Last Updated 1 year by Lukas
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you have a lot to do, but not enough time to do it all? Or maybe you just want to find a way to easily manage the tasks you have to do? In general, in our amazing lives, we almost always have less time than we need to do everything we want to do. And so we have to choose and prioritise some tasks over others. This process can have a huge impact on our wellbeing and our ability to perform well under stress. Let’s take a first step together to improve this time-planning discipline. And please remember that life is not a sprint, it’s more of a marathon. We may lose one day and win another and the trick is to put things in perspective.
Together we will go through short tips and tricks you can do/try to improve your planning/execution skills to finish the task at hand, stay motivated, healthy and productive. There is no one size fits all, I encourage you to experiment, find out more about the approaches mentioned and find the best mix that works for you.
You can start reading from any chapter as they are designed to be self-contained units of information. If there is something that catches your eye, there is nothing easier than going online to find more detailed information and to go much deeper into the subject.
Failing to plan is planning to fail
In order to stay on top of our tasks and gain a broader perspective, we need to learn how to plan properly. It has already been proven that our short-term memory is not the best place to store all the information we need. It’s a very good idea to use a modern planning tool such as pen and paper (or smartphone, PC, MAC, calendar…).
The advantage of modern tools is easy, cross-platform synchronisation. Without proper planning, it will be very difficult to keep track of the big picture and set the right direction and pace. And given that human memory doesn’t work exactly verbatim, you also lose the valuable ability to review and learn from mistakes.
Don’t think, Ink!
Introduction
Whenever you need to remember an extra task or have a brilliant idea. Don’t just rely on your memory, write it down. Following this simple rule will give you two benefits. Firstly, you will free up space in your memory so that you can concentrate on the task at hand.
Zeigarnic effect
And secondly, you use what is known as the ‘Zeigarnic effect’, which is about the human mind working on unfinished tasks, occupying it and using up valuable resources that could be used to tackle the task at hand. These unfinished tasks can also prevent you from rejuvenating/relaxing (as your mind may be pondering over them).
Wanna go into problem deep, then sleep.
Introduction
When you have been trying to solve a problem for a long time and the problem still resists solution. It may be a good idea to take a break and sleep on it. If you try to maintain a high level of attention over a long period of time, you will inevitably deplete your brain’s neocortex and your blood sugar levels.
Trying to push through this state without replenishing your blood glucose levels (fuel for the brain cells) or simply refusing to take a break. If this is done for a long time and repeatedly, it leads to long-term cognitive depletion (also known as burn-out/depletion syndrome).
Working hard
It’s a good idea to work hard, but you also need to listen to your body and give it the rest it needs. Also, if you go to sleep and think about the problem a little before you fall asleep. Your mind will work on it during sleep. During sleep the brain goes through different states and connects ideas and concepts in different ways. It’s no coincidence that many great inventions were made during sleep (the periodic table of the elements, the light bulb…).
Word of caution
A word of caution: if the problem is a major stressor for you, do not think about it before going to bed. If you increase your cortisol (stress hormone) levels, it will be very difficult to fall asleep. In this case, use the ‘Zagarnic effect’, write down the current state of the solution in progress and continue the next day. Perseverance and step-by-step approach is also a good way to solve difficult tasks.
Importance of sleep
Sleep is essential for our body to maintain itself and function properly. Please do not neglect regular 7-8 hours of sleep. Neglecting sleep for a long period of time will have a devastating effect on your body. Our bodies are amazing, complicated machines that can compensate for a lot of neglect over a long period of time. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult to associate sleep deprivation with consequences. Trust me, there will be, and it may be too late to fix it.
To think fast as a rabbit, requires a good habit
Introduction
We humans, in order to free up the processing power of our minds to handle more, automate things by creating habits. Simply put, a habit is a learned action (or actions) that is triggered by one or more cues. For example, we get up and automatically go and brush our teeth. Or, for example, the ability to drive a car, which is many actions linked together, becomes a habit after some time. Then it starts to feel easy/effortless.
Habits
Habits can make us better or worse. Many studies have shown that there are certain ‘cornerstone’ habits that can have a very positive effect on our lives. Some of these are: regular exercise, intermittent fasting, cold showers / baths, meditation or mindfulness practices, healthy eating and regular sleep patterns.
Cornerstone habits
It has been found that if we choose one of the ‘cornerstone’ habits and master it. It automatically starts a snowball positive effect. For example, if you choose the habit of regular exercise, after a while you may find that you have also started to eat more healthily. Similarly, you start taking cold showers and after some time you realise that your will power/discipline has increased and you can use it in different situations of your life.
Longevity
These habits also support longevity and keeping your body in optimal condition. This means that you can also use your powers at their peak. When your body is healthy, your self-discipline is high and your brain is fully nourished. It’s much easier to tackle tasks and perform at your best.
It’s smart even if you don’t feel like it to start
Introduction
We humans have feelings and their main purpose is to keep us safe and away from scary situations. Unfortunately, we don’t face death by saber-tooth tiger every day, and our feelings can’t keep up with the pace of all the changes in the world.
Goal division
We may face situations where we just want to lie in bed and do nothing. In this case we can try different approaches. We can divide the goal into smaller, very simple goals and start doing them. This can significantly reduce our brain’s resistance to starting the task.
Self-discipline
Another approach, if we still have enough willpower, is to simply force ourselves to start and our feelings will follow later. It’s true that feelings affect what we do or are able to do, but the reverse is also true. What we do affects how we feel. So when you start to make progress, the bad feelings will often turn into good feelings.
Don’t just talk, go out and take a walk
Introduction
Given our current work habits and fast-paced lifestyles. We spend a lot of time at home, out of reach of the sun’s rays. This means that we are likely to be vitamin (or more accurately hormone) D deficient. This important nutrient modulates many processes in our bodies. It can boost or suppress our immune system when needed. It’s a good idea to have a blood test to check your current vitamin D levels. Please note that if you are taking a supplement, it should be taken together with vitamin K, which helps with the proper storage of calcium.
Vitamine D defficiency
We now know that vitamin D deficiency has several negative effects on our bodies. Since we’re talking about performance here, let’s mention the immune system and mood. Vitamin D is made in your skin when it is exposed to sunlight. The ideal daily exposure is at least 20-30 minutes in the morning and the same at lunchtime.
See the light
In the morning, as the sun rises, you will benefit from intense light in the predominantly red spectrum. You get two benefits here. Intense light in your eyes synchronises your internal sense of time and wakes you up. But it also easily penetrates your skin and bones, energising your cells.
Sunbathing
Similarly, a walk around midday will give you the maximum boost in vitamin D production. Of course, you will get the best results if your skin is not completely covered by clothing. If you live in an area with insufficient sunlight. It’s a good idea to supplement with vitamin D3. It is best to take it with K2 to prevent improper calcium storage.
Your motivation is nearing an end, meet the Dopamine, your new best friend
Introduction
Dopamine is a substance used in our brains to keep us motivated and looking for new things. It’s also used to reward us when we find something useful. There are some specific patterns that many studies have discovered about how the dopamine circuits in our brains work. If we keep these lessons in mind, we can make our lives much more enjoyable.
Dopamine level base-line
We all have a baseline level of dopamine that corresponds to our level of energy. More specifically, how motivated we are to do things. When something excites you (and you feel energised), it’s based on the difference between your current baseline level and the new level created by interesting events. What does this mean? It means that the perceived motivation to do something is given by the difference between the previous level of dopamine and the new level.
Increasing base-line feeling less motivation
It’s also important to realise that each time you increase your dopamine levels from your baseline level, they will return to normal. This new normal is slightly higher than it was before the dopamine level was increased. What does this mean? It means that if you continue to increase your dopamine levels, you will get less and less excitement from it. This is because the excitement is given by the difference between the baseline level (which is now higher and higher as you increase the dopamine level) and the new dopamine level that is increased by the exciting event.
Dopamine fast
It’s important to realise that you don’t have an unlimited supply of dopamine – your body has to make more, and it takes time. If you keep forcing your body to produce a lot of dopamine on a regular basis. It will protect itself by increasing your baseline -> actions won’t be as exciting anymore, decreasing the amount of dopamine released -> as there is less in reserve and eventually decreasing the number of dopamine binding receptors. You will notice that as you feel less motivated, regular things will become boring and previously amazing actions will become less exciting.
Getting back your motivation
In order to rejuvenate your body and regain your former level of motivation. You can start with something called dopamine fast. This means doing nothing but boring things for a whole day (in the beginning you can extend this period up to a month). You can spend an intensive day with just a notebook to write down your ideas. No phone, no games, no films… You can also go mild for longer periods, for example not watching films/series for a week.
The sneaky thing about dopamine baseline increases is that they build up over long periods of time. You have no idea it is happening until you simply burn-out. Your work is no longer exciting, your life seems dull. Ideally, we don’t let it get to this point and from time to time we do a dopamine fast to reset your dopamine levels.
Dopamine boost
There may be times when you need to get a dopamine boost to keep you energised for longer. Fortunately, there are healthy ways to do this. Cold baths / showers have been shown to increase base line levels by 2.5 times and this increase is present for hours after you take one. Other actions with similar levels are sex (2x), exercise (up to 2x), eating chocolate (1.5x).
Let’s win the trophy with a big cup of coffee
Introduction
Coffee has been with us for many years. It has the amazing effect of preventing us from feeling sleepy by occupying the receptors responsible for sending sleepiness signals to our brain. It can also increase the effect of dopamine release by making our neurons more receptive to it.
Don’t drink it right after waking up
When you get up, wait at least 60-90 minutes before drinking coffee. That’s because shortly after waking up, there’s still a residual amount of the substance that makes us feel sleepy. Our body needs to eliminate this, and caffeine would prevent this. It’s a good idea to exercise, take hot/cold showers and get plenty of light outdoors to help our bodies eliminate the residual sleep-inducing substances. If you drink coffee immediately after waking up, you are likely to experience drowsiness in the early afternoon, when the effects of caffeine wear off.
Caffeine fast
Caffeine can also boost our brain’s response to dopamine, making it more receptive. Remember, as with anything else, our bodies adapt. It’s wise to reduce caffeine consumption from time to time to make it more effective when we need it. If we drink coffee regularly, our bodies will get used to it and it won’t have as much of a beneficial effect (but there is still some). Ideally, you should drink all your caffeine by early afternoon. Otherwise, it can adversely affect the quality of your sleep.
It’s ok, goal is not the way
Introduction
If you want to keep enjoying the same things, you need to be smart about how you prevent your body from adapting. For example, if you keep listening to music to motivate yourself to exercise, after a while you will start to enjoy the exercise less and you will need to find other ways to keep yourself motivated. It’s good to change the way you motivate yourself to do things.
Enjoy the way
The master class in motivation is to reach a state where you get a dopamine release from the action itself. For example, the very act of exercising gives you little dopamine rushes as you do it. This is very clever. Don’t tie your reward to the goal, tie it to the action itself.
If you try to tie it to a goal (which most people do), you will soon find that you need stronger motivation, bigger goals, just to get started. On the other hand, if you enjoy the act of doing. You can do this for a long time without exhausting your motivation reserves. Simply put, people who love doing things, just for the act of doing them, automatically achieve a lot and this keeps them going and provides the much needed variability to prevent our bodies from adapting.
Want to be with masters brother, teach someone other
Introduction
If you want to make sure you really understand something, try explaining it to a 6-year-old. This was a famous statement by Albert Einstein. If you can’t explain it to other people, you don’t fully understand it yourself.
Trying to explain what you have learnt to other people will inevitably expose weaknesses in your knowledge, it will also generate many unexpected questions and it will give you valuable insight/perspective from other person. There is no better way to test your understanding than by trying to teach someone else. This can help with mastering the subject.
Want to get into keeping on track gist, use TODO list
Introduction
It’s a very good idea to plan your day ahead, and not just see it as a single unit, but rather as morning, afternoon and evening. If you fail the first part of the day, it doesn’t mean you have to fail the rest. It’s just a fresh start. If you take a few minutes to think and plan what you want to do for the day, even if you only achieve a few points, you are already ahead.
Plan your day
It’s a good idea to make long, medium and short term plans. Take 5-10 minutes to plan your day. Mid-term and long-term goals will help you stay on track, while short-term goals will help you get moving.
TODO lists
These are simply lists of things to do during the day, week, month, whatever unit of time you want. What has worked really well are the versions of todo lists below. You can use them as they are, or modify them to create a combination or your own version of a todo list.
TODO Today list
It’s a version of a todo list where you only plan tasks/goals that you want to achieve for a particular day. When the task is done, you can check it off in the todo list. This gives you a reward for completing it and keeps you moving on to the next task.
Parretto’s TODO list
This form of todo list takes advantage of Parretto’s principle, which states: ‘20% of the task will produce 80% of the results’. You simply organise your todo list in such a way that you select 20% of the tasks on the list that you would ideally like to complete on a given day, as they will bring the most value..
Why TODO list
This variation of the to-do list tries to break down the resistance to doing difficult tasks by writing next to them why you want to do them. For example, there might be a task to fix a broken hairdryer. You’ve never done it before and you don’t want to. But if you write the reason: ‘My wife cannot dry her hair’. And you love that person, it might give you the push you need to get started.
Review your day/goals and adapt
From time to time it’s very wise to review your progress against your goals. You may find that the strategies you are using are not working or are not really efficient. By regularly reviewing your progress, you can adapt to changing situations. We live in the real world and the only certainty is change. This also means that something may have worked before, but it doesn’t work anymore. The only thing we can do is review, adapt and keep learning.
Do you want your ideas to rule, meditation is the tool
Introduction
Meditation can be as simple as sitting for 5 minutes and focusing on your breath. Today, mindfulness training is very popular. It’s about paying non-judgmental attention to things and staying in the present moment.
Benefits of meditation
It’s been proven that meditation helps reduce stress, improves sleep and can also improve your attention. Later, when you are used to meditating, you can even influence the state of your brain and get it to operate in a different state of brain waves. This changes the way your brain works with information and can have a significant impact on your problem solving skills and creativity.
Don’t be made a fool, listening to music is cool
Introduction
When you need to improve your performance, increase your alertness or just relax. It’s a good idea to have some music playing in the background. Of course, your choice of music is important, so it’s a good idea to experiment to find what works best for you. In general, there are plenty of ready-made soundtracks to support everything from exercise, creativity, long hours at work or just relaxing. It’s as easy as searching the internet and it’s free.
Benefits of music
It helps you concentrate, so you can work better, and it also increases the retention of information when you are learning. Some studies have even shown that it can help slow down cognitive decline as we get older. Many people also report that it helps them relax and fall asleep faster.
If you listen to fast music that makes you dance or get excited. It also keeps your heart and veins in good shape by giving them a healthy workout. Studies have also shown that it can lower your pain threshold, even for chronic pain. What’s more, it’s been tested that listening to music can help you exercise longer by keeping you motivated and less tired.