How I Rewired My Brain to Become a Highly Productive Person: 4 Tiny Habits

Use these to transform your working day

You’re busy but are you productive?

I had to ask myself this when I noticed that my to-do lists were often spilling over into the next day.

Working 9–5 and also running a business, I had to explore new ways to work more efficiently.

I found four habits that revolutionised the way I worked.

Become a part of the 5 am club

Waking up at 5 am sounds like the most absurd thing in the world to some.

For most, the alarm will go off at the last possible moment before risking being late for work.

Rushed mornings commonly cause a spike in cortisol levels that initiates a negative chain reaction that plays out during the rest of the day.

Elevated cortisol levels can wreak havoc on the mind as they heighten anxiety levels and interfere with memory.

At its peak, you then risk entering the unfavourable side of the Yerkes-Dodson curve that affects performance.

Waking up before you need to, gives you time to fuel your mind, body and spirit before starting your day without being affected by typical distractions.

This enables you to be in a cognitive surplus rather than a deficit.

Robin Sharma’s book details the benefits of waking up at 5 am and following his 20/20/20 rule for the first hour of your day.

The rule encourages this:

• 20 minutes exercising
• 20 minutes reflecting
• 20 minutes learning

When I first committed to this habit I chose yoga, journaling and reading.

Once I’d adapted to the shock of the early start, I noticed I was feeling remarkably less overwhelmed during my working day, which allowed me to concentrate for longer.

Several successful leaders have adopted this habit and noted a positive change in their energy levels, focus and morale.

Many have altered the rules to suit their lifestyles regarding the timing of the alarm and the length of the activities.

This habit alone won’t transform you but stacked with others, you will have created a solid morning routine and optimised your mind for a day of productivity.

Limit screen time

To protect your cognitive bandwidth you need to be selective and what consumes your attention.

This will naturally be interrupted by daily responsibilities, work, relationships, and most importantly our connection to the online world.

- Measure your screen time

The average person checks their phone 96 times a day.

If you were to check how many hours a day you spend scrolling social media, what figure would you see?

Mine used to be a staggering 9 hours a day.

Any time I felt overwhelmed with my workload I would scroll on TikTok as a measly attempt at relieving stress.

3 minutes of mindless scrolling would quickly turn into 3 hours.

I then had a list of uncompleted tasks and then the cycle would start again.

It can feel like a rollercoaster that you can’t get off of.

It’s not always realistic to turn your phone on aeroplane mode or place it outside of the room you’re working in so I tried a few alternative methods.

- Switch to grayscale

The apps we use are specifically designed to capture our attention and keep us wanting more.

Therefore the more we scroll, the more happy hormones (like dopamine) are released.

Switching to grayscale will instead change your phone from an explosion of colour to a wall of black, white and grey.

It will be harder to find the apps you want, making the experience much less appealing.

This is how to do it on an iPhone:

Open settings → Accessibility → Display and Text Size → Turn Colour Filters On → Click Grayscale

By doing this, you could reclaim up to 50 minutes of your time per day.

- Turn off notifications

Many smartphones encompass a feature that allows you to set limits as to when you will receive notifications.

Silencing unimportant messages outside of set hours gives you a block of distraction-free time to get on with what you need to do.

I found this particularly helpful when first getting up in the morning and decompressing before bed.

Being switched ‘on’ all the time, sends your brain into overdrive, thus reducing your attention to focus on important tasks.

Optimise your time

- The pomodoro technique

Francesco Cirillo created the technique in the 1980s as an attempt to organise his study schedule.

He experimented with varying work schedules and found that a 25-minute work interval with a 5-minute break was the optimal time for staying focused on a task.

After 4 cycles, it’s recommended you take a longer break of 15–30 minutes.

I currently use this technique to write my articles on Medium.

As a new writer, it’s easy to fall into the trap of writing and collating ideas for hours on end with no real progress made.

Working for shorter periods enables me to write more in less time.

The higher sense of accomplishment at the end of the day motivates me to produce more content.

You could apply this method to a task you don’t particularly enjoy doing.

The countdown can act as an incentive to stay engaged while you observe the time remaining.

- Time blocking

The Pomodoro Technique is simply one example of time blocking and there are many other ways to do this.

Traditional time blocking: Splitting your day into time blocks and allocating each one to a particular task. The aim is to have a fixed time slot for each thing on your to-do list.

Energy management time blocking: organising your day based on your energy levels. If you generally feel more energised in the mornings, you would plan to high priority tasks then. If you’re a night owl, you may swap this around.

Time theming: Labelling tasks with themes and assigning them to different parts of the day i.e. creative work in the morning, meetings in the afternoon, and admin work in the evening.

Get Outside

Several studies have been published showing a link between levels of exposure to natural elements and increased productivity.

They highlight that even artificial representations of nature such as synthetic flowers, nature sounds and visual imagery can produce very similar results.

The attention restoration theory proposes that nature has a restorative effect on us.

Our attention is constantly being tapped into therefore we must create space to allow our minds to recharge.

It suggests that looking at nature doesn’t require any focus from us, and subsequently becomes a simple and effective way to improve our attention and performance levels.

Here’s how you can incorporate nature into your working day:

• Go for a 20-minute walk
• Play nature sounds over a speaker
• Fill your workspace with plants
• Work close to a window (preferably where you can see greenery)
• Change your screen saver on your devices to a natural landscape

Early morning walks have worked best for me as a form of ‘reset’, however where not possible I’ve also been known to sit on my windowsill with the window open as a last resort.

Whatever resource you have, use it!