3 Productivity Hacks to Add to Your Routine

We’re going to start with an interesting observation that was published decades ago, called “Parkinson’s Law.”  And no, this has nothing to do with Parkinson’s Disease.

1. Use Parkinson’s Law to your advantage

Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” Simply put, this means that if we give ourselves a timeline to complete a task, we’ll take up the entire time we give ourselves. There are a couple of reasons this happens. Mostly, it’s because when we give ourselves more time than the task really takes, then the task increases in complexity. If we give ourselves a week to finish something we can do in a day, we overcomplicate it. We make it feel like “I better have a week’s worth of work to show for this now.” The problem is that we typically don’t ‘actually’ put in a full week’s worth of work. Mostly, we take up time just stressing and thinking about how we have more work to do by week’s end.

Another reason is we mentally put things off until the end of a deadline is because we think “why take time now?” I can always compress it into an hour later.”

We tend to give ourselves a little longer than we need either: A) because we want some legroom or a buffer, like a safety net to make us feel like we have more than enough time or B), and it’s usually this one because we just aren’t very good at judging how long something really takes.

With a little understanding of the human nature of time management, we can use it to our advantage. As you’re given deadlines for projects or set deadlines, you might be surprised how adaptable humans are at adjusting to decreased deadlines

2. A new way to retain information

In the 19th century, a psychologist named Hermann Ebbinghaus conducted experiments to measure just how quickly we forget newly learned information. This is now known as the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. This curve shows that our retention is only about 58% after just 20 minutes of learning new material. That retention then goes down even more after an hour, and a little more a few hours later. Then after a few days, we only retain about a third of what we’ve learned.

Keep in mind this research that goes back nearly 150 years. This is not a new wave of forgetfulness in a world full of social media and distractions. This shows that it is truly human nature to forget things shortly after learning them. There are a few factors that can lead to forgetfulness but typically speaking, people generally forget things at about the same rate. There isn’t much evidence to suggest that some of us are just “forgetful” people.

In order to help make sure we retain new info, there’s a method of reviewing that demonstrates increased retention. After you learn something new, review the info for 10 minutes 24 hours after the initial learning period; then review it again 7 days later for 5 minutes; and then again for 5 minutes 30 days later.

3. Utilize the foundation for adult learning

Dr. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at Stanford, is making some waves across the internet right now for bringing to light on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast that adult brains just aren’t great at learning new skills. Our brains are essentially built to learn new skills as children and then replicate those skills as adults. But that doesn’t mean old dogs can’t learn new tricks; it just means we have to work a little harder at it.

But the process is a rather rudimentary one. Step one is to have to practice a high level of focus. Dr. Huberman explains that focusing on the task to the point of having your adrenaline pumping helps with neuroplasticity. Some hacks to help reach this state include a light workout, a cold shower, high-intensity breathing, caffeine, or even nicotine. Step two, the part that helps lock in learning, is being able to achieve a level of deep sleep (or deep level of relaxation). Giving ourselves intervals between intense focus and the polar opposite helps lock in step-by-step skills to help us continue improving skills we already have.

Questions or comments? Email me at [email protected].