This is a personal curated list where I aggregate different methods, techniques, concepts and lists that, throughout the years, I have experimented with and have contributed to making me more productive and achieve a healthier lifestyle.

Disclaimer: In order to meet different cultural and legal expectations, I ask readers to consult a licensed Medical Professional or an equivalent authority before considering or adopting any health, nutritional or substantial changes to your lifestyle.

Please act, at your own risk if you choose to explore any of these tips and techniques further.

I’m fairly convinced that people nowadays live and work far below their potential.

The gains in productivity we can achieve by understanding our bodies and ourselves, and experimenting with small increments, would allow us to exceed our previous capabilities - both in life and at work.

While the digital age has increased the number of distractions, it is not the bottleneck itself, but rather it has simply made the bottleneck clearer. The proper knowledge, habits, and triggers for change are the decisive factors in productivity and health.

If we can increase our daily output, our successes will grow over the years.

If we can incrementally increase it every year, then we’d be looking at even more exponential gains.

Throughout the years I tried different techniques and models - some with more success than others. I’ve compiled my lessons into this list.

Guiding Principles

  • You and your mind are key factors for the majority of the tips and tricks you will find here.
  • The tips and techniques on this list aim to allow you to easily achieve what I consider a “stable-focused” state. This is a state of mind and body where you can work with focus and effectively manage the stress that comes from the process. This state is characterised by clarity and increased analysis, creativity, recall and stimulus processing ability.
  • I encourage you to adopt the empirical research method when experimenting with these tips. Try to focus on studying the impact of one variable at a time. This allows you to evaluate the impact on your specific lifestyle and needs.
  • We are a biodiverse and neurodiverse species. Published studies and generalizations are based on a sample of individuals and might not apply specifically to you.
  • Adapt and customize at your own discretion.

Health

  • Being a healthy person and cultivating healthy habits is the most important aspect of productivity. The body and mind are one - an unhealthy body will cause stress and take resources away from your mental work.
  • Many of our body systems, like the nervous system, are tuned to daily cycles. For example, the circadian rhythm, the melatonin-cortisol pathway that regulates sleep and alertness.
  • Brain fog, lack of energy, anxiety, and physical pain, unfortunately, plague many individuals, hindering productivity. These issues often stem from an unbalanced body, such as an inadequate diet, unhealthy habits, poor posture, lack of physical activity.
  • Blood and energy need to flow. Going for a 15-30-minute continuous walk every day, ideally before you start your day, will ensure that you get the circulation going.
  • Diet: a part of the population reacts to certain foods; however, symptoms might be hidden in the form of brain fog, mood swings, depression, and anxiety (1) (2). It is thought that for most of our history, people’s diet was stable, but in today’s world, you have access to a wide variety of foods, from different sources and different levels of processing. Even though they might be digestible, they might not be optimal or beneficial for the body long term. You can learn more about your body with food allergen tests, and by paying attention to how your body reacts after ingesting certain foods.
  • Sleep: Getting enough sleep is crucial for a healthy day and life. Sleep disruptions have been linked to various chronic diseases (3).

General Day/Work tips

  • Keep your desk/work environment free of distractions, clutter. You should even leave room and space available. This assures you have leeway to manoeuvre around.
  • Keep your cellphone in a pocket or hidden away from your senses, in silent mode, if you don’t need it during working sessions. Seeing your cellphone or receiving a notification might make you check it, out of habit.
  • The position of the room where you sit in an office might make you take in more distractions. Men, for instance, tend to be significantly more alert to changes in persons in the room or environment - it’s a biological adaptation to screening for threats.
  • Before work, clear desk/room of distractions, clutter. The environment will affect you in subtle ways.
  • Routine: Wake up early - before the noise. Allow the body to ease into the day, and not burst like a flash. The sun rises slowly, not in a thunder.
  • Identify which times of the day you are more productive for different types of tasks.
  • Have redundancies at hand for critical systems that affect your work (eg, have a spare computer, internet connection hotspot, mouse/keyboard).

Procrastination & Staying Focused

  • Procrastination starts as a feeling of pain, but it has been shown that it goes away after you start working. While it’s not the most actionable advice, starting anyway will help reduce the pain associated with procrastination.
  • Break down difficult, complex tasks into small, approachable, and actionable chunks.
  • Keep a sheet of paper on hand and write down any distractions. These can be ideas for other projects or things that you remember.
  • If “it’s not working”, go out for a short walk. Walking encourages the diffuse mode of the brain (4) to take over. This allows the focused system of the brain to relax and recover.

Specific Organisation and Analysis Tips:

  • Mind maps can help you deconstruct phenomena, problems, and scenarios and make it easier for the mind to grasp more complex subjects or detect nuances. By offloading the “mind map” from your brain to paper, you get more energy to analyse it.
  • Managing calendar, time and priorities: Time-blocking
  • The Pomodoro technique encourages short, focused sprints of time. I often set “mini-tomorrows” but just looking at the clock eg. over the next 30 minutes, I will accomplish this.

Software Support

  • Some tools can automate, simplify, or even replace tasks that you do.
  • For browser-based work, there are multiple Chrome Extensions that can make the work you do easier and faster.
    • Briskine, for instance, allows one to load templates with just the push of a keystroke. This reduces the energy that I put into writing routine messages - as well as time.
  • One should always keep an eye on the market for new tools that can improve efficiency.
  • Caution: Regular use of these tools might reduce your ability to perform tasks manually.

Electronic habits

  • Social media is designed to be adicting. Its algorithms and UX optimize engagement with the platform. You can benefit by limiting use time. Some apps restrict and keep track of your use.
  • If you spend too much time on social media, switching your cellphone’s screen to grayscale will help reduce the attractiveness of social media.
  • Use blue-light filters in electronic devices at night. This will reduce eye fatigue and improve your circadian rhythm. Blue light causes you to be more alert.

Sound

  • In case you work around loud environments, it’s good to keep a pair of headphones around. Sound can act as a sound barrier.
  • Listening to music has been shown to increase the productivity of software developers (2)
  • Some classic video game songs are intentionally designed to make you more focused.
  • My work is intellectual and creativity-based. Lyrics tend to distract me.

On Supplements, Substances

  • Caffeine and sugar are substances whose consequences and effects on the body can resemble those effects more associated with narcotics and other substances, like dependence, and dysregulation of multiple body systems. People often refrain from analysing their usages based on the the fact that they are “socially acceptable”.
  • People often use substances to compensate for metabolism shortcomings or needs in other areas: energy, being able to relax, appreciate, and comfort.
  • Cravings for certain substances might indicate a need for micronutrients, and not the substance itself.
  • Coffee speeds up your metabolism, which means it makes you consume energy faster. You might be trading energy that was reserved for other times of the day in a short burst. (I haven’t drunk a coffee in 7 years and have no need for it). It also reduces gut microbiome, reducing your digestive system balance.
  • Sugars are present in most processed foods to enhance flavour. Seek to avoid processed foods, and replace them with whole, minimally processed, organic foods.
  • If you are a regular consumer of these “culturally accepted” substances, withdrawals can be as difficult, painful and dangerous so approach these issues with due consideration and planning.
  • Some pills and supplements might contain allergens (eg. lactose is frequently used as part of pills).

Other interesting techniques/concepts

  • Cold showers/plunge: The reaction to sudden cold increases body metabolism. It essentially acts as a controlled shock to the body, waking it up to an alert state. Caution, there are dangers associated with it.
  • Sauna: Regular use of a sauna has numerous benefits for the body and health. It essentially mimics cardiovascular exercise by putting similar stress on the body (5).
  • Intermittent Fasting: This is a unique eating pattern that involves cycling between periods of eating and fasting. It is known to have several health benefits related to weight loss and metabolic health (6).
  • Wim Hof Method: This is a combination of meditation, breathing exercises, and exposure to cold that can help you regulate your stress levels (7).
  • Neuro-Linguistic Programming: It is an approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy which asserts that there is a connection between the mind’s processes, language, and behaviours learned through experience.

Wilder and Critical Thoughts

  • Operating at 100% capacity continuously seems possible, but is it desirable?
    • It may be detrimental to long-term success. Unpredictabilities can and will happen, demanding more resources from you. Energy will increase to maintain your productivity and diminish your capacity to provide an adequate response to sudden issues that arise.
    • This is what stressed people look like: they are overcompensating to maintain the same level of productivity. They do so by reducing the energy one can put into analysing and responding to unexpected situations - leading to poor decision-making.
    • If you do resistance training, you will see a physical representation of this. While you try to maintain a static position in the face of gravity, you will always subtly lose the position after being in it for too long. Naturally, our body and mind need some form of rest or reduced output.