Our brains work in some ways like a computer: they perform less well when they have several applications running in the background.
What are these applications? How do they affect our daily efficiency?
They are more or less conscious thoughts. When we try to do several things at once, we interfere with our concentration. Similarly, if we think about a problem that we have not solved, it remains stuck in the back of our mind and prevents us from living in the present moment.
Be careful, it is possible to do several things at the same time, only if only one of them requires our true concentration. Thus, you can clean your living room while listening to a podcast or run while listening to a book. It’s up to you to assess whether the two actions can conflict.
All these parasitic thoughts run through our minds throughout the day. To remedy this, it is necessary to perform a kind of “batch processing”, i.e. a treatment by batches of all these data. To do this, you need to give your unconscious mind and your conscious mind time to work in symbiosis: your conscious mind stops for a moment while your unconscious mind processes this information. In short, you need to engage in activities that finally allow your conscious mind to “rest”. These activities include meditation and certain physical activities. Here, no question of listening to a book or a radio program because you will not allow your conscious mind to disconnect.
Fighting information voracity
You also need to get rid of this information bulimia that we all have. Wanting to know every moment of the day what’s going on in the world cannot help you make real progress in life unless your professional activity depends on it.
This is one of the most tempting pitfalls because information is free and widely available on all subjects. However, not giving in to it could give you an undeniable advantage. By voluntarily deciding to reduce the amount of information you ingest each day, you are behaving like a top athlete with regard to your diet. If you are more selective in the information you consume, you will “lighten your mind” while giving more weight to qualitative content. Preferably, you need to improve yourself in the themes that have a direct link with your short and medium term goals.
Understand, brain congestion is your biggest enemy when it comes to productivity. Wanting to do something without putting your heart or soul into it because your mind is elsewhere will only bring you meager results. Make the effort to know what you really enjoy, what drives you. Choose to eliminate the tasks that do not bring value to your life and your projects. This explains why it is more than necessary to make the effort every day to question our actions, even the most trivial ones. Thus, you will be able to gradually bring clarity to your daily life. Be scrupulous, make sure you preserve the 4 most important resources directly correlated to your success: your time (during which you devote your attention), your energy, your morale and your concentration. These four squires are at your service, but it is up to you to protect them by eliminating anything that might get in their way. If you don’t act like a protective knight towards them, they won’t be able to give you their valuable help.
