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Use the Pomodoro Technique for Better Productivity

Research suggests that our natural ability to concentrate wanes between 10 to 40 minutes.

Spending longer on a task will get you diminishing results due to:

  • the primacy and recency effect (we are likely to remember the beginning and end of a learning session)
  • our minds start wandering after over extended periods of concentration.

👉 Work in 25-minute intervals with 5-minute breaks in between. After four Pomodores, take a longer 15 to 30-minute break.

Story: Your Brain Creates Wealth 🧠💸

One day at a power plant, everything comes to an abrupt halt. The machines went offline. It's been hours, and none of the workers could track down the problem, so the head of operations is desperate and calls the best local help he can find.

The expert arrives, goes to one of the numerous beams among all the electrical boxes, opens one of them, and stares at the various screws and wires inside. He turns one screw, and, like magic, everything starts working again, and the plant comes back to life.

The head of operations was relieved until he was told he owes $10,000 to the technician: "You were only here for a few minutes and turned a single screw! Anyone could have done that. I need an itemized bill, please."

The bill read:

  • Turning screw: $1
  • Knowing which screw to turn: $9,999

👉 The lesson of this story: Brainpower trumps brute strength. The modern economy rewards rare applied knowledge.

Remove Mental Limits — The Limitless Model

If there is a gap between your current reality and your desired reality, there is a mental limit that's keeping you from it in the following areas:

  • Mindset Limit: a low belief in yourself, your capabilities, what you deserve, or what is possible.
  • Motivation Limit: you lack the drive, meaning, or energy to take action.
  • Methods Limit: you are following ineffective methods or processes.

👉 All of these are in your head – you can release and replace them.

Lack of Discipline: The ‘Do Something’ Principle

Most of us think that motivation is needed to start a particular task.

❌ People who operate on this belief most often don’t get anything done because they think like this:

Inspiration ➡️ Motivation ➡️ Desirable Action

✅ If you operate under this belief, you are missing out on an essential fact that your actions create further emotional reactions and inspirations that will motivate you even more to take additional steps:

Action ➡️ Inspiration ➡️ Motivation

💡 This is an endless loop creating the ‘fire’ you see in highly motivated people’s eyes.

👉 Use this fact to your advantage: Do ‘something’ (aka start), and motivation will follow.

Horn Effect — Too Quick to Judge

The opposite of the halo effect: where one characteristic of a person negatively influences our impression of them. The most obvious example is racism, but it extends to other traits, like height, weight, etc.

Dating apps like Tinder are a modern example of this. We can look at an image for a split second and swipe left, a brief glance being enough to decide ‘not my type’.

👉 As with the halo effect, you have to think critically and be honest if your preferences or even prejudices cloud your judgment.

The Halo Effect: How Beautiful People Trick Us

This bias occurs when one trait or characteristic of a person positively influences our overall impression of them.

💡A typical example is assuming someone is competent or trustworthy because they are physically attractive or tall.

👉 To combat this bias, try to become more aware of it and honestly question whether your preferences cloud your judgment. There’s no shame in having preferences - they’re part of being human - however, be sure they aren’t at the forefront of your decisions.

Anchoring Bias — An Easy Way to Be Blindsided ⚓️

This bias occurs when someone relies too heavily on the first piece of information they receive—an ‘anchoring’ fact— and base their future opinions or choices on it.

💡 The anchoring bias is how price reductions and sales events work: The anchoring fact is a product’s starting price, so its sale price looks great in comparison.

You can find the anchoring effect everywhere in life: in sales, when asking for a favor (asking for a big favor which may get denied and then asking for the real favor), delivering news, etc.

👉 It’s easy to become blindsided and completely forget other alternatives that may be cheaper or better suited for us.

Fundamental Attribution Bias — Are You a Hypocrite?

Though it has a long name, you could call this the hypocrisy bias. It’s when we attribute someone else’s negative behaviors to their personality - while blaming our own similar behavior on external factors.

🤨 For instance, when a colleague is late to work, you might assume they’re lazy or disorganized without considering illness, traffic, etc. However, when you’re late because of a flat tire, you expect others to blame it on the tire rather than personal traits.

👉 To overcome this, see through the shallow judgment and recognize when you’re jumping to conclusions.

Change Your Inner Self-Talk

We all have these conversations in our heads. Sometimes positive and other times negative ones. Self-criticism, self-shaming, and self-discouragement are just a few examples.

The voice never shuts up, it will convince you to do things you know you shouldn't do, and it will lie to you.

💡 Self-mastery is about controlling this voice and controlling how you respond to it.

👉 It is based on our subconscious beliefs that we have formed by past experiences, which means we can change them to serve us better. Instead of listening to your inner voice, talk to it. Find its logical mistakes and correct it where it is wrong repeatedly.

All-Or-Nothing Thinking ❌

All-Or-Nothing Thinking is a thought process that is common among people struggling with recurring negative thoughts.

You believe with certainty that you won, or you lost. That you are motivated to do something, or not. That something only has good or bad qualities.

It is a cognitive distortion that causes you only to evaluate life in extreme terms.

🥗 As an example, you may think that breaking your diet once is a total failure, and you stop. Or you may treat a B on an exam as the equivalent of an F.

The dangers are that you fall into negative spirals where your thinking affects your actions that reinforce this kind of thinking again.

👉 To avoid this, regularly reflect on your day and recognize where you may have applied black or white thinking.

Prioritize Learning to Experience the Compound Effect

Humans want to complete tasks instantly with as little effort as possible and deem everything else as unimportant. This thought process misses you learning lessons that will help you when the same challenge arises again.

Most of us forget (or are too impatient) to experience this principle:

Every lesson learned in the past will help you make better decisions in the future, thus increasing the chance of you getting what you want.

👉 As you progress through life, make sure to pick up important lessons on your way to avoid making the same mistakes twice.

Could’ve Done ➡️ Could Do ➡️ Do

If there’s something you feel you could have done and still haven’t, bring it into the present by turning it into a ‘could do’. From there, change it from something you could do - to something you’re doing.

🎸 Let’s take learning the guitar: Instead of thinking ‘I could have learned the guitar (when I was young)’, think ‘I could learn the guitar’. Then proceed to learn the guitar.

👉 Not all of your regrets have to remain regrets; some of them, you can remedy.