Just Knowing These 8 Facts Will Make You Way More Productive ********************************************* Whether trying to conquer Mount Everest or just pick up your laundry, learning these quick facts will make it easier to be super productive -- or at least understand why youre not. And if youre the type of person who is likely procrastinate instead of reading the rest of this article, then you should at least read the first point. 1. Simply starting a task will make it much easier to finish. According to the Zeigarnik Effect, your brain will send signals that effectively nag your conscious mind when youve started, but not finished, an objective. Bluma Zeigarnik was a Soviet psychologist who first developed the theory that humans are naturally driven to finish what theyve started, due to a dissonance they feel when tasks are begun and then left incomplete. In 1992, a pair of psychologists proved this theory in a study on task interruption. They saw that the feeling of uneasiness unleashed in the brain could only be quelled by completing the started task. In other words, although the process might be a bit uncomfortable, our brains are naturally wired to root us along to the end. 2. Multitasking is actually impossible and you should probably stop trying to do it. Humans dont really multitask, concluded Eyal Ophir, the primary researcher on a groundbreaking Stanford Multitasking study released back in 2009. True multitasking -- that is, doing more than one thing simultaneously -- is a myth, as our brains are actually switching between tasks extremely quickly. Although some people seem to have become decently good at this bouncing around of focus, Ophir explains that these people are often working toward a different goal of juggling focus to make sure they dont miss anything. Where you might say traditionally we value the ability to focus through distractions, they are willing to sacrifice focus in order to make sure they dont miss an unexpected, but rewarding, surprise, Ophir said. So if you want to get a specific task done quickly, you should stop trying to multi-task and keep your brain tuned on the most important work at hand. 3. Your willpower is a finite resource that can be used up more quickly than you realize. Ego depletion, a specific kind of mental fatigue identified by psychologist Roy Baumeister, refers to our minds inability to simply will ourselves through an endless number of disciplined tasks. In what must have been pretty a delicious experiment, Baumeister instructed subjects to either eat or resist eating freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies before completing rigorous mental tasks. The ones who were forced to resist had used up so much willpower by not eating the cookies, that they performed significantly more poorly on the tests. So, if youre trying to push yourself through task after task, just remember that youll likely become less and less productive as you keep going on. 4. Small mindless tasks, like checking Facebook, can trick your brain into thinking its accomplished something worthwhile. goo.gl/nJT3jT
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 09:26:08 +0000
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