Productivity – Page 4

The 6 Foundational Habits for Productivity – No. 3 Nutrition

August 15, 2016 by Camilla

Today we’re going to talk about something that is extremely important when it comes to your level of productivity – namely nutrition. The popular statement that you become what you eat is true, but I would like to say: “Your cognitive ability, brain health and mood is a direct result of what you eat.”

If you missed the first two habits, click HERE.

Your brain use more energy (glucose) than any other part of your body so if you don’t feed your body properly it affects your productivity. However, not all food is created equal and it truly matters what you feed your body not just glucose wise.

The American diet loaded with sugar, saturated fats and artificial crap is not only affecting people’s general health, it’s affecting their brain too!

Your Gut is Your Second Brain

We often talk about having a gut feeling. That is because your gut is connected to your brain! Your gut has about 100 million neurons – you know those things in your brain that are responsible for transmitting information between cells and keeping you alive? We now know that you have neurons in your gut and that they communicate with the brain neurons!

Which is why your gut health impacts your cognitive ability and brain function. If you have a happy and healthy gut with good bacteria, because you feed your body good, wholesome nutrition including probiotics, your brain feels and operates better!

If you have a poor gut health because you feed your body crap it negatively affects your brain health because crap nutrition does not contain the nutrients that create good bacteria. Crap nutrition (aka much of the American diet) creates inflammation in your gut and your body, which allows for toxins and more to leak into your brain.

In other words, the state of your gut bacteria is important not only for your brain health but for the rest of your body. A quick read is this topic is an article from Harvard.

If that doesn’t wake you up studies now link bad gut health to an array of neurological diseases such as ADHD, Autism, MS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s. I highly recommend you read the book Brain Maker by Dr. David Perlmutter.

Take Your Fluids Serious Too!

Hydration plays a big role in staying focused and productive. When you are even the slightest dehydrated it affects your energy level. And what happens when you’re low on energy? You tend to grab something with caffeine or sugar in it! Grab some water instead.

In addition, after sleep your body is dehydrated – think of it, you haven’t had any fluids for about 8 hours. Which means before you start the coffee machine you should hydrate. Start your morning with 16-24 oz. of clean water before you even touch coffee or tea and then make sure you get your fluids in throughout the day. Good fluids, that is!

What are good fluids? Clean water. Kombucha. Freshly squeezed vegetable juice with lots of greens. Herbal tea. Fluids that contain good nutrients and are low in sugar.

Skip the orange or apple juice. Fruit juices are extremely high in sugar. Fruit juices often have as much or close to as much sugar as soda! Just because it’s natural sugar doesn’t mean it’s good for you! Eat your fruit instead.

But I Need My Caffeine

Now, I’m not bashing coffee, I enjoy my cup of java here and there too, but if you rely on caffeine to get you through the day something isn’t right, is it? Your brain and body is fully capable of staying energetic and sharp all day long if you take your sleep, exercise, rest and nutrition serious.

Sadly most people overlook the importance of what they put into their body and instead depend on caffeine, “energy” drinks, sugar and crap to get them through the day! And they wonder why they are always feeling tired and sluggish!!! So they add more caffeine, energy drinks, sugar and crap to get through the day!

If you’re not able to get through the day on a regular basis without caffeine or sugar it’s time to take a look at how you can change that by incorporating better eating habits and “drinking” habits.

I know it takes time to cook and eat healthy. It takes commitment to finding healthy alternatives when you are on the go. But take a look at your day and pay attention to “losing time in the rabbit-hole” activities. Is watching TV or surfing FB more important to you than taking care of your brain and your overall health? The choice is yours!

Action Step: Changing a habit takes time. Start small with changing one thing at a time. It can be to reduce your soda intake one can a week and up your water. It can be to keep everything the same but for now to add a green smoothie juice to your day. It can be that you prepare in advance to have a healthy snack for that afternoon energy boost. It can be to always choose salad instead of a burger. Then change something else until you have transitioned over from a crap diet to a healthy diet. Slow, intentional change leads to success.

*Note, I’m not a physician or dietitian, although I have some extensive training in both areas including neuroscience. Remember, you are responsible for your life and the decisions you make. Which means you may want to seek professional advice before making any changes to your diet.

The 6 Foundational Habits for Productivity – No. 2 Exercise

August 1, 2016 by Camilla

Last time we talked about the importance of sleep and its impact on your productivity level. If you missed that one click here to read habit no. 1 – Sleep.

The second habit to implement is exercise. Physical activity helps you work smarter instead of harder. But how?

Successful People Take Exercise Serious

When billionaire Sir. Richard Branson, Founder of the Virgin Group, was asked what one thing he accredits his mega success to he said exercise. He said he easily gains 4 hours of productive time a day by exercising.

It’s not uncommon that successful people mention exercise as one of their top reasons behind staying on the top of their game, which is why they take it serious.

Science shows that exercise can boost your focus for hours afterwards! That’s why exercise in the morning or in the middle of the day is a great way to boost your focus and when you are focused you get more done in shorter time.

Even a short 10-15 minute exercise break can give you a quick energy and focus jolt anytime during the day. And, it doesn’t have to be traditional “exercise” as in going for a run. Crank up the music and take a dance break! It is both fun and energizing.

Exercise not only helps to boost your focus, but it also helps you to prioritize better, make better decisions and it boosts your memory. Exercise has so many great benefits for your brain and focus, besides your body and health in general.

Heads up though! Since exercise boosts your energy exercising at night can mess with your sleep. I know many that can’t sleep after they exercise. If that’s you, figure out a way to exercise earlier, maybe right after work instead of later in the evening.

But I Don’t Have the Time!

One of the most common excuses people use is that they don’t have time to exercise. That’s a load of crap.

If the President of the United States of America can find time to exercise daily what is your excuse? If Fortune 500 CEO’s and other highly successful people prioritize exercise and find a way to fit it into their schedules, often with non-stop traveling, what is your excuse?

Everything in life is a matter of priority. On average people spend 5 hours a day watching TV, surfing the internet and going down the rabbit hole of social media.

5 hours a day!!! And people say they don’t have time to exercise! Yikes.

If you think you don’t waste much time online I dare you to use a tool like RescueTime on your phone and computer. It will show you how much time you’re wasting on things like social media and other internet sites each week that can easily take you down the “busy but not productive” rabbit hole.

Action Step: Use a tool like RescueTime to track where your time goes every day. You can also track it manually. If you do, you will see that your excuse of not having any time is just that, an excuse.

Is watching TV for an hour or surfing the internet more important to you than your health? Is checking email and social media on your phone first thing in the morning more important that getting your exercise in? What about that lunch break? You can fill it with junk or you can fill it with purpose.

It’s all about what you decide to prioritize. People that prioritize exercise has the same amount of hours in a day as you do.

If you want to be more productive take breaks throughout the day and do a few minutes of yoga, jumping jacks, dance or other, in addition to your regular workout.

The 6 Foundational Habits for Productivity – No. 1 Sleep

July 18, 2016 by Camilla

It’s time to dive into six habits and practices that can up your focus and productivity. As any new habit they require time to implement so that they can override the old automatic habit you do without thinking. Remember – Rome wasn’t built in one day!

In order to go more into detail on each habit and provide tips and advice I will cover each in its own blog post. Today we’re diving into the number one – sleep!

Sleep is More Important Than You Think

Did you know that when you’re sleep-deprived your brain is operating at reduced capacity? That reduced capacity can be significant if you’re skimping on sleep on a regular basis.

Lack of sleep means reduced output in cognitive abilities such as focus, memory retention, decision-making and more. Simply put, sleep-deprivation means your brain takes longer to process things and you’re wasting a huge portion of your cognitive ability to get stuff done.

If you’re sleep-deprived on an on-going basis your brain operates as if you were intoxicated. You’re literally drunk!

Skimping on sleep has major health consequences not only short-term but long-term. It affects your immune system, your weight, your mood and many other things.

When you’re staying up late and ignoring the natural sleep cycle that’s influenced by the daylight, you’re missing what I call the sleep-train. Your melatonin cycle starts kicking in when the sun is setting and then goes to work to tell you to get your rear to bed. If you ignore that by interrupting the cycle with artificial light from electronics and lamps, your melatonin cycle slows down and you miss the sleep-train. Eventually other things kick in to help you get tired but if you pay attention you often start feeling tired right after sunset. Unfortunately, we’re so out of sync because our modern world has caused us to want to stay up until way past dark!

Melatonin, the hormone involved in making you sleepy, is also a precursor to serotonin which is your mood hormone. Get enough sleep and you will feel happier too! We all know we get cranky when we’re tired!

Turn OFF All Electronics

Whatever you feed your brain before you go to bed is what your brain will process.

Your brain is an amazing tool that can help you get answers, provide solutions and come up with ideas. Make sure you choose what you want it to work on. Your friends FB posts, the never-ending stream of negative news or a goal you’re trying to achieve?

If you get your 7-8 hours of sleep but you still wake up feeling tired, take a look at what you feed your brain in the evening. Alcohol can also affect your sleep-cycle and so can caffeine, even if you only had it in the morning.

Turn off your electronics an hour before bedtime. Use that time to read a good book, spend quality time with family or friends, meditate, journal, or do any other activity that feeds your soul with good input.

Key is to do activities that slows your brain down so that you can sleep. A great way to help your brain slow down is to do a “brain dump” before bed. Grab a notepad and write down anything you’re thinking about, tasks you need to do the next day and so forth. Get it out of your head and onto paper.

In addition leave your cellphone and other devices in a different room. The electromagnetic field energy that you get from your phone can actually cause you to have restless sleep! Turn off your internet router too. That electromagnetic field energy can mess up your sleep cycle more than you think.

I know it’s easy to think you don’t have time to get your sleep in. There’s so much to do! But reality is, a sleep-deprived brain has to work harder to help you get stuff done. We’re all about working smarter, not harder so if your brain is operating at a more efficient level, you get stuff done faster, which will free you up to do other things.

Action Step: Start going to bed 15 minutes earlier each night for the next few weeks. Once you have that incorporated as a new habit, add another 15 minutes and so on until you have achieved a better bedtime routine allowing you to consistently get 7-8 hours of sleep. You’ll start noticing the difference which will make you want to go to bed!

If you want to be more productive, more focused, feel better, think more positive – get serious about getting your sleep in!

Stop Putting So Much Crap on Your To-Do List

June 5, 2016 by Camilla

If you use a to-do list you know how it tends to multiply itself. It never seems to be finished and always gets longer.

It’s time to change that. It’s time to make shorter to-do lists.

Crossing things off as done gives most people a sense of accomplishment. Which is a good thing. We want to feel accomplished and it’s not the crossing things off that is the culprit. It’s the false sense of being productive by crossing something off.

Our society has made being productive synonymous with being busy. Working long hours and always doing something is viewed as if you’re productive and getting stuff done. However, being busy doesn’t necessarily mean you’re being productive. Quite often, it’s the opposite. You’re busy but not productive. That leads to the feeling of never having enough time doing the things you want to do.

Are You Working On the Right Things?

To-do lists have become a dumping ground for anything and everything, which is fine. Getting things on paper instead of trying to keep it in your head is a good thing but what seldom happens is any thought of why things are on your to-do list.

Start asking yourself why a task is on your to-do list and what purpose it serves.

Is it an essential task that will make a difference in your life or is it what I call a stocking stuffer? A stocking stuffer is a task that keeps you busy but that is not essential and only keeps you distracted from working on tasks that would move you forward both personally and professionally.

It’s Time For a Short and Focused To-Do List

I teach my clients to do what I call a brain dump meaning instead of using their to-do list as their dumping ground they actually create a specific place for it, dump everything there and then use that as a base to create either a daily or a weekly to-do list that’s super short and focused.

Each item on the to-do list has a purpose, is lined up in order of priority and is scheduled to be done that day or that week.

What Gets Scheduled Gets Done

A huge reason why people don’t get everything done they set out to do, even if they have a short and focused to-do list, is because it’s not on their calendar.

We are masters at underestimating how long a task will take us. Which means, that if we only look at the list of to-do’s it’s easy to think we can easily get it done that day, but it’s first when we block out time on our calendar we get a correct picture of what can be accomplished.

I’m challenging you right now to take you to-do list and try to fit it in on your calendar. Between life, meetings, errands and everything else that needs to be taken care of, my guess is that your to-do list is a bit overambitious.

That’s why putting your to-do’s on your calendar is so effective. It gives you a visual view of your day and what you realistically can accomplish, which forces you to prioritize better.

– How important is that task if it means you won’t have time to go exercise?

– How important is that task if it means crossing it off will make you skip lunch when you promised yourself you’re going to take a daily lunch break?

– How important is that task if it means it will only make you more tired and unfocused because you’re already exhausted?

– How important is that task if it means staying up late and not getting your sleep in?

– How important is that task if it means saying no to quality time with friends and family?

Feeling accomplished by crossing things off is great but if it comes at the cost of missing out on life then how is that an accomplishment?

It takes a shift in mindset to start working in a productive, yet not busy way so that you can create time to enjoy life. It means going against what society has engrained in us. It means that others may think you’re lazy for not running around like a chicken with your head so exhausted you don’t know what’s up or down.

It means that anytime you utter the words “I’m so busy!” you mentally give yourself the grade F. Being busy isn’t a badge of honor. It means you’re not working on the essentials but working on stocking stuffers.

It’s time to change your thinking. It’s time to work on the truly important things so that you can work less. It’s time to be productive but not busy. It’s time to rip up that long to-do list!

5 Simple Habits to Boost Productivity

April 26, 2016 by Camilla

I often get the question on how I seem to have so much time and still get so much done. There’s really no secret to it. It’s a matter of prioritizing what you do. Time management is simply that. A choice in how you spend your time and what you put into each hour.

It’s just like budgeting your money. If you don’t then it’s hard to know where it’s going. Understanding that allows you to make choices. Spend an hour watching TV or spend an hour exercising?

We all get 168 hours in a week or more precisely 1,440 minutes in a day. Time is the only thing we can never get more of. Once gone, it’s gone.

But there are things you can do that will make you feel as if you have enough time and that involves being in control of your day and schedule. I’m going to cover five of them. These habits are easy to do, but they are also easy to ignore. But if you do them, they are impactful.

5 Habits to Add to Your Life

1. NO cell phone or email in the morning.
According to a 2013 study done by IDC Research 80% of people check their cell phone first thing in the morning. A recent Gallup study shows the frequency of checking your cell phone during waking hours range from every few minutes to a few times per hour. Talk about being addicted! And highly distracted.

When you check your phone first thing in the morning, you end up not only wasting precious time you could use for other things but you end up on other people’s agenda. You may think it’s not affecting you but now you’re down the rabbit hole of busy but not productive.

Action Step: Ignore the phone and email! Block out time in the morning for YOU so that you can have a nice, quiet, peaceful morning nurturing you. Decide what kind of input you want to feed your mind. Incorporate things like meditation, journaling, and exercise into your morning routine. If you rather get straight to work, get your most important tasks done first, before going down the rabbit hole of emails. That way you’ve accomplished things that help you move forward before diving into emails. 30 minutes exercising or getting your most important work tasks done vs. 30 minutes checking your phone? The choice is yours!

2. Meditation.
Meditation is no longer just for monks and hippies. The benefits of meditation is real. Not only does it help you reduce stress and anxiety, but meditation can help increase your focus, help you gain clarity and balance.

Action Step: There are both guided and non-guided meditations. If you’re new to meditation I suggest starting with an app like Calm or Headspace. Another great resource is YouTube that have some fantastic guided meditations. Oh, and if all this sounds too granola for you remember Fortune 500 CEO’s, Oprah, pro-athletes and other highly successful people accredit meditation to much of their success.

3. Exercise & Healthy Nutrition
Everything you do today has an effect long-term. I wrote a blog post called Accumulative Effect you can read HERE. Your body is your temple and if you don’t take care of it, then both your energy and productivity goes down the drain. Exercise is an energy-booster. Plus when you feel and look good you feel more confident. And when you feel better about yourself you get more stuff done! Richard Branson who started the Virgin empire accredits exercise to his success. In an interview he said he easily gains four hours of productive time a day by exercising!

Your brain use more energy than any other part of your body and if you don’t fuel it well it can’t operate at an optimal level, which means it takes you longer to get stuff done. Feed your brain good nutrition so it can help you stay focused. Avoid energy drinks, soda, fast food and all the processed crap that makes you into a sluggish blob.

Action Step: Make exercise and eating healthy a priority in your life. But I don’t have time to exercise or cook healthy food you say. Really? How much time a day are you wasting on checking social media, watching TV, or watching silly cat video’s?

4. Live in a proactive mode instead of a reactive mode.
Plan ahead! I know, what a concept! A little bit of planning ahead goes a long way. That 5-10 minutes of planning will not only save you precious time in the morning or during the day but it will also help to preserve precious brain power you can use for more important things and decisions.

Action Step: Decide the night before what to wear the next day. Lay out exercise clothes. Pack lunches. Decide beforehand what to eat for both breakfast and dinner. Take a little time in the evening to make a plan for the next day. Including what you want to accomplish the at work so when you get there you can hit the ground running. Make it a goal to live in proactive mode instead of reactive as much as you can.

5. Get plenty of rest, sleep and incorporate breaks.
You’re a human being, not a robot! Did you know that if you are sleep-deprived you operate on about 40% of your brain capacity? Talk about wasting precious resources. Also, if you are constantly in a sleep-deprived state of mind it’s the same as being intoxicated. You’re literally drunk! All because you’re not getting your 7-8 hours of sleep.

Incorporate plenty of short breaks throughout the workday. Start paying attention to your energy. When you start feeling sluggish, step away from work and take a quick break. You’re not productive and only wasting time if you are trying to “push through.”

Action Step: Make sleep a priority. Shut off electronics an hour before going to bed. Meditate if needed to slow down your brain to relax. During the day, take breaks to recharge. Go for a walk. Take a power nap. Meditate. Step away from work and let your brain recharge. Eat a healthy snack. Do something different to break up the monotony. When you’re tired your brain goes into negative thinking mode and what you’re trying to accomplish will just feel harder.

Okay, there you have it! 5 simple ways to gain more time, be more productive, control your day and feel more empowered. If you incorporate those you are going to see some great changes.

The secret? You got to do them and stick with it! If you want to do more, be more and live more, you have to take the time to incorporate success habits into your life. Rome wasn’t built in one day so if you fall off the wagon, get back on it. Small changes on a consistent basis lead to great leaps.

Which habit are you going to incorporate immediately today?