How To Deal With Ebbs and Flows in Your Productivity

In the previous article, we looked at brain training. Does it work, and how would we know if it did work?

In this article, we are going to look at dealing with ebbs and flows in your productivity.

I will also share my personal bedtime routine in preparation for the next day.

How do you get the most out of your brain?

For many people, the obvious answer seems to be that they should find ways to hack it, to bend it to their will and to make sure that it operates as they wish at all times. Not feeling productive?

Then the answer, surely, is to find ways to become more productive and focused, to drive distracting thoughts out of your head (or people out of your workspace), so you can focus on what you’re doing.

There are many videos on YouTube™ that discuss how to be more productive, as well as habits that might hinder your productivity.

I share one of those later on in this article. You might wish to skip the rest of this article and view it.

Taking note of biorhythms

What if you chose to let your mental state, or, indeed, your body’s internal clock/biorhythms, dictate your activities…

…so that when you felt focused you worked on tasks that required focus?

And when you felt relaxed, you could spend time being creative.

Are you a morning person?

A day person?

Or a night person?

At what time of the day are you most productive?

What happens during ebbs and flows?

You could use cognitive enhancers and other nootropics, CBT and other psychonautic techniques to try and hack your brain and to force yourself to become more alert, more focused or more awake.

Perhaps this is not the best strategy for you. It might even be counterproductive in some cases.

Did you know that you actually already alternate between states of high focus and relaxation?

In fact, you can fairly accurately describe your mental state at any point as being somewhere on a single spectrum.

At one end of the spectrum is the highly alert aroused state of acute stress (fight or flight, or beta) and at the other end of the spectrum is the far more relaxed and calm state of relaxation (rest and digest, alpha, theta, or delta).

We spend most of the time somewhere in-between (a state called homeostasis) but throughout the day we will shift slightly toward each end of the spectrum.

When you wake up in the morning for instance, you are initially in an alpha state before you move into in a fight or flight state.

A state of arousal that is caused by low blood sugar – the result of effectively fasting through the night by not eating.

This low blood sugar puts the body in a mild state of stress and encourages food-seeking behavior. This is further enhanced by morning light, which encourages the production of cortisol to further increase arousal.

When you later eat, this causes a surge of sugar to enter the blood.

The body absorbs this sugar and leaves behind a substance called tryptophan. Tryptophan is a building block of the ‘feel good hormone’ serotonin.

And serotonin, in turn, gets broken down to create melatonin – the sleep hormone. That’s why we feel more tired and less effective after eating.

What’s also interesting is that these states of mental arousal and relative relaxation also correlate with the physical, hormonal states of ‘catabolism’ and ‘anabolism’.

When we are excited, our body burns energy stored as fat to use as energy (catabolism).

And when we are relaxed, it takes the opportunity to rebuild tissue and heal wounds.

Exercise increases arousal yet it also triggers a subsequent anabolic (rest and digest) state.

Of course, fear puts us into an extreme state of fight or flight/arousal.

Adenosine builds up throughout the day, slowing down our thoughts and edging us toward neural inhibition and the release of Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid (GABA, another inhibitory neurotransmitter).

What to do with this information

So why is this relevant?

The answer is simple: if you want to get the best from your brain, you could do so by working out your natural ebbs and flows and the times you work best.

Instead of trying to force your brain into arousal, why not take note of when you are most alert and then get to work?

A more structured approach

Brian Tracy offers 10 productivity tips to help you reach your goals.

One of these tips includes writing down your “to-do” list. I find this one useful particularly when I make my plans for the next day before going to bed, so I am not stressing over it and losing sleep.

Included in my bedtime routine are

• making out my to-do list,
• daily declarations and autosuggestions,
• off to bed,
• then “going to level” using the Silva Method in order to practice the Alarm Clock Technique then Sleep Control.

In that order.

If I do not need to use the Sleep Control or the Alarm Clock techniques, I do a simple countdown after “going to level” and then drift off to sleep.

By the way, when you have completed a task, don’t just cross it off your list. Pat yourself on the back.

To a better, wiser, stronger – YOU.

In the next article, we will look at flow states and how to achieve them.

Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay