Maximizing Your Productivity by Building Better Habits

Old habits die hard, but what if that was a good thing? What if you could give your productivity in your career, home life, and every other sphere a boost by building habits that help you instead of ones that pull you down? 

In our last post in this series on maximizing your productivity, we looked at the different kinds of noise that disrupt our focus and drain our energy, like the clamor of a loud machine outside your office window or the stress of an important meeting coming up. In this post, we’re zooming in on one of the three types of noise – physiological noise – and sharing how building better habits is the key to overcoming that noise.

Where to Start

Maybe this already sounds daunting to you because 1- new habits are hard to build and stick to, and 2- there are so many things in your life that may need improvement you wouldn’t know where to start. Well, good news! You’re not alone in those concerns, and there is something you can do about them. Start small and start big. 

1- If new habits are hard to build and stick to, then start with small, achievable goals and once those are easy, level up to a goal a little harder.

2- If there are too many areas of your life that you want to improve than you can count, then start with the big areas, the most important ones, the ones that will probably affect the smaller ones too. 

Here are the three important areas that need good habits the most and ideas for how to build those habits so you can sustain them (so then they can sustain you).

Sleeping

Sleep deprivation has kind of become a joke at this point. We’re all a little sleep deprived, right? People repeat the classic line, ‘we’ll sleep when we’re dead,’ and go on grinding. But if you’re planning on getting it all done, that kind of mindset is not a real option. In a TED Talk he gave in 2019, sleep scientist Matt Walker informs his audience that “sleep, unfortunately, is not an optional lifestyle luxury. Sleep is a non-negotiable, biological necessity.” He explains that sleep deprivation has immediate effects on our day to day lives for our bodies and our brains. Walker shares the alarming findings of two different sleep studies in his talk. The first study showed that, after just one all-nighter, your brain’s ability to make new memories drops by 40%. The second study looked at people’s immune systems after they had been limited to 4 hours of sleep. This study found that, after just one night of sleeping only 4 hours, the activity of the immune system’s defense cells drops by 70%. Clearly, losing sleep is a bigger problem than we often think, which means that getting better sleep should be a higher priority than it often is!

Here’s how to start small in building a better sleep habit. Pick your times and stick to them. Walker advises his audience that regularity is key to getting better sleep. Naps and caffeine won’t help you keep going nearly as much as a regular sleep schedule will. Go to bed at the same time each night as best as you can and get up at the same time each morning as best as you can. 

Hydration & Nutrition

After you’ve woken up at your designated time in the morning, you need more than just a cup of coffee or a protein shake to give your body the tools it needs to get everything done in a day. And, just like sleep, it doesn’t make you cooler if you can cover all your responsibilities without being hydrated and nourished. It just makes you more likely to burn out. Every single part of your body needs water. Our bodies mostly are water, and we also need calories to burn if we plan on knocking out all our tasks for the day. Essentially, an iced latte won’t cover it. But there’s a lot out there telling you how much water to drink and how to balance your diet to maximize your productivity. Where do you even begin?

Here’s how to start small in building better hydration and nutrition habits. For hydration, cut your body weight in half, swap the pounds for ounces, and that’s how much water you should be drinking everyday. But we’re working our way up to that, so start with half that number. Or a third. Remember, start with a goal that sounds easy and doable in an average work day, then, once you have it down, add a little more and repeat. (And yes, flavored water counts.) For nutrition, approach it the same way – start small by making sure you’re having two servings of fruits or vegetables each day, then start adding in the priorities of protein, grains, etc. The key to building sustainable habits is by building them one brick at a time.

Exercising

You probably don’t need any convincing that incorporating exercise into your lifestyle is really important, it’s the reason everyone buys a gym membership on January 1. Exercise makes you stronger, happier, and all-around healthier, but it also has the especially helpful benefit of helping increase your productivity. You have to spend some energy to get more energy. If you’re sleeping good hours, eating good foods, and drinking lots of water but still don’t have as much energy as you wish you did, think about how much you move each day. Are you stuck at your laptop most of the day? Sitting down, looking at a screen? Chances are, if you can add the third habit of getting consistent exercise, then start feeling better pretty quick.

Here’s how to start small in building a better exercise habit. Find the kind of exercise you enjoy and make space in your schedule to do it once a week. Try different things until you find one you like! Maybe it’s taking walks in the afternoons or going to a zumba class one morning a week. We’re not all made to be marathon runners or competitive weightlifters. But we all thrive when we get our heart rate up on a regular basis. After you can easily exercise once a week, move to twice. You know the drill by now.

Conclusion

You can’t get it all done if you’re falling apart at the seams and your body is filled with noise. As we said in the previous post, one of the keys to maximizing your productivity is minimizing the noise in your life and in yourself, and the place to start is with simple but significant habits. Developing healthy habits and building them up one step at a time is one of the most effective ways to make yourself more effective and to set yourself up for success in everything you do. It’s true that you’ll never be perfect in these areas, but don’t let that stop you from being better.

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