Category: Being Productive

When we exercise our body to fatigue, it takes less to get back to that point of fatigue if we do another set of the same exercise within a close enough timespan.

And even after we’re done with our workout, it can take anywhere between 24 – 72 hours before our body is fully recovered… which means we’re in a prolonged state of it requiring less to get us back to that point of fatigue.

This is how it is for mental fatigue as well.

If we push our minds to a point of complete mental fatigue, it’ll require less to get back to that point for at least a day thereafter. And the closer in proximity we are to that initial point of complete fatigue, the easier it’ll be to become re-fatigued.

The reason this is important to understand is because in life… we’re constantly getting hit with mentally fatiguing tasks, challenges, and experiences.

And if we’re not mindful of where we are on this Fatigue Threshold Spectrum… then we might not act in alignment with what our mind needs to perform optimally and most efficiently.

Just like the muscle group that we fatigued needs 24 – 72 hours of rest to fully recover… so, too, do the mental muscles we flexed to similar points. And if we don’t follow this protocol, then we’ll just hit fatigue quicker, using muscles that aren’t fully recovered, and only prolong our full recovery out further.

So either a) get in the habit of stopping at your 70% fatigue level so you can recover quicker or b) find ways you can give yourself more time to get back towards 0 after pushing yourself to 100%.

The more tired I am, the more easily I’m sucked into distraction.

The more easily I’m sucked into distraction, the more tired I get.

At some point, the cycle needs to be broken.

The cycle can be broken by getting more sleep (which makes it easier to avoid/resist distraction and then again get more sleep) or by further removing distraction (which makes it easier to get more sleep and then again further remove more distraction).

The problem is that most people have a really hard time making this up front investment.

They get to the end of their day and don’t want to go to bed early (because they just want to ‘relax and unwind’) so they allow for unnecessary and excessive distraction.

Or while they’re staring at the priority workload they have to complete, they succumb to the distractions instead because it’s easier and more pleasant to get a couple quick dopamine hits than trying to complete a daunting work load.

But once you make that initial upfront investment and deliberately make choices that lead to more sleep or allow you to focus on the priority tasks over the cheap dopamine hits… and the cycle is actually broken… what begins anew is a fresh cycle… an upward spiring cycle… one where more sleep leads to more willpower over distraction and/or less distraction leads to less struggle with sleep.

And THAT is where the real pleasure in life is found.

Inner Work Prompt: How can you break the tired and distracted cycle in your life?

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P.s. ICYMI you can read the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week here.

Almost everything is made better when we slow down.

The quality of our work is made better when we slow down.

The comprehension of any learning material is better when we slow down.

The connection made with another person is stronger when we slow down.

The understanding of our inner world becomes more apparent when we slow down.

The presence we might feel when traveling is more pronounced when we slow down.

Which begs the question… why are we rushing all of time?

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P.s. ICYMI you can read the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week here.

One of the most useful times of my day… is the time I spend sitting at my computer… staring at its blank screen… as I allow my mind to replay and settle from the recent happenings… and patiently wait…

Feeling bored to tears and drawn to distraction…

Until, slowly, slowly…

I feel the noise… quiet… and ideas start to shine… and imagination start to run… and creative connections start to form… and what’s important resurface… and the urge to do inner work and create gifts and share learnings and make meaningful contributions and take proactive initiatives increase in size…

One of the most useful times of my day… is when I’m not doing anything useful per se—in the sense of getting tasks done and checking things off my urgent to-do lists…

…It’s when I’m unobtrusively being and introspectively observing.

Two ways to better utilize the limited amount of energy you get each day:

1. Daisy chain tasks—physics says it’s easier to keep a body in motion than it is to start a stopped body… So, daisy chain tasks one to the next to the next so that you can keep momentum on your side and reduce the energy suck that comes from having to start back up after coming to a full stop.

2. That said, plug yourself back in strategically—we humans don’t recharge very well while our bodies are in motion. That happens best when we come to a full stop… like our phones when we plug them back into the wall. Sure, there’s coffee and other stimulants that we can take on the go, but nothing beats rest. Too many rest breaks, however, can mess with idea #1… and actually make rest a counterproductive effort to our day.

So the art, then, comes from figuring out how to optimize your tasks so that you’re daisy chaining everything together that can be daisy chained while mindfully making time for full stop rests.

…And not letting full stops turn into a counter productive daisy chain of full stopped tasks that last way longer than they’re supposed to (i.e. taking a power nap, which leads to social media scrolling, which leads to TV viewing, etc).

Ask yourself: where are the full stops in my day? Can I daisy chain tasks in their place instead? Can I combine my full stops into one strategic full stop that’s placed at my most needed time? And how can I make it easy to start back up after that full stop?

It’s one thing to use your willpower to get a task done. It’s another thing to use your willpower to get the same task done at the most aligned time.

It’s one thing to plan a night out with friends. It’s another thing to plan a night out with friends who are completely aligned with your energy going into that night out.

It’s one thing to go to work and do your job. It’s another thing to fight for alignment with the place you work and the job you’re doing and the people you’re with.

Alignment is what allows you to get the same—if not more—done with less effort and/or in less time.

Alignment is what unlocks a feeling of fulfillment, a sense of purpose, and/or a level of vibrancy/joy from something that otherwise might feel like an obligation, task, or chore.

Alignment is the good fight worth fighting because being mis-aligned is the completely counterproductive act of fighting against yourself.

Enough of that, dear reader.

It’s time to point your time, energy, and effort towards bigger and better things… more efficient and productive things… more meaningful and memorable things…

…And a great place to start is with what you’re going to do after you finish reading this short article.

Think about how much time you can spend staring unflinchingly at a screen that’s displaying an algorithmic refined series of “interesting” media.

Contrast this with how hard it is for you to concentrate for even a few minutes on a project you don’t give two cares about and it’d appear as though you were inspecting two completely different concentrations from two completely different people.

…Looking purely at their faces without any knowledge of which task they were engaged in and you’d say one had ADHD and the other was some kind of focus machine.

Which illustrates an important point to understand about us humans.

Concentration isn’t so much a measure of a person’s skill or ability to concentrate… it’s a measure of how aligned they are with something that’s interesting to them.

Because while, yes, algorithms are excellent at endlessly displaying an onslaught of personalized interests designed specifically to maintain our attention… there’s another tool that’s even more powerful.

One that’s backed by the most complex object in the known Universe.

Can you guess what it is?

…The human imagination backed by the human brain.

Within which there are approximately 1 million billion synapses (the links between nerve cells). Hard to grasp, I know. But if you were to count these synapses one per second, it would take about 32 million years to complete.

This is what’s between your ears right now. And all it takes to unleash the unfathomable power of this gift are the correct keys that are the interests of your life. Discover these and the superficial value that most algorithms produce will quickly become obsolete.

…Discover these and you’ll never have a concentration problem again.