4 Simple Steps to Stop Multitasking the Wrong Way

As CEO, David Walker leads Triplemint’s mission, vision for the future, business strategy, and culture. Working with his co-founder Philip Lang, Walker drives Triplemint’s goal of creating the best possible client experience when buying, selling, or renting a home.

Handling a busy workday can make you go crazy quickly. These simple tips will help keep you sane while making you more productive.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has gone through this cycle more times than I can count: while you’re working on an important brief, your phone rings. As you sigh and reach to pick it up, a knock on your office door indicates someone is trying to grab your attention. You wave them away and focus on the voice speed-talking through your phone, while distractedly scanning your emails. Meeting in 10 minutes. Great.

Navigating through a busy work schedule where you’re constantly doing 4 things at once is stressful and leaves you stripped of all your energy when you get home at night. Multitasking is actually one of the hardest skills to obtain since it forces your brain to focus on multiple tasks at once. Many even claim multitasking is virtually impossible.

A study conducted at Stanford University found that people who are bombarded with several streams of electronic information on a regular basis cannot pay attention or process information as well as those who tackle one task at a time.

Now that we’ve established multitasking is inefficient and makes you crazy, how can you get your job done while being distracted by something at least 100 times a day?

1. Act like you’re out of office.

Who doesn’t love the feeling of putting an out of office message in your emails before leaving for a two-week vacation? Who says you can’t treat yourself to that feeling while working from your office as well? If you plan on doing calls for the next two hours or you have to focus on a particularly challenging writing task, set up an out of office message in your email program.

This way, your clients and peers will be notified of your absence (aka desire to work without distraction) as opposed to not getting a reply at all. Plus, it saves you the hassle of sending back emails saying that you don’t have time.

2. Work in Blocks.

Practice your OCD. When planning your day, don’t just write a to-do list. Actually plan time frames for everything you do. That way, you will be less likely to steer away from your actual schedule. The clock will work against you, so you will feel more pressured to finish every single task in time. This pressure forces you to work efficiently and in a timely manner.

However, you might need to practice to accurately estimate how much time you need to finish the tasks at hand. Naturally, it’s not always possible to plan every single minute of the day and unforeseen things happen, but a rough outline will help you stay organized.

3. Multitask, don’t every task.

Just because you’re doing multiple things at once doesn’t mean you have to do everything. You still need to be able to filter out what is and isn’t important or there will be more amount of multitasking that can help you catch up.

The Stanford study claims that regular multitaskers are actually worse at it than those who normally don’t multitask. The reason lies in the fact that they have more trouble filtering out what’s important and organizing themselves to finish tasks efficiently.

4. Create your perfect workspace.

You remember those times in college when you had to study for finals, write six assignments and prepare a presentation? We all found a million reasons to procrastinate. We were thirsty, hungry, we got a message, our dog needed petting. Now that it’s actually crucial we achieve something every single day, make sure to rid yourself of all reasons to get distracted.

Create your perfect workspace. Before starting a task that you know will need 100 percent of your attention and brain power, prepare a glass of water, a light snack, have your laptop on full battery, make sure you sit in a comfortable chair… You know what I mean. These things matter more than we realize. Your body and mind need to feel comfortable for you to be able to concentrate on the task before you.

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source: https://www.inc.com

5 Tips for Developing Deep, Relaxed Concentration

This is an article on productivity and mindfulness by Radhika Cosley

Here are five simple exercises that will help you get a feel for the art of concentration. Remember to stay relaxed. Yes, you may have to tear your attention away from alluring distractions. But you’re sure to find that the state of deep, relaxed concentration is soothing, renewing, and can even be blissful.

Ananda’s founder, Swami Kriyananda, was able to remember a phone number hours later after just glancing at it. He said that all it takes is concentrating with enough energy. When he would put his mind to something, he usually wasn’t even aware of what was going on around him.

1. Find a peaceful setting
If possible, set aside a room or a corner of your living space that is quiet and free from distractions, where your TV and computer aren’t visible, your phone is silent, and other distractions are beyond arm’s reach.

If you don’t have a free space, hang a curtain or place a screen in a corner of a room, so you won’t be able to see the busy world outside. If need be, you can simply sit facing a blank wall, where you can’t see anything immediately distracting.

2. Set a goal
Close your eyes for a moment. Think of a reasonable expectation for what you’ll be able to accomplish. A good way to decide what’s reasonable is to estimate how long the task will take – and double it, because unforeseen delays will be unavoidable.

Write down your goal, so you can refer to it if you become distracted. Think of the many reasons the task is worth investing your time and concentration and write them down. The founder of the San Francisco Bay Area’s most successful woman-owned business says she finds it a lot easier to achieve her goals if she writes them down as soon as she thinks of them. A Chinese saying is: “The best memory is not half so firm as faded ink.”

3. Do one thing at a time
If you try to do two or more things at once you won’t get either of them done more effectively – you’ll simply ruin your concentration by dividing it, so you’ll take longer to get both tasks done, and you’ll make more mistakes. A study at Stanford University  found that “chronic multi-taskers” had poorer memories, were more easily distracted, and were less able to switch easily between tasks.

By focusing on just one thing in small matters, you’ll find it becomes easier to concentrate while facing big challenges.

4. Take a break – and drink a glass of water
At first glance, taking time off would seem to be counterintuitive. If you plan to work longer than an hour,  though, it will actually help your concentration to get up and walk around for 5-10 minutes, preferably outdoors. This will increase the blood flow to your brain, which will help you think more clearly, and will relieve the frustration of working past the point where your brain gets tired and wants to rebel.

Drinking water will prevent dehydration, which leads to dizziness and tiredness. A study of athletes found that those who were dehydrated lost up to 40 percent of their strength.

5. Meditate
Many meditation techniques are based on focusing the mind on a single thought, mantra, or object, which can noticeably improve your concentration, even if you only practice it 10 minutes a day. Here is a simple technique you can try.

It’s good to remember that the most important thing in concentration is not, in fact, to force the mind to concentrate, but to become deeply relaxed and intensely interested in whatever you hold your attention on.

Swami Kriyananda often said that the mind tends to follow whatever feelings are uppermost in the heart. By cultivating positive, expansive feelings such as love, compassion, and kindness we find that the mind becomes easily focused.

Try This
For a day, or a week, try doing one thing at a time. When you sit down to a meal, focus entirely on the meal, and even avoid talking if possible.

Whatever you do, put your full attention on it. At the end of the day or week, check how you feel. Are you more relaxed, more peaceful? Did you accomplish more than you expected? If you make one-pointed concentration a habit, you’ll notice that you find your activities more enjoyable. Instead of seeing concentration as a strain, you’ll find that it becomes a very fulfilling part of your day.

source: https://www.ananda.org/blog

The 10 Best Foods To Boost Brain Power and Improve Memory

This is fascinating, we are all starting to understand the importance of ‘feeding’ our brains the right words to stay positive and centred. But, how many of us recognise that the foods we eat have such a dramatic impact on the workings of our brain?

By Brainy Dose 

The 10 Best Foods To Boost Brain Power and Improve Memory 

You recognise that the way you eat can have an effect on your frame, however what you put in your mouth additionally affects your temper, your mind’s electricity, your memory, and even your potential to deal with pressure, complex problems, or simple every day responsibilities!

Though your brain weighs only 2% of your body weight, it consumes 20% of the calories you consume! And the greater nutrients you consume, the sharper your mind works.  So, to be naturally brainy, eat the following foods liberally! 

Number 1 – Legumes Legumes are an splendid source of complicated carbohydrates! These complex carbohydrates also are mixed with fibre that gradual down absorption, offering a steady supply of glucose to the brain without the risks of sugar spikes associated with many different sugar sources. Legumes also are rich in folate — a B vitamin vital to brain function! 

Number 2 – Mint Mint is a superb source of diet A and diet C. Vitamin A can assist improve mastering abilities and increase mind plasticity, even as nutrition C is said to protect against cognitive decline.

According to research, even the fragrance of mint influences mind functioning with the aid of boosting alertness and memory. It also enables enhance primary clerical competencies, together with typing and memorization. 

 Number 3 – Broccoli Broccoli isn’t simplest a superfood for the whole body, it’s also one of the pleasant foods to enhance mind energy and improve your reminiscence! It’s rich in calcium, diet C, B vitamins, beta-carotene, iron, fibre, and diet K. These nutrients guard towards free radicals, they keep right blood movement, and cast off heavy metals that can damage the mind.

Broccoli’s potassium content material allows the apprehensive machine, which in flip helps the mind. Research additionally indicates that broccoli can help make contributions to the mind restoration itself within the event of an injury! That’s pretty effective stuff for a vegetable, and it’s now not just restricted to broccoli, however extends to the cruciferous vegetable own family, which includes cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. 

Number 4 – Beets One of the best methods to increase mind power naturally is to encompass greater beets for your diet. They’re high in nitrates, which help boom blood glide in parts of the mind related to govt functioning.

Beets also incorporate plenty of nutrition B9, that can aid cognitive functioning and delay dementia. In addition, beets are wealthy in carotenoids, which could help increase mind functioning and stave off despair. 

 Number five – Seeds Sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds in particular, are exceptional for the brain! They incorporate a rich mix of protein, omega fatty acids, and B vitamins. These seeds also include tryptophan, which the mind converts into serotonin to boost mood and fight melancholy.

Eating a handful of seeds each day will also offer your every day advocated quantity of zinc, which can help decorate reminiscence and questioning talents! Soaked and sprouted seeds are even more healthy! 

Number 6 – Nuts Especially walnuts and almonds, they are some of the pleasant brain-boosting ingredients on the earth, and that they’re great for the worried machine too. Nuts are a remarkable source of omega three and omega 6 fatty acids, nutrition B6; and diet E, which has been shown to enhance mind energy and save you many kinds of dementia by means of protecting the brain from free radicals. Though it’s far really worth noting, nuts contain a few anti-vitamins – inclusive of phytic acid, so it’s an awful lot more healthy if you soak them overnight before you eat them. 

Number 7 – Quinoa Quinoa is an excellent supply of complex carbohydrates and fibre to balance blood sugar even as providing the vital glucose the brain craves.

Quinoa is also a good source of iron which facilitates preserve the blood oxygenated, whilst B vitamins stability mood and protect blood vessels. It is also gluten unfastened for people with sensitivities to this protein.

 But, like most seeds, grains, and nuts, quinoa should be soaked overnight before cooking. 

Number eight – Avocado Good best fats are extraordinarily essential for brain fitness, and avocados are a simply right supply of mono-unsaturated fat, omega three, and omega 6 fatty acids.

These growth blood float to the brain, lower ldl cholesterol, and useful resource within the absorption of antioxidants. Avocados also come with many antioxidants in their personal, along with diet E, which guard the frame and the mind from unfastened radical harm. They’re additionally an awesome source of potassium and vitamin K—each shield the mind from the chance of stroke. 

Number nine – Blueberries These berries are antioxidant powerhouses, defensive the brain from oxidative harm and pressure that cause untimely getting old, Alzheimer’s, and dementia.

The flavonoids in blueberries also improve the verbal exchange among neurons, which ends up in advanced reminiscence, mastering, and improved cognitive functions – along with reasoning, decision making, verbal comprehension, and numerical ability. 

 Number 10 – Coconut Oil Coconut oil contains medium chain triglycerides that the body uses for energy, leaving glucose for the mind. It also appears to have a beneficial effect on blood strain, blood sugar, and ldl cholesterol. 

And something that advantages the coronary heart and movement, additionally blessings the mind! Coconut oil additionally acts as an anti-inflammatory and has been connected within the prevention of Alzheimer’s and dementia.

While there’s no single mind meals that could completely protect against age-associated disorders, listening to what you consume, gives you the best chances of getting all the nutrients you want for cognitive fitness. 

Eating a healthy, balanced weight-reduction plan that consists of those 10 brain-boosting foods will help keep your memory, awareness and cognizance as sharp as can be. 

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