The Unexpected Key to Boosting Your Productivity | The Way We Work, a TED series

Ever wished you could stop procrastinating and just be as efficient as a machine? Since you’re a human, that’s not going to happen — but that’s OK, says entrepreneur Dan Shipper. Here’s how you can use awareness, observation and experimentation to clear your own way to getting more done.

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5 Comments

  1. What works best for me are these three steps:

    1. Stop overthinking: Often, we don’t realize it, but we find ourselves overthinking without even meaning to. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in itself—many of my best ideas have come to me while overthinking—but if we want to be more productive, we need to learn to control it because thoughts can generate different emotions, and emotions distract us. What I do is become aware of it and look at my subconscious, saying, “Stop, you’re overthinking.” This immediately freezes it and allows me to continue with what I need to do.
    2. Gamify your goals: I have recently discovered that what keeps me motivated to continue with my goals is seeing the progress of my efforts. To do this, I currently use Notion, which allows me to set specific goals such as improving my leg strength, arm strength, or piano skills. So every time I train or practice the piano, I can mark my daily progress with a button and see how the progress bar increases to reach my goal. This is because we often get discouraged when we don’t see immediate results, and our minds tend to be quite short-sighted. This way, I keep my mind distracted by thinking that every day I train, I am making progress because I am getting closer to my specific goal without comparing myself to others, because my overall goal is simply to be better than yesterday.
    3. Environment: The environment is extremely important. You should try to surround yourself with people who have similar goals in life or at least share your ambition to be better. That way, your brain adapts to the environment and stops looking for excuses to procrastinate. It also motivates you to be better. As for your physical environment, it is also very important to keep your room clean and tidy (personally, this is the most difficult thing for me), but only in this way will you have fewer distractions. You should try to make your immediate environment as optimal as possible to avoid these distractions and start the day on the right foot.

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