Good news: Scientists have discovered a simple, effective trick to reach your optimal performance and be the smartest human you can be.
Bad news: You’re not gonna do it.
Here is the trick:
- Breathe deep,
- Drink more water,
- Sleep 8 hours every night
- Eat more vegetables,
- Move your ass
- Go outside
For optimal results, do it every day.
I am sure I am not blowing your mind with novel insight.
You probably are aware that air, water, sleep, and exercise are important. But because these are such basics, we tend to discount them. They are not newsworthy, they won’t make the headlines, and they don’t help you delude yourself that „this time will be different, because you have one more magic trick up your sleeve.”
You probably have heard those points before, but you have a list of concerns and cannot deal with a yet-another morning routine that will take your precious time away from you.
But there is more good news: taking care of these basics seriously will have an immediate effect on your to-do list.
“Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance.”
Power of Full Engagement
In a best-selling book „Power of Full Engagement”, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz have listed 4 sources of energy that can fuel your attention, performance, and productivity:
- physical
- emotional
- mental
- spiritual
And your „Biggest Bang for the Buck” is the physical level by far – it is the cornerstone of the other ones. Unfortunately, Humanity has a fascinating ability to forget important lessons.
Breathing
Physical energy is derived from the interaction between oxygen and glucose.
„Surely I know how to breathe!” You may think to yourself.
If you feel constant anxiety or are low-key stressed all the time, here me out: you may be breathing incorrectly. Shallow breathing can very often influence your mood, focus and energy levels. Throughout our evolution, we would shallow breathe only when there is danger, or we have to chase after prey.
So guess what? Your body is releasing cortisol based on your crappy breathing.
But you are sitting in front of your laptop, doing none of those things and yet getting stressed like your life depends on it.
Proper breathing:
- Your arms are back
- Your belly sticks out while you are breathing (that is the diaphragm)
- Air goes in through your nose
- Inhale is at least 3-4 seconds
Watch this video of two navy seals explaining how to breathe:
A sidenote about your laptop/smartphone:
When you are sitting in front of a laptop or holding your smartphone with two hands, you are constricting your lungs.
- Your arms get close together, closing your chest and lungs
- Your head is down, constricting the air canals
- This position is similar to how you would hide from a predator, prompting your body to release cortisol
Homework:
- Watch the navy seal video
- Set a timer in your phone for every 3 hours that says “breathe”
- If you work on your laptop, buy a keyboard and a monitor.
Drinking Water
Drinking water, we have found, is perhaps the most undervalued source of physical energy renewal.
Power of Full Engagement
Your body has lots of water, chances are you know that. But if you are like me, you probably keep putting other stuff in it, like:
- Coke
- Coffee
- Tea
Even though they contain it, none of those things ARE water.
They have much lower PH (they are acidic), which means your body has to work hard to filter them before the water content can be used in metabolic processes.
On top of that, beverages tend to flush out the essential salts ( Magnesium, Calcium, Potassium ) out of the body. All of these elements are needed to keep your brain spinning to ingest my insightful blog posts.
A study published in “Frontiers in Human Neuroscience” has found evidence that drinking water improves cognitive performance in both children and adults. Hydration for health is collecting empirical evidence for the many benefits of just drinking water.
Homework:
- Buy a water bottle and put it by your computer
- Put a post-it on it that says „Drink Me.”
- Drink whenever you feel foggy
Sleeping
Loss of sleep hurts attention, executive function, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning, and even motor dexterity.
Brain rules
I am writing this for you as much as I do it for my own benefit. Every once in a while, I will get deep into a fun automation project – a book, or a new Netflix series and realize that it’s 3 am already.
The next day is totally wasted and I promise to never repeat that mistake until the next time. Goddamnit, Artur!!
- Yes, you need 8 hours of sleep.
- You are not as productive at 10 pm as you thought
- Go to bed
Arianna Huffington, the founder of HuffPost has decided to devote her entire career to promoting sleep and in this TED Talk, she explains why:
Homework:
- Set an alarm that says „Go to sleep” at, say 21:45
- Go to sleep when the alarm rings
Moving your Ass
Physical activity is cognitive candy. Civilization, while giving us such seemingly forward advances as modern medicine and spatulas, also has had a nasty side effect. It gives us more opportunities to sit on our butts.
Brain rules
Apart from the countless evidence that exercising keeps your body healthy, it also helps you think.
Read more about Ass-Shaking here
Exercise gets blood to your brain, bringing it glucose for energy and oxygen to soak up the toxic electrons that are left over. It also stimulates the protein that keeps neurons connecting.
Homework:
- When you wake up, go for a fast walk, every day for a week. Just try it.
- Report back
Basics are your key to success
We search for “advanced tricks” and “pro tips” in a vain effort to save ourselves time and effort on the basics.
The harsh reality is that mastering the basics is the real “trick”. We gloss over them, because they are intellectually simple. Yet simple is not easy and it takes practice to engrain proper habits and foundations.
Maybe someday I will. Until them, I’ll keep having to remind myself to drink more water and move once in a while.