How to be High Efficiency? (Part 2)

3. Is It Helpful to Switch Work Scenarios Frequently?

Think about a simple question first: Many people's desks are messy, is it better to tidy up the desk often or not at all?

Source: Freepik

The answer may come as a surprise: it's better not to tidy up your desk.

Why? Because the brain has a characteristic: it likes to connect two things and build up a quick response. Therefore, when you work on a messy desk for a long time, the brain will associate the state of the desk with the work state, making it easier for you to process your work. However, the association will be broken once you tidy up the desk. As a result, you need to spend more time getting into the work state. It means that: If you can keep your desk tidy from the beginning, just keep it; but if your desk is messy all the time, there is no need to tidy it up, better to keep its natural state.

This principle is apply to many cases. For example, Why do many people feel not full of energy at home when they work remotely or freelance? Here's why: your brain has already associated your home with "rest", which leads to a conflict between your resting state and your working state. So it's important to make a distinction if you have a habit to study or work at home. It is better to divide your home into several functional areas and focus on one thing in one functional area. For example, you are used to watching movies on the sofa, then don't read or work on the sofa because it's easy to get distracted. Instead, find another functional area -- even if it’s just a chair and a table -- be sure to separate it from other daily activities. If you are unable to divide your home into several functional areas, an effective solution is to go out and work in a café. Making the café be your work scenario will allow you to be more focused on the work.

Same way, we can build up some daily routines to help us trigger the working state quickly. For example, I would take a rest after lunch, and then have a cup of tea before I start to work. As time goes by, "have a cup of tea" will be a trigger for me to start working. My brain will know that it's time to get to work once I drank tea, which is convenient for me to get into work state.

So, you can create a connection between any simple behavior and your work to help yourself to get into a working state quickly. But be noted that DO NOT associate the behavior with other states (eg: watch movies after having a cup of tea), otherwise, it won't work.

In a summary, the third principle of high efficiency is :

Associating the working state with a fixed scenario and behavior helps us to get into work quickly.

Source: Freepik

4. Is It Helpful to Put Important Work in the Morning?

Many articles and courses may tell you that the morning is the time of the day when you are most focused and efficient, so be sure to take advantage of the morning to do the important work first.

Does it apply to anyone? No, not really.

The so-called "people are most focused and efficient in the morning" not due to any magical power of morning, but because our brain is constantly running, thinking, working, learning since we wake up every day, all these activities have to consume energy, and in consequence, a lot of metabolic products are accumulated, which is called adenosine. The accumulation of adenosine will inhibit the secretion of dopamine and serotonin, making us feel sleepy and tired. As a result, many people believe that they are more productive in the morning. The reason is the brain is at its healthiest when adenosine is cleared out in the morning.

But it doesn't mean that the adenosine can't be removed in the whole day. Actually, we are able to remove adenosine by eating, resting, changing focus, and clearing the distracting thoughts to further reassemble them into ATP for the brain.

Morning-type people generally accumulate a large amount of adenosine in the afternoon and evening because they go to bed early and get up early, thus their state is more depressed than in the morning. However, the nocturnal people are in the opposite direction. On the one hand, nocturnal people tend to work shorter hours during the day, so it is easier for adenosine to reach a dynamic balance and less likely to get accumulated; on the other hand, nocturnal people tend to think more diffusely and freely at night, which makes it easier for the brain to get excited.

Source: Freepik

Of course, you need to find out when you have the best energy state of a day by yourself. Why not try to keep a diary every day? Write down what you are doing at a specific time and record your feelings. In the long run, if there is a certain time when your mind is particularly active, full of energy, and you can always get things done quickly, it is likely to be your "peak time." Same way, you can find your "trough time" and "normal time". Next, it is worthwhile to schedule your tasks according to the rhythm:

• Schedule the most trivial, the least important, the less energy-draining (usually the organizing tasks or operational tasks), and those that can get feedback quickly in the "trough time"
• Schedule the daily business, communication, collaboration, and massage response in the "normal time"
• Schedule the most important tasks including those that are closely related to your performance goals, those that require highlights and achievements, and those need to devote energy to learning in the "peak time" that requires highlights.

We can get the fourth principle of high efficiency :

With reference to your own habits and nature of work, find 3 stable "rhythms" in your day and schedule your work according to the rhythms.

5. To Sum It Up

Finally, I would like to raise a question: What's the purpose of pursuing high efficiency? Is it doing more things? It seems that we can never finish all the things.

The pursuit of high efficiency is to save more time to focus on our health, families, dreams, and happiness. Most of the time, what we lack is not high efficiency, but abandonment. Abandon the things that don't matter, the things that we don't really want to do, and the things need not to be done without serious consequences. Only in this way can we have more space to allow us to have a conversation with our inner self.

Source: Freepik

What we are looking for is not "high efficiency" but "slow" most of the time. Slowing down allows us to really pay attention to our minds, emotions and bodies, to savor life and experience it, instead of living ourselves as a screw.

This is the real meaning of "efficiency", and it's also the real goal of being "efficient".

The road of life is long and difficult. We run faster at some stages is not for the purpose of getting to the destination earlier but of having enough time to slow down to enjoy the scenery along the road with someone we really care.

After all, we can take nothing into our graves. Only health, dreams, memories and love will stay with us all the time.

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Click here to learn more about 【How to be High Efficiency? (Part 1)】