Here are a few biohacks that will shoot your productivity out of the charts:
Let’s start at the beginning. In order to get better, your brain has to be ready for it. It has to be cleaned up, fresh and ready to accept new information. How to do that – any guesses? Right, your sleep works as a tool for your brain to organize and clean your thoughts. Think of it as if you’re clearing catches out of your phone – you didn’t even know you had all this data, but it’s slowing you down.
REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement Sleep) is where all this magic happens. Here, you get to experience psychological, mental and emotional clan up.
Challenge yourself to go to bed at the same time every day and switch off your devices one hour before you do, to avoid the blue light. Try that for one week, you won’t want to stop after that anyway, that’s how good you’ll feel.
Once your brain is ready, you are having a good amount of quality sleep; you are ready to recruit and re-assign your brain cells towards your productivity. All the cells in your brain that work on your goals need to be paid. And the brain currency is called ATP. If you don’t have enough of that in your bank, you get sleepy, your brain is foggy, you are just not at your best. And you have to look for the thief stealing your energy from where you need it. Luckily, we know who the thief is. And we are after him! INFLAMMATION. Doesn’t sound familiar? Ok – how about this – sugar. Sugar causes inflammation in your body, and if you have to pay the cells fighting inflammation, you don’t have enough to pay the cells that focus on your goals.
For one week, remove all added sugar. And look for all the other names sugar comes in. Look for things like dextrose, maltodextrin, xanthan gum and others.
So now your brain knows how to get ready, your body has enough currency to pay your brain cells, it’s time to talk about how to effectively use that energy and multiply the outcome. And it’s as easy as body position. Did you have any idea that sitting only allows your lungs to open to 70% of what it would be while standing? Imagine what you can do with all the energy you can gain here, how much more brain cells can get oxygenated if you simply stand up! And not only does it expand your lungs, it also straightens your spinal cord; the main avenue of your body’s electricity. The spinal cord is incredibly precious, and when it’s restricted, your body is in a constate state of alert. Once you free it by standing up, your brain will give more focus to for example your heartbeat and other features of your body that help you focus.
Try to work while standing a few time a day. 20 minutes is enough. If you don’t have a standing desk, get creative! Put your laptop on a box on your table or work on a window shelf. You may look funny but you’ll be so proud to look like that once the results come!