Research shows that not all interruptions during your work have the same effect. There is an important difference between work-related and non-work-related interruptions.

Work-related interruptions (such as your manager stopping by to ask about a task, or a colleague messaging you about a project you’re working on together) actually have a positive effect on how engaged you feel during your workday. This goes against the common belief that all interruptions are bad for your productivity. Work-related interruptions don’t break your concentration; instead, they help you stay more connected to your work and colleagues.

Non-work-related interruptions (just chatting about the weather, sports, or what you’re going to eat tonight) do have the negative effect you might expect: they make you less engaged and disrupt your work rhythm so much that it really gets in the way of your work.

Related:

• Interruptions aren’t intrinsically distinct from other events, they’re just events most professionals don’t want around. The distinction is in our head.
• Messy work environments have no effect on either creativity or executive functions

When you create a podcast and want to publish extra content related to a specific episode, this bonus content receives the same episode number as the original episode. This means that both episodes, the main episode and the bonus episode, are published under the same number in your podcast feed.

“Revenge bedtime procrastination” is a phenomenon where you deliberately delay your bedtime to regain a sense of control over your life. This often occurs in people who have little personal time during the day due to busy schedules or demanding jobs. By staying up later at night, you try to reclaim some personal time, even if it comes at the expense of your sleep.

Although the term is relatively new, the behavior it describes has been known for a longer time. After a long day, you want to relax, for example by watching TV or scrolling on your phone, even though you know you have to get up early the next day.

While it’s understandable that you want this time for yourself, delaying your bedtime can have negative consequences for your health. Lack of sleep can lead to fatigue, reduced concentration, and even long-term health issues. Therefore, it’s important to find a balance between your personal time and getting enough sleep.

Related:

• Good sleepers are more productive and earn more
• Well-rested people are more positive
• The optimal amount of free time seems to be between 2 and 4 hours per day
• Hard work

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the learning process offers a unique opportunity to reduce unnecessary difficulties. For example, AI can help you by providing clear explanations, offering useful examples, and giving you quick feedback. This can eliminate frustrating obstacles that you often encounter while learning, such as unclear sources or insufficient practice material. By reducing this unnecessary hassle, you can better focus on truly understanding the material and developing your skills.

But beware: AI is not meant to avoid the essential efforts you need for effective learning. Essential efforts include activities like active practice, retrieving information from memory, and consciously working towards a good understanding of the subject matter. These activities are important for building knowledge that sticks. While AI can make your learning process easier, it should not replace the core activities you need to truly learn.

The danger exists that you might use AI to avoid the necessary effort, for example, by simply copying answers without understanding the underlying ideas. This can lead to superficial knowledge that does not last long. Therefore, it is important to find the balance between reducing unnecessary hassle and maintaining the essential effort needed to truly learn. By using AI wisely, you can reap its benefits without jeopardizing the real learning process.

Related:

• Working slower promotes deeper thinking processes and better results
• Motivation

In communication, it’s important to adapt your style to that of your conversation partner. This can be challenging if your partner speaks quickly and you struggle to keep up. Instead of speeding up your own speech, which can lead to stumbling over words and confusion, it’s better to use non-verbal cues. Hand gestures and head movements are super helpful in this regard. By subtly moving your hand or nodding, you can encourage your partner to continue talking without having to speak faster yourself.

Non-verbal communication is a powerful tool in conversations. With hand gestures, you can hold your partner’s attention and encourage them to speak faster. By nodding your head, you show that you understand and that they can continue. These tricks ensure that your partner feels understood and can tell their story at their own pace, while you can think and respond calmly.

By smartly using non-verbal signals, you can communicate better without having to speak faster yourself. This is especially useful in work situations where it’s important that you both understand each other well. If you adjust your non-verbal communication to your partner’s pace, your conversations become more effective, and you both feel better understood.

The idea that you can concentrate better by hiding your phone sounds logical, but research shows that this is not always effective. Although people indeed reach for their phones less often when they are further away, they often replace this time by sitting at their computer, keeping the total screen time roughly the same.

In the study, participants had to work for 5 hours, of which an average of 3.5 hours was spent productively, regardless of whether their phone was within reach or not.

Notable findings:

• With your phone within reach, you spend almost twice as long on it, an average of 14 minutes more per session
• The duration per use remains the same, but you pick up your phone more frequently when it’s nearby
• When the smartphone was not accessible, participants spent more time on their computer, but the number of activities on the computer remained unchanged

This suggests that the problem is not the devices themselves, but rather your habits and time management. Concentration issues seem to be more related to your environment and activities than to the technology itself.

The research emphasizes that it is more important to adjust your habits around technology use than to focus on the devices. Hiding your phone is therefore not necessarily the solution; a more conscious and controlled approach to technology can be more effective in reducing distraction and stress.

Related

• Reduce mobile phone use to improve your life satisfaction, well-being, and health
• Mindfulness meditation reduces the size of your amygdala, making you less prone to distractions and procrastination
• We pick up our phones over 350 times per day, almost four times more than in 2019

People can often solve their own problems. They sometimes just need a little help to find the right solution. A coach therefore does not provide ready-made answers but helps people find answers themselves. This is like peeling an onion: layer by layer, you get closer to the core of the problem.

A coach asks questions, listens carefully, and helps people think about what they are saying. This makes someone feel safe to think about what they want to achieve and the problems they encounter. By discussing this together, someone gets to know themselves better. This gives more confidence to make decisions on their own. The coach only helps - the person themselves knows best what is good for them.

It is important that the coach believes that someone can find answers themselves. When people realize they can come up with solutions on their own, they feel stronger. They then take more responsibility for their own growth. Because they have found the solution themselves, it suits them well. As a result, the changes they make are often lasting and they feel good about them.

Related

• Trust in yourself, the process, and the client

Under pressure, we can indeed accomplish more work in less time, but this often comes at the expense of accuracy and depth. Researchers like Don Moore and Elizabeth Tenney have shown that while deadlines can help us complete tasks that might otherwise be left unfinished, the quality of the work often suffers due to the rush. This is because, under pressure, we tend to make quicker decisions and spend less time checking our work, increasing the likelihood of errors.

Additionally, the heightened state of alertness we experience under time pressure, caused by substances like dopamine and adrenaline, can give us the feeling that we are performing better. However, this state of readiness can also be achieved in other ways, without the drawbacks of hasty work. For example, some people use physical activities like trampoline jumping to get into an energetic and focused state. This can help to be productive without the risks associated with working under time pressure, such as overlooking details or making unnecessary mistakes.

Finally, it is important to recognize that while time pressure can help us work faster, it is not always the best way to ensure quality. It is essential to find a balance between speed and accuracy and to understand when it makes sense to use time pressure as a tool to increase productivity. By being mindful of deadlines and how we allocate our time, we can work both efficiently and effectively.

Related

• Do the right thing, in the right way, and at the right moment
• Take the time before doing something you can’t undo
• Try to complete new tasks on the day you receive them
• Before you start (a task, a work session, a project…), set a time budget
• Working slower promotes deeper thinking processes and better results
• A little time pressure while working on your tasks helps to reduce ‘attention residue’

Trust is the foundation of coaching and personal growth.

It starts with self-confidence, which is very important for any coach or professional. When you believe in yourself and your knowledge, you can better help and support others. This self-confidence helps you remain calm and assured, even when things get tough. Remember, as a coach, you don’t need to have all the answers; your task is to help the client find their own answers.

The process, such as the GROW model (Goals, Reality, Options, Will), offers a structured approach that helps streamline conversations and provide direction. By following the process, coaches can work step by step towards the client’s goals. Trusting this process means believing that the client, by taking the right steps, will come to important insights. The model helps both the coach and the client stay focused and goal-oriented.

Finally, trust in the client is essential. Every client already has the answers within them, and the coach helps them find these answers. This means believing that the client can grow and change. By being genuinely interested in the client and their story, you naturally ask the right questions that help them move forward. This mix of self-confidence, trust in the process, and trust in the client ensures successful coaching and personal growth.

Related

• The client being coached already has the answer within themselves

On MacOS, you can easily hide files or folders by using the command line. This can be useful if you want to keep certain files out of sight without deleting them.

To do this, first open a terminal window. You can do this by pressing Command+Space, typing “Terminal,” and pressing Enter. In the terminal window that appears, use the command chflags hidden <file path>, replacing <file path> with the path to the file or folder you want to hide. This command marks the file or folder as hidden, making it no longer visible in Finder.

If you later decide that you want to make the file or folder visible again, you can use the same command with nohidden instead of hidden. This will make the file or folder visible again in Finder.

There has been much discussion about how blue light from screens affects our sleep, but new research shows that the impact may be smaller than we thought. Sleep experts have found that blue light causes you to fall asleep on average less than three minutes later. This means that the idea that blue light significantly disrupts your sleep is largely incorrect. Although using technology just before bedtime is sometimes linked to poorer sleep, there are other factors that have more influence, such as what you watch and notifications that can wake you up.

People often use technology to keep themselves occupied or to feel better, which can also affect their sleep habits. It is important to know that it is not so much the blue light that affects your sleep, but more how and why you use technology. Through self-control and help from others, you can use technology wisely before bedtime so that it does not negatively affect your sleep.

Related

• Good sleepers are more productive and earn more
• Reduce mobile phone use to improve your life satisfaction, well-being, and health

In the past, work was often simple and predictable. There were fixed processes and predictable outcomes, as Armand Hatchuel describes. This made it easy to measure and manage performance. If there were problems, such as a broken machine or a sick employee, managers could quickly intervene to achieve the same results.

Today, work is different. Hatchuel calls this “unconfined” work. It involves jobs like knowledge work, care work, and creative work, where you don’t know in advance what the outcome will be. Innovation and surprising outcomes are often the goal. This means you only know what the result is once it’s finished. There is a lot of uncertainty about how much effort it takes to achieve these unpredictable results. For example, a home care worker doesn’t know what they will encounter with a client, a designer doesn’t know how a client will react to an idea, and a software developer can’t always predict what problems will arise with the code.

Modern work is thus unconfined because it is not tied to fixed rules or predictable results. It requires a lot of flexibility and adaptability from workers, whether the work is physical or mental. The real challenge is dealing with the absence of boundaries and navigating the uncertainties and complexities that come with this type of work.

Related

• Professionals spend about 60% of their time on work about work
• Spend a little attention on planning and organizing your tasks, but not more than necessary; then, get to work
• Explore a map for each month’s cycle that not only includes things to do, but also things to avoid
• Hard work

Research shows that people often underestimate how much they enjoy just sitting and thinking. In a series of experiments with students, participants thought they would be bored if they had to wait in a quiet room. But in reality, they found it much more enjoyable than they expected. This shows that we often do not appreciate how important it is to take a moment to pause and reflect.

The idea of “niksen,” a Dutch word that means consciously doing nothing, fits well with these findings. Doing nothing can be seen as a way to give our minds a break, so we can relax and let our thoughts wander without distractions from the outside world. This is different from the modern habit of always being busy and seeking distractions, such as constantly checking internet news. By doing nothing, we can improve our mental health, as it gives us the opportunity to organize our thoughts and become more creative.

We often underestimate how valuable doing nothing can be, because we do not realize how interesting and enjoyable our own thoughts can be. People usually choose activities to keep busy, often because they are afraid of getting bored. But doing nothing can be surprisingly enriching, as shown by the positive responses of people in studies. If we learn to appreciate moments of rest more, we can learn to enjoy simply thinking and reflecting. This can ultimately contribute to a more balanced and satisfying life.

Related:

• Scatterfocus

Playing videos faster can be useful to save time. Research shows that you can watch videos at 1.5x or even 2x the normal speed without understanding less. This way, you can go through the videos faster and use the extra time to study more or watch the videos again. But be careful: if you go faster than 2x, you may not understand what is being said as well.

It is important to know that these results can vary. This depends on how difficult the videos are, how fast the speech is, and how much visual and audio content there is simultaneously. Often, comprehension issues arise from a lack of background information. Therefore, it is wise to first watch videos at a faster speed and then spend extra time on the difficult parts or review them, especially right before a test.

Spending at least two hours per week in nature can have significant benefits for health and well-being. A study in the United Kingdom, which surveyed nearly 20,000 participants, found that people who spent at least 120 minutes per week in nature reported better self-reported health and well-being. The likelihood of reporting good health or high well-being significantly increased with 120 minutes or more of nature contact per week. These positive associations peaked between 200 and 300 minutes per week, with no further gain from additional time in nature.

It doesn’t matter how these 120 minutes per week are achieved; both one long walk and multiple shorter visits per week can provide the same benefits. This suggests that the flexibility in planning nature visits makes it easier for people to integrate this habit into their busy lives.

Related:

• Do things that makes you happy everyday, since happy workers are 12% more productive

Starting meetings on time significantly contributes to both the satisfaction and effectiveness of the participants. Research shows that when meetings start late, this leads to lower satisfaction with the outcomes of the meeting. Participants not only have a negative attitude towards the meeting itself, but also towards the results that come out of it. This is because a late start is often accompanied by negative socio-emotional behaviors, such as frustration and impatience, which can undermine productivity and collaboration within the group.

In addition, experimental studies show that starting meetings on time has a positive influence on the expected and actual effectiveness of the meeting. When meetings start on time, participants feel more respected and motivated, leading to a more constructive and efficient collaboration. Adhering to the scheduled start time can therefore be a simple but powerful way to improve the overall quality of meetings, which ultimately contributes to better decision-making and higher satisfaction among participants.

Related:

• Professionals lose an average of three hours per week on unnecessary meetings

The use of SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound) is a popular way to set goals. However, there are reasons not to use this method. Firstly, the SMART principle is not based on strong scientific theories and does not align with research findings. This means that the effectiveness of SMART goals has not been well-proven by scientific research, which can lead to poorer results and confusion when using them.

The SMART framework does not take into account the type of goal being set and is often not applied consistently. This lack of consistency and clarity can result in goals that do not fit well with the personal needs and situations of the people trying to achieve them. Moreover, the SMART acronym does not provide enough detailed guidance, which can lead to a superficial approach to goal setting and a higher risk of negative effects, such as demotivation or stress if the goals are not met.

Finally, SMART goals are often not used as intended and sometimes contain redundant criteria. This can lead to inefficient and confusing objectives. Instead of sticking to a rigid and possibly flawed system, it is more useful to use more flexible and tailored methods for setting goals. These methods better fit the specific situation and needs of the people.

Related:

• Link the desired behavior to a clear signal
• Spend a little attention on planning and organizing your tasks, but not more than necessary; then, get to work

Various studies on sleep habits and work performance show that good sleep has a significant impact on how well people perform their jobs. A study by Rosekind et al. (2009) examined the sleep habits of more than 4,000 knowledge workers. They found that people who sleep well not only earn more but also perform much better than their colleagues who sleep poorly or too little, or suffer from insomnia. These good sleepers are better at time management, physical and mental performance, interpersonal skills, and their work output. These improvements are much more convincing than, for example, the benefits of shorter meetings.

Data shows that people with insomnia and insufficient sleep perform much worse at work and work less safely. They also use sleep medication more often, while others more frequently opt for non-medication treatments. Due to fatigue, employees lose an average of $1967 per year in productivity. This shows how costly sleep deprivation can be for both employees and employers.

The importance of good sleep cannot be emphasized enough. Sleeping in is seen as a major gain because it not only improves your performance and well-being but also has economic benefits. Employees who get enough and good sleep can do their work better and faster. This leads to higher productivity and ultimately more income.

Related:

• Well-rested people are more positive
• Blue light from screens has little effect on how quickly you fall asleep
• “Revenge bedtime procrastination” is the deliberate delay of bedtime to regain control

People are often happier when planning a vacation than during the vacation itself. Research shows that people who are going on a trip are happier in the time before their vacation than people without travel plans. This is because they are looking forward to a good time. By planning a vacation, people can dream about new experiences. This makes them happy.

When people prepare for a vacation, they are busy choosing places to go and what they want to do there. They imagine how fun it will be. This preparation time makes people excited and happy. They look forward to getting away from their regular life and seeing new places.

After the vacation, people are often not happier than before, except if the vacation was very relaxing. There is usually no difference in how happy people are after their vacation compared to people who did not go away. This is because people quickly get used to their normal life. It seems that planning a vacation makes people the happiest, even if the vacation itself is sometimes less enjoyable than expected.

Related:

• Take the time to think about, dream of, and look forward to future activities
• Do things that makes you happy everyday, since happy workers are 12% more productive

People who sleep well are often more positive, and this is due to how sleep affects their brains. Research shows that sleep deprivation mainly affects the part of the brain that processes positive and neutral memories, the hippocampus. The part that remembers negative things, the amygdala, is less affected. As a result, people who do not get enough sleep have more difficulty retrieving positive memories, but negative memories remain well ingrained. This means that lack of sleep has a negative impact on their mood and how they see the world around them.

Walker conducted an experiment that clearly demonstrates this effect. In this study, sleep-deprived students had to remember a list of words. The results showed that these students could remember 81% of words with a negative meaning, such as “cancer,” but only 31% of words with a positive or neutral meaning, such as “sunshine” or “basket.” This difference in memory performance shows how sleep deprivation causes people to focus more on negative information, which can lead to a more pessimistic worldview and a less positive mood.

Many people notice that they feel happier and more positive after a good night’s sleep. This is because enough sleep helps the brain process positive and neutral memories well. This allows you to look at the world more optimistically and balanced. In short, getting enough sleep is very important for maintaining a good mood and seeing the world in a balanced way.

Related:

• Take the time to think about, dream of, and look forward to future activities
• Good sleepers are more productive and earn more
• Morning productivity
• “Revenge bedtime procrastination” is the deliberate delay of bedtime to regain control

Instead of tackling every small task as soon as it arises, you can gather similar tasks and do them all at once. This is called “batching,” and it helps you spend less time starting and finishing work. For example, if you make all your phone calls at one time of the day, you stay in the same mindset and don’t have to constantly switch between different types of tasks. This way, you not only work faster but also feel less mentally burdened.

A good example of batching is how you handle emails. Instead of constantly checking your inbox and responding to every new email immediately, you can choose to check and respond to your emails at set times of the day. This way, your day isn’t constantly interrupted by new messages, and you can better focus on more important tasks. By applying batching, you create a calmer and more focused work rhythm, allowing you to ultimately get more done and experience less stress.

Related:

• Do the right thing, in the right way, and at the right moment
• Schedule two hours every day for important work that doesn’t need to be completed immediately; this helps you become happier and more productive
• Spend a little attention on planning and organizing your tasks, but not more than necessary; then, get to work
• Start with the difficult work and do the easy things later
• Work in 90-minute cycles separated by 20-minute breaks

When you have less energy, it can change your way of thinking and promote creativity. You are less likely to stick to usual thought patterns and more open to unexpected ideas. Research shows that people are often better at solving problems when they are less alert, such as at times of the day when they don’t feel at their best.

Being creative means being able to make connections between things that seem unrelated at first glance. This is easier when you are less focused, as your mind can wander more freely and form new ideas. Sometimes it helps to let a problem rest for a while, so the solution emerges on its own. When you have less energy, you are less inclined to focus on direct, logical solutions and can instead make room for innovative ideas.

It may seem strange to do creative tasks when you don’t feel energetic, but that’s when surprising and original ideas can arise. Creativity doesn’t always come from hard work and focus; it can flourish when you are relaxed and less alert. By consciously choosing low-energy moments for creative tasks, you can take advantage of your mind’s natural tendency to make new and unusual connections.

Related:

• Add some art to your workplace for reduced stress and increased creativity and productivity
• Schedule two hours every day for important work that doesn’t need to be completed immediately; this helps you become happier and more productive
• Work in 90-minute cycles separated by 20-minute breaks
• Scatterfocus

This phenomenon, also known as “elimination neglect” or “subtraction neglect,” is deeply rooted in our basic cognition. Research by Gabrielle S. Adams of the University of Virginia and her colleagues shows that people tend to add complexity rather than reduce it when faced with problems. This pattern has been consistently demonstrated in a series of 8 studies, where participants systematically overlooked that removing elements could be an effective solution.

This “addition bias” manifests in various contexts, such as building Lego models, planning trips, and even improving universities. People tend to add more layers of complexity, often leading to overcrowded schedules and inefficient processes. This behavior is not only limited to individual decisions but also occurs in group dynamics, such as meetings, where more and more items are added to the agenda without considering removing existing ones.

By becoming aware of this cognitive bias, individuals and organizations can learn to be more effective by considering what can be removed instead of added. This can result in simpler, more streamlined solutions that save both time and resources.

Related:

• A four-day workweek improves employee well-being without reducing productivity
• Reduce mobile phone use to improve your life satisfaction, well-being, and health
• When starting a new habit, routine, or project, it is important to consider the future maintenance costs that may arise

Spiritual and social values have a bigger impact on our happiness than self-centered values.

Related:

• Appreciate the feedback you receive and be deliberate about the feedback you give
• Do things that makes you happy everyday, since happy workers are 12% more productive

While the concept of a growth mindset, as popularized by Carol Dweck, suggests that people can develop their basic abilities through dedication and hard work, a critical analysis of the literature shows that interventions designed to promote this mindset often do not lead to significant improvements in academic performance. This may be due to inadequate research, poor reporting, and bias in the studies evaluating the effectiveness of these interventions.

It is important to emphasize that the lack of evidence for the effectiveness of growth mindset interventions does not mean that the growth mindset itself has no value. The core ideas of the growth mindset, such as the belief that skills can be developed and that effort leads to improvement, can still be valuable for personal development and motivation. However, the specific programs and interventions designed to promote this mindset do not consistently result in improved academic performance, suggesting that there may be other factors at play that limit the effectiveness of these interventions.

Related:

• Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right
• Motivation