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work with your thoughts. the first thing you have to save from procrastination is your good mood. and your mood depends on your thoughts. good thoughts = good mood. any job is a game. thanks to Huizinga.

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Advice from Anfisa, Khristiana and Anastasia  

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Advice from Anfisa, Khristiana and Anastasia  

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First, you need to write a plan and break the task into several parts.  We are often afraid of the volume of tasks we have set, but this does not mean that we need to pull to the last.
The second way is to learn to enjoy the tasks at hand.  If the reason we procrastinate is because we are more comfortable doing other things, then we need to transform the current tasks into a more enjoyable and exciting experience.

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1) Pomodoro Method: you know the exact time, when you can rest, so the possibility of procrastination decreases
2) Study in different places to change the surroundings: in cafes, libraries
3) Get your priorities right. Plan the things you need to do.

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i do pretty much nothing about it. why? because i think that there is a reason for me to procrastinate - i need a rest. but if i feel that enough time passes (more than an hour) and i`m workable, i just get up and start doing at least somethink useful without overthinking. i suppose my strategy works appropriately since i tackle my affairs with joy and without coercion :)

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I think that for many people, the main time killer is the phone. So I have some tips. First, disable notifications for applications such as wildberries, any games and other applications where there is no important information. So, during the day, we will receive only messages or calls. Secondly, when you are performing some task, turn on the "do not disturb" mode. This mode doesn’t allow any notifications so you won’t be distracted. And finally, find time to rest without a phone. You can walk down the street or meditate, this will help the brain recover.

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Here are some advices I came up with:1)Tackle your most important task for 15 minutes.For this you need to set a timer and just get started! Instead of thinking about the total number of hours you’re about to work for, just start.2)Break tasks down into small chunks.Instead of thinking about everything you have to do like one big obstacle, break it all down into tiny pieces.3)Start your day with the hardest tasks.You’ll feel better when the hardest one is done, and then you can move on to a few easier tasks for the rest of the day.4)Promise yourself you’ll get a reward when it’s done.Motivate yourself with something you love. As for me, I motivate myself with ice cream and sweets :)5)Pick a workspace that works for you.Figure out where you’ll be doing most of your work.This may be the library, a coffee shop, your local bookstore, or a home office.

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Add your advice to the comments section.

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Answer the questions below:
Why does the author claim that 'you are one of the poorest people in the world'?

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There is an 8 out of 10 chance that you are one of the poorest people in the world. However, when I say you're poor, I'm not talking about your bank account (although material poverty is indeed a pressing concern for many of us).

Rather, I mean you are time poor: You have too many things to do and not enough time to do them. Time poverty affects all cultures and crosses all economic strata. Most of us feel this way.

In 2012, about 50 percent of working Americans reported they were "always rushed," and 70 percent "never" had enough time. In 2015, more than 80 percent said they didn't have the time they needed.

If you're worried that this is some kind of first-world problem and that you should just get on with it, don't. Time poverty is a serious problem, with serious costs for individuals and society. The data that I and others have amassed show a correlation between time poverty and misery. People who are time poor are less happy, less productive and more stressed out. They exercise less, eat fattier food and have a higher incidence of cardiovascular disease. Time poverty forces us to compromise. Instead of preparing a nutritious dinner, we grab chips and guac and munch mindlessly while staring at our screens.

The most obvious explanation is that we simply spend more time working than previous generations but evidence doesn't support this theory. Time diaries show that men's leisure time in the US, for instance, has increased six to nine hours a week in the past 50 years, while women's has increased four to eight hours a week.

Why, then, do we feel more time poor than ever?

Time poverty doesn't arise from a mismatch between the hours we have and the hours we need; it results from how we think about and value those hours. It's as much psychological as it is structural. We are ceaselessly connected. When free time arrives, we are unprepared to use it so we waste it. Or, we tell ourselves we shouldn't take a break so we work right through it.

The first step to becoming time smart is to identify the time traps in your life.

Time trap #1: Technology interruptions break our hours into confetti

Technology saves us time, but it also takes it away - this is known as the autonomy paradox. We adopt mobile technologies to gain autonomy over when and how long we work, yet ironically we end up working all the time. Long blocks of free time that we used to enjoy are now interrupted constantly by our devices. This situation taxes us cognitively and fragments our leisure time in a way that makes it hard to use.

I and other researchers call this phenomenon "time confetti", the little bits of seconds and minutes lost to unproductive multitasking. Each bit alone is not very bad, but all that confetti adds up to something more pernicious.

Consider this example. Let's say you have one hour of leisure at 7PM. During that hour, you receive two emails, check both and respond to one; four Twitter notifications, and you thumb through the replies for one of them; three Slack notifications from colleagues asking you questions or a favor, of which you answer one and ignore two; one alarm reminding you to call your mother tomorrow on her birthday; and four texts from a friend trying to make plans for next weekend, all four of which you reply to.

Each of these events takes only seconds - but collectively they create two negative effects. The first is the sheer volume of time they take away from your hour. A few seemingly harmless interruptions can usurp 10 percent of this leisure time. However, research shows that our estimates of interruptions is conservative, so typically it may be worse than this.

The second and more invasive effect of time confetti is the way it fragments an hour of leisure. Most likely, these interruptions are randomly distributed throughout your hour so the hour of leisure becomes several smaller chunks, sometimes only five or six minutes long. Even if you're disciplined about not responding or not responding very quickly, the interruptions undermine the quality of those chunks of leisure time by reminding you of all the activities that you could or should be doing.

It also takes time to cognitively recover from shifting our minds from the present to a stress-inducing activity. People end up enjoying their free time less and, when asked to reflect on it, estimate that they had less free time than they actually did. Time confetti makes us feel even more time impoverished than we actually are.

Time trap #2: We focus too much on money

Another trap is a cultural obsession with work and making money. We are taught - incorrectly - that money, not time, will bring greater happiness.

Research shows that money protects against sadness but doesn't buy joy. Once we make enough money to pay our bills, save for the future and have some fun, making more does little for our happiness.

In data from 1.7 million people in 165 countries, researchers figured out the exact dollar amount at which added money no longer increases happiness. After we make USD$65,000/year - or $60,000 globally - money stops predicting how much we laugh or smile each day. After we make USD$105,000/year ($95,000 globally), money stops predicting how well we think we are doing in life.

If anything, once people make a lot of money - $105,000/year in the United States - they start thinking they are doing worse in life. When we become rich, we begin to compare our lives to people even richer than we are.

Having money definitely shields us from stress. When your car breaks down, money provides a solution. And having cash on hand even provides peace of mind in the absence of a crisis. But staving off negative outcomes is different from creating happier ones.
I will repeat this point, because it's so important: Money does not buy joy.
A culture obsessed with making more money believes, wrongly, that the way to become more time affluent is to become financially wealthier. We think, "I'll work hard and make more so that I can afford more leisure time later." This is the wrong solution. Focusing on chasing wealth leads only to an increased focus on chasing wealth.

Time trap #3: We undervalue our time
Because of a cultural obsession with money, many people protect their money in ways that are counterproductive to time affluence.
In one survey, 52 percent of people who were financially comfortable but extremely time poor - working parents with young kids - said they'd rather have more money than more time. Asked how they would spend a hypothetical $100 prize to increase their happiness, only 2 percent of working parents said they would spend this money to save time, such as by having groceries delivered. People who could clearly afford to value time - people who had an average of $3 million in the bank - still said that they would rather have more money.

It's hard for us to measure time's value. Even if we're making a bad trade-off between time and money - such as driving two miles out of our way to save 10 cents per gallon on gas - it doesn't feel like a bad choice. That's because we don't really know the worth of the time it took.

When you book a trip with connecting flights to get a slightly cheaper price, you are falling into a time trap. Suppose you save $300 on that flight, but it takes 8 hours total out of your vacation time and increases your fatigue and stress because you have to get up early and switch planes. Would you pay $300 for an extra eight hours of vacation - a full workday's worth - along with less stress and fatigue?

The trap is simple: We reflexively go for the lowest cost when we shouldn't. Let's look at the gas example more closely. You consistently drive an extra six minutes to a different station to save 15 cents per gallon, and you go in for a 15-gallon fill-up four times a month. Impulsively it seems worth it - six minutes isn't that much, and the savings will add up.

15 cents × 15 gallons = $2.25 saved per trip

$2.25 × 4 visits per month = $9.00 saved per month

$9.00 per month over 12 months = $108 saved per year

But someone aware of time traps would see it differently:

6 minutes per trip × 4 visits per month = 24 minutes lost per month

24 minutes per month × 12 months = 4.8 hours lost per year

Looking at it this way, you've spent almost five hours to save $108. This doesn't take into account the opportunity cost of what you could have done with that five hours instead of driving out of your way to save money.

You might still feel that this trade-off is worth it. But doing these calculations puts a different lens on time value, which we tend to grossly underestimate.

Time trap #4: We regard busyness as a status symbol

More than ever, our identities are tied to work. The best data show that people living in the US increasingly look toward work - not friends, families or hobbies - to find purpose. In a 2017 survey, 95 percent of young adults said that having an "enjoyable and meaningful career" was "extremely important" to them.

Given the importance that we place on work, busyness at work carries status. We wear it like a badge of honor. We want to be seen as the employee who works the longest hours, even when these hours aren't productive.

Financial insecurity also drives workism, and it's on the rise. As society becomes more unequal, people feel increasingly insecure about their financial future, regardless of their current stature. Those doing well worry about how far they could fall. Those struggling to make ends meet fear falling farther behind.

Most of us cope by working more and trying to make more money. And we feel guilty about spending money on things that make us happy, such as dining out or vacations.

With our self-identity so wrapped up in work and productivity, the social appearance of being busy makes us feel good about ourselves. In contrast, focusing our attention on something other than work can threaten our livelihood and status. We worry we won't be valued, and, in part, we are right.

Turns out employers are mostly rewarding the cult of busyness. Research shows that employees who boast about working nonstop and being extremely busy are seen by others as better workers who have more money and prestige, even if they don't. They're even thought to be more physically attractive.

Even if it feels good in the moment for someone to see the email you sent on Saturday at 8:30PM, this behavior contributes to an unhealthy, unhappy life.

Time trap #5: We have an aversion to idleness
Even if we lived in a perfectly equal society, we would still create time stress for ourselves because human beings are not built for idleness.
Researchers call this idleness aversion, and it makes us do some strange things. Dan Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, placed some college students in an empty room and gave them nothing to do. Many preferred giving themselves mild electric shocks to being left alone with their thoughts. Another study showed that working parents felt "bored" and "stressed" during leisure activities, signaling that even the most time poor among us don't know how to relax.

Technology may help us avoid being alone with our thoughts, but it is a trap that contributes to stress and time poverty. Being constantly connected to our devices prevents the brain from recovering, keeps our stress levels elevated and takes us out of the present.

In fact, idleness has been shown to be a valuable form of leisure and can increase time affluence. The physical and mental benefits of disengaging the brain are far more valuable than the stress created by keeping the mind engaged at all times.

Time trap #6: We think we have more time tomorrow than we actually do

Most of us are overly optimistic about our future time. We mistakenly believe that we will have more time tomorrow than we do today. This is sometimes referred to as the " planning fallacy " I call it the "Yes ... damn!" effect. Let me explain.

Last Monday, a friend asked if I could help her move on Saturday. No problem. On Tuesday, a colleague asked me to look over her report by Saturday. I said yes. On Wednesday, another friend invited me out for dinner on Saturday at a new restaurant that I wanted to try. I said yes. I said yes over and over and over until Saturday morning, when I woke up and thought, "Damn! What was I thinking!"

Actually, as a happiness researcher, I know what I was thinking: "Even though I'm too busy now, Saturday is a ways off, and I'll have time to do these things."

Statistically, the best predictor of how busy we are going to be next week is how busy we are right now. Our minds frequently forget this important point and trick us into believing we'll have more time later than we do now. This overoptimism means that we're cavalier with our yeses, even for small stuff we don't want to do. We also want to say yes; we see it as a way to overcome idleness and feel productive, connected, valued, respected and loved.

But where does the time to fulfill these yeses come from? From the leisure time that we could be using to feel more time affluent, of course. Ironically, perpetual busyness undermines the goals that we set out to achieve with all our busyness in the first place.

While these are the six most common time traps, of course there are many other reasons that we fail to prioritize time. For now, your goal should be to recognize and document the time traps that you fall into most often.

Keep in mind: Your time traps won't be the same as other people's. What makes it a trap for you is that it makes you unhappy and steals time that you would otherwise use in a way that makes you happy.

We all have the power to overcome the time traps we have fallen victim to. Like getting fit, increasing your time affluence requires taking small, deliberate steps each day to have more free time and enjoy it. And like getting fit, it's not easy at first. Both our society and our psychology make these time traps extremely appealing.

Keeping the exercise metaphor going, just as you shouldn't punish yourself for not being perfect in your workout habits, don't ever beat yourself up about being bad at prioritizing time. Multiple forces are making it difficult. We don't naturally respond to time poverty in a way that controls it. In fact, when we feel busy, studies show that we take on small, easy-to-complete tasks because they help us feel more control over our time. In this case, it's a false sense of control that doesn't alleviate the root cause of our busyness.

Even though time poverty feels the same for everyone, time affluence looks different for everyone. It could mean spending 15 more minutes strumming the guitar instead of scrolling through your phone, or it could be 10 minutes of meditation or a Saturday morning learning how to invest your savings instead of Slacking about work gossip.

No matter what time affluence looks like for you, the happiest and most time affluent among us are deliberate with their free time. Working toward time affluence is about recognizing and overcoming the time traps in our lives and intentionally carving out happier and more meaningful moments each day.
Excerpted from the new book Time Smart: How to Reclaim Your Time and Live a Happier Life by Ashley Whillans. Copyright © 2020 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. All rights reserved. Watch her TEDxCambridge Talk here:

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Which of these 6 time traps is eating up all your time?

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There is an 8 out of 10 chance that you are one of the poorest people in the world. However, when I say you're poor, I'm not talking about your bank account (although material poverty is indeed a pressing concern for many of us).

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Procrastination isn't shameful or a character flaw. Instead it's rooted in a very human need: the need to feel competent and worthy, says educator Nic Voge.

"It's 11 o'clock. You're in your dorm room, and you have a paper due in a day or so. You sit down at your desk, you open up your laptop to get started, and then you think, 'I'm gonna check my email just for a minute; get that out of the way.' Forty-five minutes later, you've checked a lot of email," says Nic Voge, senior associate director of Princeton University's McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning in New Jersey, in a TEDxPrinceton talk. "You've done a really good job of that, but now you realize, 'You know what? I'm pretty tired. I'm kind of exhausted, and that's not conducive to writing a good paper. What do I need? I need to go to sleep." And you do - only to wake up and go through the whole cycle of delays-and-excuses the next day.

Is this you? Rather than a college paper, maybe it was a report for work, graduate program application, peer review or some other important thing that you kept kicking down the road until the road ran out and you had to deliver.

You probably scolded yourself for your behavior. And wondered, "Why am I so lazy/ weak-willed/ disorganized/ unmotivated/ hopeless/ [fill in other belittling adjective]?"

Well, Voge has good news for you. "Procrastination isn't shameful. It's not a sign of weakness. It's not a flaw," he says. "It's actually pretty predictable; it's something we can really expect if we understand the dynamics of motivation," At Princeton, Voge develops, designs and directs academic support programs for undergraduates. He's seen procrastination in all its forms, and he has also, he confesses, "mastered the craft and art of procrastination - the mind games, the rationalizations, the justifications."

There are many theories about why we procrastinate. Some have said it's about the inability to cope with difficult emotions; others, that it's connected to faulty time management or perfectionism. Voge, however, believes it is rooted in our self-worth. He explains, "The paramount psychological need that all of us have is to be seen by ourselves and others as capable and competent and able ... and we will actually sacrifice or trade off other needs to meet that need."

To be clear, the need to be seen as worthy or worthwhile is not the problem.Where things go wrong is that some of us depend heavily on external feedback - in the form of good grades, praise from bosses, parents, in-laws or other authority figures, or the acceptance of prestigious organizations - for those feelings of worthiness. Voge says, "People who procrastinate a lot have a kind of simplistic equation in their mind: their performance is equal or equivalent to their ability, which is equal or equivalent to their self-worth as a person." Or, as he puts it: performance = ability = self-worth. The reason we're so terrified about performing poorly on that paper, application, analysis, etc. is because we feel our ability rests on it - and our value as a person.

In the performance = ability = self-worth equation, the only variable we can control is how much effort we put into our performance. When we procrastinate and put in less effort, we're doing it as a form of self-protection, according to Voge. That way, if we earn a bad result, it doesn't mean we're not talented, able or worthy; we were just too busy or distracted to do our best.

Think about the murmurs you inevitably heard before exams in high school or college. Voge asks, "What are people saying? 'I only studied three hours.' 'I only studied two hours; my computer froze.' Everyone's explaining how they're not ready. Why? Because if they don't achieve, then they have this built-in excuse not only for themselves but for others."

Anyone who has ever procrastinated has experienced that feeling of stuckness. "Many people describe procrastination as being stuck at or against a wall or an obstacle they can't get over," says Voge. "We are often agitated, we can't sleep - but we [also] can't work." At those times, we find ourselves pulled between two equally strong and compelling forces: the drive to achieve and the fear of failure. We come unstuck only when the fear of not getting things done overrides our fear of failure.

How do we break the cycle? Voge highlights three strategies:

1. Be aware of what you're doing and why.

"We know from the research on procrastination and overcoming it that gaining knowledge and being aware of self-worth theory in these dynamics helps people over these things," says Voge. "To understand the roots of procrastination helps us weaken it." Your procrastination is probably not coming from a place of self-loathing or self-sabotage but from a need to protect yourself.

Know when you're procrastinating. Sometimes it's obvious; there is absolutely no reason for us to do the laundry before we write that grant application. At other times, it's more subtle, so you may need to check in with yourself: "Yes, removing old files from my computer desktop will give me a less distracting workspace, but is it essential that I do it right now? Or am I just postponing writing the application?" Pro-tip: If you have to ask yourself whether you're procrastinating or not, chances are you are.

Get familiar with your "greatest hits" of wasting time. Most of us have specific fall-back activities that we do when we're playing the delaying game. What's yours - house-cleaning, napping, shopping, reading email, catching up on Netflix? Learn to recognize it so you can nip it in the bud; it's much easier to prevent falling down the cleaning /napping /shopping rabbit hole rather than pulling yourself out. Voge says, "The greater awareness we have of our tendencies and our motivations, we're more likely to overcome them."

2. Tip the balance.

Our progress towards completing any activity is affected by "approach" motives (reasons why we want to do this thing) and "avoid" motives (reasons we don't want to do this thing). With activities that we have no hesitations doing - let's say, eating something that's delicious and healthy - it's because we have many "approach" motives and very few "avoid" motives.

Many procrastinators have the mistaken belief that the reason they're putting off a task is because there's an underlying reason they don't want to do it. "Often, that's not the case. It's simply that their fears dominate or overwhelm their 'approach' motives," says Voge. When you're playing solitaire instead of performing a competitive market analysis for your boss, it could be because your "avoid" motives - in particular, you're avoiding the project because you're terrified you'll fail - outweigh your "approach" motives.

When this happens, think of all the reasons why you want to do this activity. It might help to remind yourself of how completing it fits into your larger goals, objectives or mission. Then, if it seems especially big or intimidating, break it down into manageable pieces. When Voge found himself procrastinating writing his TEDx talk because it seemed so daunting, he decided to create an outline so he could write his script section by section. Warning: Just resist turning that outline or to-do list into an invitation to procrastinate further.

3. Challenge your beliefs.

We need to undermine the ideas that brought us to procrastinate in the first place, says Voge. "The equation that we carry around in our head is flawed ... your ability is not equivalent to your worth." He adds, " Our worth derives from our human qualities of kindness and thoughtfulness and our vulnerabilities."

Watch his TEDxPrincetonU talk now:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daryl Chen is the Ideas Editor at TED.
This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It's part of the "How to Be a Better Human" series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

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"It's 11 o'clock. You're in your dorm room, and you have a paper due in a day or so. You sit down at your desk, you open up your laptop to get started, and then you think, 'I'm gonna check my email just for a minute; get that out of the way.'

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17 Tricks To Get More Things Done During the Work Day

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17 Tricks To Get More Things Done During the Work Day

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Practice these simple tips to start freeing up your time and getting more done during the day.

Read the article quickly and type (copy-paste) the advice which can be fine for you:

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7 min read

Sometimes, we wish there were more hours in the day. Unfortunately, we can't control time. What we can control is our productivity. Being cautious with how we spend our time is vital to getting more done during the day. Waking up earlier, meditating, creating daily to-do lists -- there are a number of ways to make the most out of every minute.

If you want to be more productive during your day, these simple hacks will help get you on your way.

1. Wake up an hour earlier.

Even if you don't identify as a "morning person," you can still become one.

By setting your alarm an hour earlier than usual (and don't hit the snooze button!), you'll be able to get an extra hour of uninterrupted, peaceful work time.

Several studies correlate waking up early to productivity and success. Early risers have an advantage -- they have extra work time and are more optimistic in general.

2. Make a daily to-do list.

Create a daily list of realistic tasks to tackle everyday. Keep it simple, too. Your tasks don't need to be massive jobs that will take hours to complete. If you need to fold your laundry, add that to the list. Need to call the doctor? Add it.

These micro-tasks will not only help you get more done on a day-to-day basis, but they'll also help you reach your bigger goals too.

3. Do the hardest tasks first.

It's best to get those dreaded tasks out of the way first. After getting that big chunk of difficulty out of the way, the rest of your day is freed to complete everything else. Not only will you feel better, you'll be much more productive too.

Read This: Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy | Amazon | eBooks.com | Barnes & Noble | Audiobooks.com

4. Clear off your desk.

As the saying goes, "Out of sight, out of mind." That can be true for staying focused too. Taking 15 minutes before work every day to clear off your desk and create a clean workspace will help you focus and avoid distractions. Trash what you don't need and file what you do.

Image credit: Matt Dutile | Getty Images

5. Exercise in the morning.

Go for a quick jog or do some morning yoga.

Getting a workout in in the morning is linked to a better mood and higher levels of productivity. Harvard psychiatry professor Dr. John Ratey explains that exercise is vital in reaching "high-performance levels in intellectually demanding jobs."

6. Set up a system.

Having a system of organization will give you a clear and consistent idea of the projects you have going on. This inventory of commitments will bring clarity, focus and control. It will help you know what's most important.

7. Focus on one thing at a time.

Focus on getting one project finished before switching to the next.

People usually think that they're getting more done by multitasking, but in reality, going back and forth from task to task isn't beneficial. In fact, trying to perform two tasks simultaneously can actually take a toll on productivity, a study by the American Psychological Association reveals.

While most of us are guilty of talking on the phone while typing out an email -- it's not the little tasks that deter productivity, but the larger ones. "The mind and brain were not designed for heavy-duty multitasking," reports the study.

8. Start saying no.

Sometimes that little word is the hardest to say. But it's OK to say it. It's important to manage people's expectations, so if you can't take something on and give it 100 percent, then don't do it at all.

9. Get enough .

This one's a given, but you'd be surprised how few people actually do get enough sleep every night. According to the National Sleep Foundation, the average adult needs seven to nine hours of sleep a night. Are you getting that much?

Maybe it's time to go to bed earlier. Sleep can make or break your productivity and well-being.

Read This: The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time by Ariana Huffington | Amazon | eBooks.com | Barnes & Noble | Audiobooks.com

10. Keep your emails organized.

Seeing 200 unread messages in your inbox will only give you anxiety. But it's also important you don't overlook any important messages. Keep your inbox clean by responding, filing, drafting or deleting an email immediately after you've opened it.

11. Shut off .

Take a break from the hustle and bustle of the outside world and avoid going on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. They'll only distract you. For people who need social media for work, make sure you're logged out of any personal accounts so you don't get pulled off-task.

Image credit: Eva Katalin Kondoros | Getty Images

12. Read, don't skim.

It's important to actually read the documents that come your way, not skim through them. Even though it doesn't always feel this way, skimming can be more time-consuming than reading because you may skip something and have to go back.

13. Schedule chunks of uninterrupted time.

Once you get yourself focused, stay focused.

Although it's easier said than done, a helpful way to make sure you keep your mind on track is to clear out a specified, uninterrupted time frame where you focus solely on the project at hand. Whether that means turning off your phone or closing your email, create an environment where you are free to focus on one thing -- and one thing only.

According to a study by Microsoft researchers, it takes the brain 15 minutes to re-focus after switching our attention to something else. So if you're constantly being interrupted, it's going to take you a long time to get your work done.

14. Put your headphones in.

Whether you want to play some tunes or not is up to you. But people are far less likely to disrupt you if they see that you're zoned out with your headphones in.

15. Meditate before going into the office.

Take a couple minutes right when you wake up to clear your mind and meditate. According to the Art of Living Foundation, morning meditation is particularly powerful because it recharges and prepares you for the challenges that lie ahead.

16. Eliminate unnecessary meetings.

Face-to-face communication is vital in the workplace, but sometimes those long and endless meetings can be a waste of time. When scheduling any meetings, make sure they are truly necessary and whether what you plan to discuss can be handled through email or by phone.

If you do plan an in-person meeting, schedule it for 30 minutes only so it is fast and to-the-point. When people feel crunched on time, they are more likely to get to the important stuff quickly.

Read This: Let's Stop Meeting Like This: Tools to Save Time and Get More Done by Dick Axelrod and Emily Axelrod | Amazon | eBooks.com | Barnes & Noble | Audiobooks.com

17. Make 60-second decisions.

If you want to get more done during your day, you've got to work fast. Start by cutting down the amount of time it takes you to make a decision.

Decision-making can be one of the most time-consuming tasks you do on a daily basis, so cut down on it to free up your time. You'll likely make the same decision you would have made in 20 minutes' time.

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17 Tricks To Get More Things Done During the Work Day

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7 min read Sometimes, we wish there were more hours in the day. Unfortunately, we can't control time. What we can control is our productivity. Being cautious with how we spend our time is vital to getting more done during the day.

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Home reading: option 2              Is Multi-tasking such a new idea?

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Home reading: option 2              Is Multi-tasking such a new idea?

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with all today’s talk of work-life balance and 24 hour schedules, it is worth remembering that the multi-tasking and the pressures of time are not only about our modern life. In 1887, Nietzsche himself described a feeling that seems familiar now: “One thinks with a watch in one's hand even as one eats one's midday meal while reading the latest news of the stock market.”

A BBC article: EXTRA reading
MEDICAL MYTHS | HEALTH

Why your brain likes it when you multi-task

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We all know the feeling. You're in a noisy office trying to concentrate. Your computer screen shows you have eight different websites open, along with two email accounts, three documents, a spreadsheet, two pdfs and at least one social networking site. You seem to be working on at least five different things and just as you get into one of them, you get an email or message about another and you move onto that instead. You have been at your computer for hours, but it doesn't feel as though you're getting anything finished.

And it's not just at work where the trend for multi-tasking is increasing. In 2014 it was found that 99% of adults use two forms of media simultaneously at some point every week. On average people do this for two hours and three minutes each day. The most popular combination is watching TV at the same time as chatting on the phone.

We could decide not to check our email so frequently or to turn off alerts, but in general we tend not to. Doing two things at once makes us feel as though we've somehow saving time, yet there's still a nagging feeling that finishing one job before starting another might be more efficient.

In psychology the monochronic assumption is the idea that it's always better to complete one task before you start on the next. In research conducted over several decades, Allen Bluedorn has found that, unsurprisingly, it's a matter of personal preference. Some people favour monochronicity and feel happier completing one task before they start the next. Others are polychronic and perform better when they are doing lots of things at once, and can excel in jobs which require them to do just that.

Running a busy cafe would be a good example - though this doesn't mean they necessarily get the jobs done faster. In a cafe there's no option but to jump from task to task.

The research on compulsory multi-tasking is at first sight discouraging. Multi-tasking has a bad name. Some studies give people two tasks to complete simultaneously. In others multi-tasking means switching backwards and forwards between different tasks until they're done. So you're not actually doing them at the same time, but within the same block of time, something that often happens at work.

The problem here is something known as attention residue. Experiments have demonstrated that when you switch your attention from one task to another, a bit of your mind is still focused on the previous task. Each time you switch back again you have to remind yourself about what it was you were doing, while dealing simultaneously with the slight distraction from the other task. This can increase your cognitive load.

Sometimes when you concentrate on more than one task at a time there simply isn't enough cognitive resource to go round. You need to employ attention, working memory and executive function, and the harder the tasks are, the more likely you are to exceed your limit. Then your performance will suffer.
Focusing the mind
Many studies over the years have found that in general people are slower and less accurate when they do two tasks at once. This might suggest that the answer is to complete every task one at a time, but this isn't always the case. In Sophie Leroy's experiments on attention residue, this hangover from the previous task disappeared if it had been done under time-pressure.

When people were given a tough deadline, they are forced to narrow their options and to make decisions which are cognitively less complex. This in turn decreases the hangover from that first task, allowing them to put it behind them and get on with the next job. So an approaching deadline not only concentrates the mind, but allows it to clear more easily after it's passed, leaving us to worry about the next deadline instead.

Multi-tasking is hardest when the tasks are similar to each other, but a bit easier if they are different. So while chatting on the phone and writing an email is difficult, because they involve similar thinking processes in order to generate meaningful sentences, talking while playing the piano isn't as hard.

If the tasks are different enough then multi-tasking can even improve your performance. A study conducted in 2015 at the University of Florida surprised even its authors. People were asked to sit on exercise bikes and to cycle for two minutes at a speed they found comfortable. Later they cycled again, this time with a screen in front of them which presented them with 12 different types of cognitive tests, some of them quite hard.

In the easy tests they had to say the word "go" whenever they saw a blue star on the screen; in the harder tasks they had to memorise long lists of numbers and then recite them in reverse order. They completed similar cognitive tests while sitting on a chair in a room and the researchers compared the results.

When people were sitting on an exercise bike they pedalled 25% faster when given mental problems to solve simultaneously, without doing any worse on the problems. This is a case where distraction seems to be useful. The authors speculate that anticipation of the tasks might have increased arousal in the brain, which also made the people more efficient at cycling.

And if you are a supertasker then you don't have the same problems the rest of us do. Just over 2% of people are brilliant at multi-tasking and suffer no drop in performance. This special group was discovered quite by accident by psychologists at the University of Utah. David Strayer and Jason Watson were investigating why talking on a mobile phone in a car is so much more dangerous than chatting to a passenger who's in the car with you (the reason is that the passengers naturally cease the conversation whenever things are tricky).

They spotted what they thought must be a mistake in their data - one person who was just as good at driving, whatever the distractions. They rechecked the data and then realised that this individual wasn't alone. Two people in every hundred are supertaskers, able to divide their concentration effortlessly without their performance suffering.

The problem is that most of us aren't very good at knowing whether or not we fit into this group. The same psychologists found that the better people believed they were at multi-tasking, the worse they performed on a test which required them to memorise a list of words while also doing maths problem.

But even if you're not a supertasker, multi-tasking by surfing the web at the same time as answering emails, playing computer games, or listening to music could bring another benefit. Kelvin Lui and Alan Wong from the Chinese University of Hong Kong gave participants a computer task which involved searching for visual information while also responding to certain sounds which could help them with the search. They found people who regularly used three or more different media at a time were better at integrating the information that came in through their ears and their eyes. Since real life involves a lot of integration of different senses this could be a good skill to have.

There are other studies which show that people who use lots of different media at once might have worse working memories, but with these and the Hong Kong study there is always the same problem. Which came first? The skills needed to integrate information and the worse working memory, or the multi-tasking? It's impossible to randomise someone to many years spent using certain kinds of media. So they're always self-selecting.

The intriguing thing about multi-tasking is that although it can increase your cognitive load many of us still can't resist working in this way. When I began writing this article this morning I decided to count how often I chose to check my email or look at some irrelevant site. When I got to 20 I stopped counting. So why do we like it? It seems even if it's not the most efficient way to work, it feels less of an effort. It certainly can keep us entertained while we work if we do things other than concentrate on the task in hand.

So multi-tasking may have its downsides, but it isn't always bad. There are certain circumstances under which we are better at multi-tasking - when we feel relaxed and when we've been doing a mentally creative exercise which encourages us to think broadly. ( In this study it involved thinking of as many uses as possible for a paper clip, a newspaper, some wool and some upholstery foam.) After this kind of activity people became better at multi-tasking. When the experimenters deliberately made them feel stressed, they were worse at it.

One final word on this topic - with all today's talk of work-life balance and 24 hour schedules, it is worth remembering that the multi-tasking and the pressures of time are not confined to modern life. In 1887, Nietzsche himself described a feeling that seems familiar now: "One thinks with a watch in one's hand even as one eats one's midday meal while reading the latest news of the stock market."
If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

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Why your brain likes it when you multi-task

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We all know the feeling. You're in a noisy office trying to concentrate. Your computer screen shows you have eight different websites open, along with two email accounts, three documents, a spreadsheet, two pdfs and at least one social networking site.

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5 Research-Based Strategies for Overcoming Procrastination 

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5 Research-Based Strategies for Overcoming Procrastination 

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by Chris BaileyOctober 04, 2017
Summary.

Why do we procrastinate, even though we know it’s against our best interests? And how can we overcome it? A careful look at the science behind procrastination reveals five tips. First, figure out which of seven triggers are set off by the task you want to avoid. Is it boring, frustrating, or difficult? Or perhaps it’s not personally meaningful to you? Then, try to reverse those triggers. If it’s boring, find a way to make getting it done fun. If it’s unstructured, create a detailed plan for completing it. Then, only spend as much time working on the task as you can muster. Since it’s easier to pick up an in-progress project, be sure to get it started as soon as you can. List the costs of not getting it done. And, lastly, get rid of distractions, especially digital ones.

Chances are that at this very moment you’re procrastinating on something. Maybe you’re even reading this article to do so.

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Why do we procrastinate, even though we know it's against our best interests? And how can we overcome it? A careful look at the science behind procrastination reveals five tips. First, figure out which of seven triggers are set off by the task you want to avoid. Is it boring, frustrating, or difficult? Or perhaps it's not personally meaningful to you? Then, try to reverse those triggers. If it's boring, find a way to make getting it done fun. If it's unstructured, create a detailed plan for completing it. Then, only spend as much time working on the task as you can muster. Since it's easier to pick up an in-progress project, be sure to get it started as soon as you can. List the costs of not getting it done. And, lastly, get rid of distractions, especially digital ones.

Chances are that at this very moment you're procrastinating on something. Maybe you're even reading this article to do so.

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5 Research-Based Strategies for Overcoming Procrastination

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Why do we procrastinate, even though we know it's against our best interests? And how can we overcome it? A careful look at the science behind procrastination reveals five tips. First, figure out which of seven triggers are set off by the task you want to avoid. Is it boring, frustrating, or difficult?

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tip #7: Focus on one thing at a time.

Focus on getting one project finished before switching to the next.

People usually think that they’re getting more done by multitasking, but in reality, going back and forth from task to task isn’t beneficial. In fact, trying to perform two tasks simultaneously can actually take a toll on productivity, a study by the American Psychological Association reveals.

While most of us are guilty of talking on the phone while typing out an email-- it’s not the little tasks that deter productivity, but the larger ones. “The mind and brain were not designed for heavy-duty multitasking,” reports the study.

EXTRA reading:

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Subtle "switching" costs cut efficiency, raise risk.

Doing more than one task at a time, especially more than one complex task, takes a toll on productivity. Although that shouldn't surprise anyone who has talked on the phone while checking E-mail or talked on a cell phone while driving, the extent of the problem might come as a shock. Psychologists who study what happens to cognition (mental processes) when people try to perform more than one task at a time have found that the mind and brain were not designed for heavy-duty multitasking. Psychologists tend to liken the job to choreography or air-traffic control, noting that in these operations, as in others, mental overload can result in catastrophe.

Multitasking can take place when someone tries to perform two tasks simultaneously, switch . from one task to another, or perform two or more tasks in rapid succession. To determine the costs of this kind of mental "juggling," psychologists conduct task-switching experiments. By comparing how long it takes for people to get everything done, the psychologists can measure the cost in time for switching tasks. They also assess how different aspects of the tasks, such as complexity or familiarity, affect any extra time cost of switching.

In the mid-1990s, Robert Rogers, PhD, and Stephen Monsell, D.Phil, found that even when people had to switch completely predictably between two tasks every two or four trials, they were still slower on task-switch than on task-repeat trials. Moreover, increasing the time available between trials for preparation reduced but did not eliminate the cost of switching. There thus appear to be two parts to the switch cost -- one attributable to the time taken to adjust the mental control settings (which can be done in advance it there is time), and another part due to competition due to carry-over of the control settings from the previous trial (apparently immune to preparation).

Surprisingly, it can be harder to switch to the more habitual of two tasks afforded by a stimulus. For example, Renata Meuter, PhD, and Alan Allport, PhD, reported in 1999 that if people had to name digits in their first or second language, depending on the color of the background, as one might expect they named digits in their second language slower than in their first when the language repeated. But they were slower in their first language when the language changed.

In experiments published in 2001, Joshua Rubinstein, PhD, Jeffrey Evans, PhD, and David Meyer, PhD, conducted four experiments in which young adults switched between different tasks, such as solving math problems or classifying geometric objects. For all tasks, the participants lost time when they had to switch from one task to another. As tasks got more complex, participants lost more time. As a result, people took significantly longer to switch between more complex tasks. Time costs were also greater when the participants switched to tasks that were relatively unfamiliar. They got up to speed faster when they switched to tasks they knew better.

In a 2003 paper, Nick Yeung, Ph.D, and Monsell quantitatively modeled the complex and sometimes surprising experimental interactions between relative task dominance and task switching. The results revealed just some of the complexities involved in understanding the cognitive load imposed by real-life multi-tasking, when in addition to reconfiguring control settings for a new task, there is often the need to remember where you got to in the task to which you are returning and to decide which task to change to, when.

According to Meyer, Evans and Rubinstein, converging evidence suggests that the human "executive control" processes have two distinct, complementary stages. They call one stage "goal shifting" ("I want to do this now instead of that") and the other stage "rule activation" ("I'm turning off the rules for that and turning on the rules for this"). Both of these stages help people to, without awareness, switch between tasks. That's helpful. Problems arise only when switching costs conflict with environmental demands for productivity and safety.

Although switch costs may be relatively small, sometimes just a few tenths of a second per switch, they can add up to large amounts when people switch repeatedly back and forth between tasks. Thus, multitasking may seem efficient on the surface but may actually take more time in the end and involve more error. Meyer has said that even brief mental blocks created by shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of someone's productive time.

Understanding the hidden costs of multitasking may help people to choose strategies that boost their efficiency - above all, by avoiding multitasking, especially with complex tasks. (Throwing in a load of laundry while talking to a friend will probably work out all right.) For example, losing just a half second of time to task switching can make a life-or-death difference for a driver on a cell phone traveling at 30 MPH. During the time the driver is not totally focused on driving the car, it can travel far enough to crash into an obstacle that might otherwise have been avoided.

Meyer and his colleagues hope that understanding switching costs and the light they shed on "executive control" may help to improve the design and engineering of equipment and human-computer interfaces for vehicle and aircraft operation, air traffic control, and many other activities using sophisticated technologies. Insights into how the brain "multitasks" lend themselves to a range of settings from the clinic, helping to diagnose and help brain-injured patients, to the halls of Congress, informing government and industrial regulations and standards.

This research is also taken into account by states and localities considering legislation to restrict drivers' use of cell phones.

Gopher, D., Armony, L. & Greenspan, Y. (2000). Switching tasks and attention policies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129, 308-229.

Mayr, U. & Kliegl, R. (2000). Task-set switching and long-term memory retrieval. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 1124-1140.

Meuter, R. F. I. & Allport, A. (1999). Bilingual language switching in naming: Asymmetrical costs of language selection. Journal of Memory and Language, 40(1), 25-40.

Meyer, D. E. & Kieras, D. E. (1997a). A computational theory of executive cognitive processes and multiple-task performance: Part 1. Basic mechanisms. Psychological Review, 104, 3-65.

Meyer, D. E. & Kieras, D. E. (1997b). A computational theory of executive cognitive processes and multiple-task performance: Part 2. Accounts of psychological refractory-period phenomena. Psychological Review, 104, 749-791.

Monsell, S., Azuma, R., Eimer, M., Le Pelley, M., & Strafford, S. (1998, July). Does a prepared task switch require an extra (control) process between stimulus onset and response selection? Poster presented at the 18th International Symposium on Attention and Performance, Windsor Great Park, United Kingdom.

Monsell, S., Yeung, N., & Azuma, R. (2000). Reconfiguration of task-set: Is it easier to switch to the weaker task? Psychological Research, 63, 250-264.

Monsell, S. & Driver, J., Eds. (2000). Control of cognitive processes: Attention and Performance XVIII. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Rogers, R. & Monsell, S. (1995). The costs of a predictable switch between simple cognitive tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 124, 207-231.

Rubinstein, J., Evans, J. & Meyer, D. E. (1994). Task switching in patients with prefrontal cortex damage. Poster presented at the meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, San Francisco, CA, March, 1994. Abstract published in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 1994, Vol. 6.

Rubinstein, J. S., Meyer, D. E. & Evans, J. E. (2001). Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27, 763-797.

Yeung, N. & Monsell, S. (2003). Switching between tasks of unequal familiarity: The role of stimulus-attribute and response-set selection. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Human Perception and Performance, 29(2): 455-469.

American Psychological Association, March 20, 2006

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Subtle "switching" costs cut efficiency, raise risk. Doing more than one task at a time, especially more than one complex task, takes a toll on productivity. Although that shouldn't surprise anyone who has talked on the phone while checking E-mail or talked on a cell phone while driving, the extent of the problem might come as a shock.

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Vote here:

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Video
Inside the mind of a master procrastinator

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Inside the mind of a master procrastinator

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Tim Urban knows that procrastination doesn’t make sense, but he’s never been able to shake his habit of waiting until the last minute to get things done. In this hilarious and insightful talk, Urban takes us on a journey through YouTube binges, Wikipedia rabbit holes and bouts of staring out the window -- and encourages us to think harder about what we’re really procrastinating on, before we run out of time.

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Follow the link, type 3 time-killers and submit.

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This is the place to be if you're trying to participate in a live poll

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