In Elite Productivity, here is just a fraction of what you will discover:
● Why multitasking is actually making you less productive
● Why productivity and perfection don’t go hand-in-hand – and what you should be focusing on instead
● Actionable exercises to help jumpstart your productivity and keep it running for the long haul
● Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder: How to create the perfect workspace for maximum efficiency
● Why finding your rhythm can mean the difference between a day spent staring into space and a fully-ticked checklist – and how to find yours
● Why establishing boundaries is crucial to living a balanced life – yes, you can have it all!
● Power Words that Pack a Punch: How a slight change in the words you use daily can impact your productivity
And much more.
If you genuinely want to transform your lifestyle and boost your productivity levels to those of the elite, nothing will get in your way.
It’s time to power up your days and put every second to valuable use!
In Elite Productivity, here is just a fraction of what you will discover:
● Why multitasking is actually making you less productive
● Why productivity and perfection don’t go hand-in-hand – and what you should be focusing on instead
● Actionable exercises to help jumpstart your productivity and keep it running for the long haul
● Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder: How to create the perfect workspace for maximum efficiency
● Why finding your rhythm can mean the difference between a day spent staring into space and a fully-ticked checklist – and how to find yours
● Why establishing boundaries is crucial to living a balanced life – yes, you can have it all!
● Power Words that Pack a Punch: How a slight change in the words you use daily can impact your productivity
And much more.
If you genuinely want to transform your lifestyle and boost your productivity levels to those of the elite, nothing will get in your way.
It’s time to power up your days and put every second to valuable use!
It stands to reason that doing more than one thing multiplies how much you can get done in a particular period of time. I used to be the master of multitasking. I could read notes and brush my teeth, even read and drive at the same time. Believe me, placing a book on the steering wheel clears the path of other cars, because no one wants to be driving next to you! Then I discovered a new truth: Multitasking was not my friend.
The truth was a wake-up call. Researchers discovered that using more than one electronic device at the same time actually decreased or ate up the old gray matter. We all know that the gray matter is a term for the thinking part of the brain. What?! I need more gray matter, not less! Yet it was proven that prolonged exposure to multitasking, and electronic devices in particular, can actually alter the configuration of the brain. Study participants who had higher multitasking scores also demonstrated less density of gray matter, and researchers stopped short of suggesting causality, but the inference was very clear. It may not be in your brain’s best interest to multitask.
Earl Miller, an MIT contributor to Fortune magazine, took it a step further, describing what happens in our brains when we try to shift between tasks. It may feel seamless, but in reality, each shift requires your brain to recognize a perceptual change of environment. That doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Think about it and it makes perfect sense. If you went to the kitchen for a drink of water and while there, decided to cut a brownie from the pan to eat as a snack, it would feel perfectly logical. You are already there. No big deal. But think of each action as single unit of energy; you reach for and fill a glass of water, and do you expend more energy when you reach for a plate, then reach for the pan of brownies, get a knife from the drawer, cut a portion of dessert, lift it out, and place it on a plate?
Getting a drink of water represented two energy units. Leaving the kitchen with a brownie expended at least five additional units of energy, and I didn’t add in picking up a fork or napkin. This simplistic example demonstrates the energy drain when your brain picks up and tries to coordinate two actions, toggling back and forth between them. You may feel like you are getting more done, but you are actually depleting brain reserves in the process. Ultimately you may get less done. The guy from MIT? He concludes that you may experience less productivity and less creativity.
Lest you think this was an isolated incident, the same research has been replicated since then, and it is true; your brain wastes precious time with each shift of attention. That time is representative of a brain energy drain. Scientists call it attention residue, explaining that when you switch your focus of attention, a bit of the prior attention remains behind, sapping your focus from the new item demanding your input. That leftover bit of attention is going to cost you.
2020 greats like Daniel Levitin concur (www.daniellevitin.com). He suggests that the parts of our brains where we think can actually be trained, molded if you will, by consistent loss of focus, to function with less efficiency. Think of it as an addiction. We’ve covered neurotransmitters, and you realize that a little spurt of dopamine is one of those chemicals released with some brain activity. It’s also the drug of choice for those who like to live on the edge, do more than one thing at a time, always expand their limits of performance and efficiency. Does it help? Maybe in the short run, but not in the long haul.
Talk about the long haul. What if I told you that consistent multitasking could reduce your IQ?
British researchers looked at the relationship of IQ scores to serious multitasking. They demonstrated that students who multitasked, looking at both Facebook and their texts, experienced lower GPAs than their counterparts, and that the intelligence quotas changed in demonstrable ways. In a day when many seniors worry about losing their current level of function, the idea of actually entering their senior years with lower IQs is very disturbing.
When you add other factors affecting creativity—increasing stress, reducing short-term memory, and fostering burnout—the cost of multitasking is a high price. Indeed, it is now recognized as a significant issue within the workplace. Recent studies suggest that the average person spends 40 percent of their day trying to simultaneously focus on various lines of communication, decreasing productivity, increasing errors, training the brain how not to get things done.
This trend of fractured attention has proliferated, not decreased, with time. California researchers found that 25 percent of Stanford students were using four streams of media at the same time, and it wasn’t all study-related. While writing a research paper, students were accessing incoming email, checking Facebook posts, listening to music, picking up on new tweets, etc. This is the opposite of students just a generation ago, who experienced less distraction through electronic media. We may not be raising a smarter field of workers; we may be dumbing down those who enter the workforce.
Most office workers leave emails open throughout the day, and many check for new emails as often as every seven minutes. Are you beginning to see the amount of energy that is lost, the amount of attention residue being accumulated, and how fractured performance can be? Researchers found that even when it takes just a few tenths of a second to switch attention, those tenths add up to pretty startling figures; 40 percent of the workday can be consumed in the process. Employers should be wondering right about now: Is that what you want to pay your employees to do? Many who work in a demanding field assume it is the price they pay for the big bucks, but it doesn’t have to be.
RescueTime is a service offered to help people reduce communication distractions within the workplace. It filters the intrusions, a valuable tool when a worker finds himself constantly pinged and reminded of various things to do. If you have ever been a lover of multitasking and have prided yourself on how many things you can do at one time, read up on this. Do some digging on your own. You’ll see I have just scratched the surface on this topic.
What if you don’t work in a high-pressure environment? Everyone has the option of changing the flow of the day. Block your time. Mute your phone. Remove pop-up reminders of incoming emails. Set your phone on vibrate for emergencies. Realize that screening irrelevant material takes a lot of energy, and every time you try to shift your focus, it’s costing you time, energy, and gray matter.
What Are Your Takeaways?
Despite the thrill of doing more in less time, multitasking is not the way to do it. Trying to fracture your attention is much like fracturing your arm. Why would you do that? Your brain and its ability to focus is every bit as valuable as your arm, so stop tinkering with the way your brain works. Work with your brain, not against it.
· Multitasking is a work of fiction; no one can do more than one thing at a time well.
· Multitasking offers long-term risks of decreased brain performance. Do you really want to destroy your own gray matter?
· Learn to set limits on distractions.
In the next chapter you will learn what laser focus looks like, and why you want it!
There are few persons who would not want to improve their productivity. On the flip side there are many persons who want to improve their productivity but have no clue where to start. In Elite Productivity: 29 Steps to Reaching Your Peak Performance in Life, Jacob Edwards provides a guide for anyone who wishes to jumpstart their productivity.
There are three chapters in Elite Productivity: 29 Steps to Reaching Your Peak Performance in Life. The three chapters are followed by 29 steps that the author believes are the building blocks for increased productivity. Chapters one to three kind of set the tone for the 29 steps. I believe that this is an excellent move by the author because this provides background information for those who might need it. Chapters one to three also mentally prepares the reader to receive the information that the author has provided.
I smiled when I say the section on multitasking because I am famous for that. While I do not believe multitasking slows down my progress, there is room for debate and I am willing to reconsider. I love the tips and takeaways in Elite Productivity: 29 Steps to Reaching Your Peak Performance in Life. If you are pressed for time, or want to refresh your memory, then the chapter takeaways are a great way to help with that. The tips and takeaways are simple and practical, so regardless of the level of the reader, they should be able to get something valuable.
I have no doubt that many persons might be familiar with some of the steps provided by Jacob Edwards. However, it is always good to hear a different perspective. So, if you are looking for a way to improve your productivity, this book might be a great starting point. Even if you feel like you are already super productive, you can still find something useful within the pages of Elite Productivity: 29 Steps to Reaching Your Peak Performance in Life.