Home › Archive for Procrastination, Productivity, Time Management › Page 3
Blog Archives

tDCS: Brain-Zapping for Creativity and Focus

Fun Stuff Brought To Us By Mad Scientists

A recent study found that participants were performing better than usual in a creative task when they received electric stimulation of the brain.
The method is called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), and this particular treatment was set up to increase activity in the right hemisphere, while diminishing activity
in a part of the left hemisphere involved with sensory input, memory, and language.

If you’re intrigued – or alarmed – by the idea of sending electric current through your brain, I recommend this Radiolab episode:

It does a great job explaining how tDCS works, including interviews with participants, researchers, and other neuroscientists who might have a more skeptical view of this method.

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR

…

Read more ›


Book Recommendation: Your Brain at Work

David Rock. (2009). Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long.

This book gives very useful insights into how our brain works, and what we can do to make it work better. So far, it has been one of the most influential books for my own work in helping people be more productive in healthy and sustainable ways.

David Rock does a wonderful job bringing together a vast amount of research on cognitive neuroscience, and in helping us understand why our brains work better in some situations than others. Recognizing the limitations of our brain, he suggests very practical steps we can take to optimize our work days and maximize our brain’s potential.

He presents his advice through a series of anecdotes and stories of the “meet Emily and Paul” type.

…

Read more ›


Decision Fatigue: Time for a Break Now?

It turns out that making decisions is tiring and wears us out, more so than other (similarly difficult) mental tasks. At this point, a large body of research shows that whenever we make many choices in a row, the quality of our decisions gets worse over time.

Decisions that are especially taxing are those that involve self-control. For example, when people fended off the temptation to eat M&M’s or freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies, they were then less able to resist other temptations later on.
Nourishment and Recovery
Self-control tasks and decisions also require more glucose in the brain than other mental tasks. Low or hypoglycemic levels of glucose lead to impaired decision making, poor planning, and inflexible thinking. In contrast, simple psychomotor abilities, such as responding quickly to certain cues, seem relatively unaffected by glucose levels.

Rest and Sleep

This pattern is in line with other things we know about impulsive behavior and typical self-control problems.

…

Read more ›


Video: A Dialogue About Procrastination

A conversation about procrastination with Joseph Rhinewine, PhD, from Portland Mindfulness Therapy:

by

 

…

Read more ›


Featured Video: Inbox Zero

Merlin Mann is advocating a lean process to deal with our flood of emails and become more productive: http://inboxzero.com/video.

The talk itself is 1/2 hour (~2:30-32:30), the rest is intro and Q&A.

The basic idea is to keep your Inbox empty and not spend time re-reading and re-considering emails without responding.

What I like about it is that you can apply the Inbox Zero principle to other tasks: get each new task out of your mind immediately by either getting it done right away, scheduling it, or deciding not to do it. In other words, get a system that helps you NOT think about any other tasks than the one you’re working on right now. This will reduce decision fatigue and help you focus.

“That Zero? It’s not how many messages are in your inbox – it’s how much of your own brain is in that inbox.”

—

…

Read more ›


Featured Video: Where Do Good Ideas Come From?

In this RSA animation, Steven Johnson talks about his research into what kinds of situations and environments are most conducive to great ideas and creativity:

It turns out that good ideas take a lot of time. There’s not usually an “Eureka” moment, but a slow development, often requiring exchange of ideas, creative conversation, and collaboration.

That’s why coffee shops are so important! :)

But also, the increase in connectivity that came along with new technologies can be seen as a major engine of creativity and innovation.

 

…

Read more ›


Procrastination and Self-Compassion

It’s not surprising that procrastination can lead to considerable stress, exacerbated by feelings of guilt and failure. A recent study found that procrastinators were indeed less self-compassionate than others, and that those who showed least self-compassion experienced the most stress as a result of procrastination.
The author, Dr. Fuschia Sirois, suggests that this lack of self-compassion might not just be a consequence of procrastinating, but that it might set the stage for procrastination to become more chronic in nature. Namely, the self-blame could lead people to over-identify with procrastinating and to ruminate about the unattained goal, rather than to focus on a new goal.

Or, in other words, being more self-compassionate after we fail may help us get over it more quickly, move on, get a fresh start and get new things done.

Happy New Day!

Sirois,

…

Read more ›


Seth Godin: Do You Ship?



Seth Godin makes the case that having great ideas is not difficult. “Shipping” them – actually getting them done and out – is the hard part, and the important part.

Shipping is not just hard because it takes a lot of work, but also because it’s scary. It’s our shipped stuff that will be judged, and – as opposed to our brilliant ideas – the finished product will never be perfect.

I can relate to that very well, because almost everything that I ever accomplished in my life required me to get out of my comfort zone – not only the big projects, but even the daily little shippings, like sending emails, or posting stuff to this very blog.

So how can we do it?

  1. Commit to delivering on time.

…

Read more ›


How to Increase Innovation in Organizations

Innovation and creative thinking in organizations is not only difficult to achieve, but also potentially risky, time consuming, and expensive. Is it worth the effort? Several studies suggest that indeed, higher organizational innovation affects overall performance quite strongly and is worth pursuing.

How, then, can innovation and creative thinking be increased in an organization? One important factor seems to be a strong learning orientation within the company.

Learning orientation (as defined in this body of research) consists of the following four components:

  1. commitment to learning,
  2. shared vision,
  3. open-mindedness, and 
  4. intra-organizational knowledge sharing.

Studies have shown that learning orientation not only influences firm innovativeness directly, but that it also moderates the impacts of risk-taking,

…

Read more ›


Book Recommendation for the New Year

Charles Duhigg. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.

This book offers a very well-researched but easy to understand explanation of how we form and maintain habits. Gaining a deeper understanding of this general mechanism gives us as readers a very useful starting point to develop our own interventions in kicking old unwanted habits and forming new intentional ones. It is not the kind of book that offers a lot of specific advice, but it gives you the knowledge to develop your own best practices. I have found it a very useful framework for improving my own habits, as well as for my coaching work with clients who want to achieve specific goals in their work or personal lives.

…

Read more ›


RSA Animate: The surprising truth about what motivates us

I love those animated videos, and this one is adapted from a very interesting talk by Dan Pink about what does – and doesn’t – motivate us. Watch a skilled artist illustrate some very counter-intuitive findings:

…

Read more ›


Top

Privacy Policy - Terms and Conditions