There is) also lot of
breathing and mindfulness behind it, that helps you sustain your attention.”
After
a week of putting into practice all these productivity ideas, I feel more
committed to sculpting my routine. Since I feel so much clearer when I've
sat for a full 20 minutes, I need to build that into my routine. This will
require getting up earlier--and a reintroduction of our friend the alarm clock.
And since it's so energizing to have lunch with awesome humans, I'll be eating
alone less.
All
this speaks to a larger point about how the behaviors suit the goal: if my
purpose were to write an infinite number of posts a week, then I'd never leave
my desk. But since I aim to write fewer, more thoughtful pieces, creating an
environment that allows me space to think boldly is essential.
It's
like what philosopher Gustav Flaubert said: “Be regular and orderly
in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work." So the
more I arrange my days to take care of my body and mind, the more "violent
and original" I can be in these articles.
By Drake
Baer
http://www.fastcompany.com/3026200/work-smart/i-followed-my-own-productivity-advice-for-a-week?partner=newsletter
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