Irreversible decisions, also known as “one-way doors,” require careful and thoughtful consideration. It is important to thoroughly assess the situation and seek advice if necessary before making a decision that cannot be undone. This helps prevent regret and ensures you don’t end up in an undesirable situation.

Some decisions are permanent, but there are also many decisions you can reverse, the so-called “two-way doors.” These decisions can be made more quickly and with less concern because the consequences are not final. If such a decision doesn’t work out well, you can go back and try something else. It’s important to know what type of decision you are making so you can use your time and energy wisely.

Take your time with important decisions. This doesn’t mean you should be indecisive, but rather think consciously and smartly. By calmly considering the consequences and risks, you can make decisions with more confidence. This helps prevent mistakes and gives you a sense of control and responsibility over your choices and their impact on your life.

Related:

• Make reversible decisions as quickly as possible
• 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
• Although time pressure makes us work faster, it does not automatically mean we work better
• Systems maintenance

Research shows that only 2.5% of people can multitask well without their performance deteriorating. This means that these people work just as well when doing multiple things at once as when they focus on one thing. This is remarkable because most people perform worse when they try to multitask.

Most people perform worse when they try to do multiple things at once. This is because the human brain has difficulty dividing its attention well over different tasks. Research has shown that multitasking often leads to less productivity and more errors. But there is a small group of 2.5% of people who can multitask well. They seem to have a special ability to use their attention and thinking skills efficiently.

The ability to do multiple things at once without performing worse varies from person to person and can be seen as a skill that can be developed. Most people cannot multitask well, but the fact that 2.5% of people can shows that there are different levels of multitasking.

Related:

• Avoid excessive task switching to increase efficiency
• Attempting to do two or more attention-demanding tasks simultaneously reduces productivity
• The human mind and brain lack the architecture to perform multiple tasks simultaneously

Meals that are high in carbohydrates can affect our reaction speed. This is because carbohydrates can increase the production of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that has a calming effect, which can lead to relaxation and less alertness. This can be useful if you want to relax, but it can be a disadvantage if you need to react quickly, such as when driving or performing difficult tasks.

On the other hand, meals high in protein can distract you more quickly. Proteins contain amino acids like tyrosine that stimulate the production of dopamine and norepinephrine. These substances help you stay alert and focused, but too much of them can cause you to become more easily distracted and have trouble concentrating. This can be particularly challenging in situations where you need to pay attention and stay focused for a long time.

It is important to find a good balance between carbohydrates and proteins, depending on what you are going to do. If you need to do something that requires good concentration and quick reactions, it may help to eat fewer carbohydrates and opt for a meal with a bit more protein. On the other hand, if you are going to do something that requires less concentration, a meal high in carbohydrates can help you feel relaxed and calm.

Related:

• Do the right thing, in the right way, and at the right moment

When constantly switching from one task to another, so-called ‘switching costs’ arise. These costs include the time and mental energy needed to reorient yourself to the new task, let go of the details of the previous task (attention residue), and fully concentrate on the new task. This process can take several minutes, which means that frequent task switching can lead to a significant decrease in productivity.

By handling tasks sequentially instead of in parallel, these switching costs can be minimized. Once you start a task, it is more efficient to continue it for as long as possible until it is completed. This eliminates the need to switch constantly and allows you to fully focus on the task at hand. Research has shown that subjects who repeatedly perform the same task work faster and more efficiently than when constantly switching tasks.

Additionally, studies have shown that employees lose a significant portion of their time by frequently switching between applications and websites. This constant switching can lead to a loss of 9% of their working time. By consciously choosing to monotask and handle tasks in a logical order, employees can increase their productivity and improve the quality of their work. It is therefore crucial to create a work environment where unnecessary interruptions are minimized and focus on one task at a time is promoted.

Related:

• Before you start (a task, a work session, a project…), set a time budget
• A small part of the population is able to multitask without performance reduction
• Ensure that your computer screen is large enough so that you can view both the work document and the reference material at the same time
• Attempting to do two or more attention-demanding tasks simultaneously reduces productivity
• Workers lose 9% of their time at work by toggling roughly 1200 times per day between applications and websites
• A little time pressure while working on your tasks helps to reduce ‘attention residue’
• The human mind and brain lack the architecture to perform multiple tasks simultaneously
• Work cycle
• Interruptions
• Phone addiction

Research shows that exposure to cold, such as a cold shower, can temporarily reduce your cognitive abilities. After a cold shower, you may have difficulty remembering, react more slowly, and have trouble planning. These effects can last up to an hour. This means that after a cold shower, you may think and make decisions less quickly and effectively.

Cold showers have long-term benefits, such as improved circulation and a stronger immune system. However, it’s important to know that they can affect your cognitive abilities in the short term. If you need to perform a task that requires a lot of concentration, it’s better to wait with a cold shower until you’re done. It’s important to find a balance between the benefits of cold showers and their temporary adverse effects on your cognitive abilities.

Related:

• People who do not experience stress often have a lower level of cognitive ability
• Motivation

Taking the time to think about, dream of, and look forward to future activities is an essential part of happiness and satisfaction in life. Research suggests that not only the memory of positive events, but also the anticipation of future events plays a significant role in our overall well-being. By consciously spending time planning and visualizing future activities, we can create a sense of excitement and anticipation that enriches our daily lives.

The process of anticipation offers us the opportunity to mentally prepare and enjoy the anticipation. This can range from planning a vacation to looking forward to a dinner with friends. It is important not to underestimate these moments of anticipation, as they make a significant contribution to our joy in life. By regularly taking the time to dream about future activities, we can provide ourselves with a source of constant joy and motivation.

Additionally, consciously thinking about future activities can help us to be more focused and purposeful. It allows us to determine our priorities and direct our time and energy towards what is truly important to us. This can lead to a more fulfilling and meaningful life, where we not only enjoy the activities themselves, but also the journey towards them. In short, taking the time to dream and look forward to the future is a valuable investment in our own happiness and well-being.

Related:

• The optimal amount of free time seems to be between 2 and 4 hours per day
• Well-rested people are more positive
• More money will make you happier
• Do things that makes you happy everyday, since happy workers are 12% more productive
• Imagine how your life would be without the beautiful moments from the past; this can help you feel better about how it is now
• Explore a map for each month’s cycle that not only includes things to do, but also things to avoid
• Looking forward to your vacation and making travel plans often makes you happier than the trip itself
• Scatterfocus

Linking desired behavior to a clear cue is a smart way to change behavior. This idea is similar to making “if-then” plans, where you decide in advance what you will do in a particular situation. By choosing a clear cue that reminds you of the desired behavior, it becomes easier to exhibit this behavior automatically and regularly. This works like a habit: the cue triggers a routine that provides a reward, encouraging you to repeat the behavior.

Implementation intentions help you achieve your goals by making desired behavior happen automatically. By deciding in advance what you will do in a certain situation, it becomes easier to stick to your plans. For example, you might decide to meditate for five minutes every morning after brushing your teeth. Brushing your teeth then becomes the cue to start meditating, making it a fixed part of your daily routine.

By automating behavior with clear signals and specific plans, the process becomes more predictable and requires less mental energy. This leaves more room for other tasks, which can improve your productivity and effectiveness. By linking desired behavior to a clear signal, it becomes easier to develop and maintain positive habits. This increases the likelihood of achieving your personal and professional goals.

Related:

• Before you start (a task, a work session, a project…), set a time budget
• Do not set SMART goals
• Physical cues affect our state of mind and can be used to switch between different productive modes
• Reduce mobile phone use to improve your life satisfaction, well-being, and health
• A little time pressure while working on your tasks helps to reduce ‘attention residue’
• Start with the difficult work and do the easy things later
• Motivation
• Habit

The basic principle of the Getting Things Done (GTD) system, developed by David Allen, is that your memory is not the right tool for keeping track of your to-do list. As long as you have a good system that systematically gets tasks out of your head, your system meets this basic principle. This means that you don’t necessarily have to organize tasks by context, follow the five steps, or do weekly maintenance.

David Allen emphasizes that anything that helps to get something out of someone’s head and creates more cognitive space and freedom to be present and focus your attention where you want, without distraction, could also be GTD. For example, if you could hire 40 people to follow you everywhere and to whom you can entrust all ideas or future reminders, and who can guide you through every thinking process at the right time, then you don’t need any additional tool or process. That would also be GTD.

Related:

• Do the right thing, in the right way, and at the right moment
• Your own implementation is the correct way of doing GTD
• Keep essential information in your mind so you can access it quickly without having to look it up

When people can easily understand information, for example through good sound quality, it positively influences their trust in that information. This is because smooth and clear communication creates a sense of reliability. When information is presented without glitches or disturbances, listeners experience less cognitive load, meaning they have to exert less effort to process the message. This ease leads people to more quickly consider the information as true and reliable.

Research has shown that when information is difficult to process, for example due to poor sound quality or a strong accent, people are more likely to judge the information as less true or convincing. This effect occurs even when the difficulty arises from insignificant features, such as the color of the text or the pronunciation of a name. The idea is that anything that makes processing information difficult creates a barrier to the trust people have in that information.

Good sound quality and clear communication thus play a crucial role in how information is received and evaluated. By ensuring that information is easy to understand, speakers and organizations can increase the trust of their audience. This underscores the importance of attention to detail in communication, such as the clarity of the audio and the articulation of the speaker, to have a positive impact on how the message is received.

Related:

• When helping someone, give that person enough information and boost their confidence by showing how that information can help others

A Zettelkasten is a flexible system in which you write down and connect ideas and thoughts in an organized way. This helps you think better by combining reading and writing. By putting your thoughts on paper, you build a network of knowledge that helps you rediscover and use old insights.

The idea of a Zettelkasten as a conversation partner means that you have an equal relationship with your notes. Your Zettelkasten is a reliable partner that helps you organize and develop your thoughts. In turn, you add new information and insights to the system. This collaboration ensures that your Zettelkasten is not just a place to store things, but also an active part of your thinking process that helps you explore and understand complex ideas.

According to Niklas Luhmann, one cannot think well without writing. Writing helps to clarify differences and important points that are embedded in ideas. By writing, you create a reliable partner in your notes that helps process information consistently. This forms a solid foundation for further developing knowledge. In this way, your Zettelkasten becomes a living archive that helps you grow intellectually.

Related:

• Use your own words to express your own thoughts
• Rephrasing a text helps me to better understand what the author means
• Connect notes to start a conversation with your own thoughts
• Keep essential information in your mind so you can access it quickly without having to look it up
• When helping someone, give that person enough information and boost their confidence by showing how that information can help others
• Reserve quality time for reading; only with full attention can you make the shift from ‘reading for information’ to ‘reading for knowledge’
• Self-talk
• Fleeting notes

Large organizations often try to place employees in fixed roles. These roles are usually intended for the average employee and not for people driven by passion and the desire to excel. As a result, passionate employees may feel limited in their ability to fully utilize their talents. The structures and processes within large organizations are often focused on efficiency and predictability, which can lead to an environment where innovation and personal involvement are less encouraged.

Sometimes the organization and an enthusiastic employee have different goals. What a manager may find unimportant can be very important to the employee. This difference can cause the employee to feel frustrated and undervalued. If their hard work is not noticed or appreciated, it can reduce their motivation and engagement.

Finally, enthusiastic employees may feel excluded in large companies. They may think that their ideas are ignored or viewed with suspicion. This can cause them to withdraw or even leave to find a place where their enthusiasm is appreciated. Therefore, it is important for large companies to create an environment where passion and innovation are encouraged, so that employees can develop and contribute to the company’s success.

Related:

• Choose a workplace where you can see other people focused on their tasks. This will help you concentrate better.
• Professionals lose an average of three hours per week on unnecessary meetings
• Working outside of normal working hours can undermine intrinsic motivation, as it prompts people to reflect on how they could have spent their day better if they had not worked
• The expectation that you check email outside of working hours can lead to health problems, relationship issues, and anxiety
• A four-day workweek improves employee well-being without reducing productivity
• Employees with a private office have 70% more face-to-face interaction compared to employees in an open workspace
• Hard work
• Private offices

Use a large screen on which you can see both your work document and your reference material side by side. This way, you need to switch between windows less often. This makes it easier to concentrate and helps you work more efficiently.

The idea that a larger screen can increase your productivity comes from being able to see more information at once. This helps you work faster and better, especially if the information is important for what you are doing. With a larger screen, you can, for example, view a document and other necessary information side by side. This allows you to look things up more quickly and reduces the need to search for what you need.

Related:

• Avoid excessive task switching to increase efficiency
• A standing desk does not appear to impact productivity
• Workers lose 9% of their time at work by toggling roughly 1200 times per day between applications and websites

Feedback is a useful tool that helps people and organizations improve and grow. It is important to see feedback as an opportunity to learn, even if it sometimes feels uncomfortable or difficult. By appreciating feedback, you create a safe environment where people dare to express their opinions without fear of negative reactions. This ensures good communication and collaboration, which is important for success.

When giving feedback, it is important to do so in a positive and thoughtful manner. Feedback should be intended to help the other person and should be practical so that the recipient can actually do something with it. Also, consider the right timing and manner of giving feedback so that it is well received. By carefully considering the feedback you give, you show respect for the other person and contribute to a culture of understanding and improvement.

It is also important to remember that feedback is just a suggestion and you can choose what to do with it. It is normal to sometimes feel attacked when receiving feedback, but try to understand that the other person wants to help you. By being open to feedback and appreciating it, even if you disagree with it, you can grow and improve your skills. The ability to accept and use feedback is a sign of maturity and an important step in your personal development.

Related:

• Fleeting notes
• Social values

It is important to connect your notes with each other so that you can build a network of ideas and insights. This helps you not only to store information but also to truly understand and integrate it into your own thought patterns. By linking notes together, you create a system where ideas are related rather than isolated. This ensures that you understand things better and generate new ideas because you actively seek connections and patterns between different pieces of information.

Connecting notes is like having a conversation with your own thoughts. This is similar to the Zettelkasten method, where notes serve as building blocks for a larger whole. By linking notes together, you create a network that helps you organize and deepen your thoughts. This network works like a memory palace, where you can always return to earlier ideas to expand or adjust them. It is a way to actively maintain your knowledge and ensure that it remains useful and applicable.

Connecting notes helps you deepen your knowledge. When you truly understand a new idea and add it to what you already know, it becomes a useful tool in your daily life. This requires discipline and perseverance, as you need to look beyond just first impressions and superficial connections. By actively seeking related notes and merging them, you create a system that ensures important ideas and insights remain vibrant and easily accessible.

Related:

• A Zettelkasten is an intelligent conversation with my past thoughts
• Fleeting notes

When you help someone, it is important to provide them with enough information so they can move forward. This doesn’t mean overwhelming them with details, but sharing the key points and useful knowledge they need to progress.

In addition to providing information, it is important to boost the person’s confidence. This can be done by showing how the knowledge they gain can help not only them but also others. When people see that their knowledge and skills can positively impact others, they often feel more motivated and confident. This can be achieved, for example, by encouraging them to give advice to friends, which not only deepens their own understanding but also increases their confidence.

In training sessions and workshops, encouraging mutual advice can be a powerful way to enhance participants' confidence and motivation. By giving participants the opportunity to share their knowledge and help others, they discover their own skills and the value they can offer. This not only aids their own learning process but also fosters a culture of collaboration and support, ultimately leading to a more engaged and confident group of people.

Related:

• Use your own words to express your own thoughts
• Rephrasing a text helps me to better understand what the author means
• A Zettelkasten is an intelligent conversation with my past thoughts
• Reserve quality time for reading; only with full attention can you make the shift from ‘reading for information’ to ‘reading for knowledge’
• When information is easy to understand, people are more likely to trust it
• Self-talk

Most decisions in life are not final. These decisions, also known as Type 2 decisions, can easily be reversed if they do not yield the desired result. This is different from Type 1 decisions, which have consequences that are difficult or impossible to reverse. By acting quickly on decisions that can be reversed, we can save time and resources that would otherwise be spent on overthinking and analyzing.

The Pareto principle, which states that 80% of results come from 20% of efforts, can help with this. Instead of striving for complete certainty, which is often not possible, we can make decisions based on the most important 20% of information we have. This makes the decision-making process faster and allows us to act and learn from the results more quickly.

Taking quick decisions that can easily be reversed gives us the opportunity to test what works and what doesn’t in practice. Often, you only truly know if a decision is good when you try it out. If the result is not good, you can easily adjust or reverse the decision. This process of deciding, testing, and adjusting allows for a flexible approach, enabling us to make progress faster and respond better to changes.

Related:

• Take the time before doing something you can’t undo
• Try to complete new tasks on the day you receive them
• Start with as little as possible and add complexity as you go

When you rewrite a text in your own words, you have to think carefully about what is written and what it means. This helps you to understand the main ideas and arguments of the writer and to express them in a way that is clear to you. By doing this, you gain a better understanding of the text because you are not just reading, but also actively engaging with the information.

Rephrasing helps you to better understand a text. Just like with modern art, it is important to know what the writer means and in what context the text was written. By repeating a text in your own words, you think about the context and how it connects to what you already know. This can give you new insights and help you to better understand the writer’s message.

Finally, rewriting a text helps you to learn better and understand its meaning. It gives you the opportunity to engage in a conversation with the writer and discover what he or she means. By actively engaging with the text, you cannot only understand it better but also appreciate it and add it to what you already know. This makes reading an engaging and educational experience, where you not only absorb information but also build new knowledge.

Related:

• Use your own words to express your own thoughts
• A Zettelkasten is an intelligent conversation with my past thoughts
• When helping someone, give that person enough information and boost their confidence by showing how that information can help others
• Keep essential information in your mind so you can access it quickly without having to look it up
• Reserve quality time for reading; only with full attention can you make the shift from ‘reading for information’ to ‘reading for knowledge’

During the mornings, work in 90-minute cycles separated by 20-minute breaks.

Related:

• Before you start (a task, a work session, a project…), set a time budget
• Avoid excessive task switching to increase efficiency
• A 5-minute unstructured break is enough to regain your focus
• Schedule two hours every day for important work that doesn’t need to be completed immediately; this helps you become happier and more productive
• Creative tasks are best done while low on energy
• Spend a little attention on planning and organizing your tasks, but not more than necessary; then, get to work
• Physical cues affect our state of mind and can be used to switch between different productive modes
• Time to flow
• Morning productivity
• Time buckets

Give your mind time to wander.

Related:

• A videoconference provokes a narrow focus on the screen, which hinders divergent thinking
• Any personal effectiveness system that helps to get tasks out of your mind is Getting Things Done
• Doing nothing is more fun than we think
• People with a wandering mind (ADHD) are motivated by actions that captivate, create, compete, or complete
• Take the time to think about, dream of, and look forward to future activities
• Do the right thing, in the right way, and at the right moment
• Creative tasks are best done while low on energy
• Messy work environments have no effect on either creativity or executive functions
• Mindfulness meditation reduces the size of your amygdala, making you less prone to distractions and procrastination
• Inspiration
• Fleeting notes
• Even a single guided meditation of ten minutes can help you concentrate better

Multitasking means trying to do multiple things at once. This causes your attention to be divided, making it harder to focus on one task. When your attention is divided, you are more likely to make mistakes or miss important details. As a result, you often have to spend more time correcting these mistakes, which makes you less productive. Research shows that most people are not good at multitasking without their work suffering.

Multitasking can also lead to “attention residue.” This means that when you switch from one task to another, part of your attention remains on the previous task. This makes it harder to fully concentrate on the new task, reducing your efficiency. Constantly switching between tasks can also be tiring, making it harder to think clearly and make good decisions.

To be more productive, it is often better to focus on one task at a time, also known as monotasking. By giving your full attention to one task, you can complete it faster and with fewer errors. This means not only finishing faster but also producing higher quality work. Although some people are good at multitasking, this is not true for most people. Therefore, it is usually better to avoid multitasking for tasks that require a lot of attention..

Related:

• Avoid excessive task switching to increase efficiency
• A small part of the population is able to multitask without performance reduction
• Do the right thing, in the right way, and at the right moment
• Workers lose 9% of their time at work by toggling roughly 1200 times per day between applications and websites
• A little time pressure while working on your tasks helps to reduce ‘attention residue’
• The human mind and brain lack the architecture to perform multiple tasks simultaneously

Capture your mind wandering while reading; get into a conversation with the author.

Related:

• Use your own words to express your own thoughts
• A Zettelkasten is an intelligent conversation with my past thoughts
• Connect notes to start a conversation with your own thoughts
• Appreciate the feedback you receive and be deliberate about the feedback you give
• Reserve quality time for reading; only with full attention can you make the shift from ‘reading for information’ to ‘reading for knowledge’
• Scatterfocus
• Motive

When you write information in your own words, you really need to understand what it is about. This helps you remember the information better and form your own opinion. It is an active way to engage with new ideas, rather than just reading what others have written.

It is important to use your own words because there is a big difference between highlighting text and writing down your own thoughts. Highlighting and making notes usually happens while reading, but taking notes happens while thinking. By using your own words, you move from passive reading to active thinking. This helps you think more deeply about what you read and gain new ideas and insights that you might otherwise miss.

Additionally, writing down your thoughts in your own words can help you clarify and better understand your ideas. Writing forces you to organize your thoughts, which can lead to a better understanding of difficult topics. It also helps you convey your own opinions and arguments more clearly. In short, using your own words to express your thoughts is important for personal and intellectual growth.

Related:

• To get better ideas, group members first write down their own ideas
• Rephrasing a text helps me to better understand what the author means
• A Zettelkasten is an intelligent conversation with my past thoughts
• When helping someone, give that person enough information and boost their confidence by showing how that information can help others
• Fleeting notes
• Think

This happens because the things you see influence how you feel. Seeing others working hard reminds you to stay focused yourself. This idea is often used in places like libraries and cafes, where people work together and create a productive atmosphere.

When you see others working hard, it can make you feel like you need to work harder too. This is because you feel responsible and experience social pressure. Research shows that people try harder when they see others performing a difficult task. Working in an environment with focused people can help you concentrate better and be more productive. Therefore, try working in a coffee shop or library, where you are surrounded by others who are also working.

Related:

• A videoconference provokes a narrow focus on the screen, which hinders divergent thinking
• Add some art to your workplace for reduced stress and increased creativity and productivity
• Large organizations extinguish employees' passion
• Physical cues affect our state of mind and can be used to switch between different productive modes

Start with the difficult work and save the easy tasks for later. This helps you manage your time wisely. Difficult tasks often yield the most when you look further ahead. By doing these tasks first, you use your energy for what is truly important. This prevents you from procrastinating. Many people start their day with easy chores, like reading emails. This seems productive, but you don’t really make progress on the important matters.

It can be challenging to start with difficult work. However, this yields more. If you start with a challenging task in the morning, you are still fresh and clear-headed. This helps you achieve better results. After the difficult work, the easy tasks feel much lighter. This gives you a good feeling and more energy for the rest of the day.

The small tasks are also important, but tackle them smartly. Save them for moments when you get stuck with a difficult project. By doing small tasks all at once, you work faster. You can also strategically use small tasks when you have a very short deadline. Then it can actually help to start with the easy things. You feel better for a moment and get more motivation to continue working.

The most important thing is to organize your day in a way that you achieve the best results. This often works best by tackling the difficult tasks first.

Related:

• Do the right thing, in the right way, and at the right moment
• Link the desired behavior to a clear signal
• Most knowledge workers check their email within the first 30 minutes of the day
• Time to flow
• Time buckets

Research into the use of sit-stand desks shows that these desks do not directly lead to higher productivity at work. Although they are popular for reducing the drawbacks of prolonged sitting, they have little impact on how well people perform their tasks.

However, sit-stand desks can help create a healthier work environment by offering the option to alternate between sitting and standing. This can lead to a better work experience and well-being, which may have a positive impact on productivity in the long term. For immediate productivity improvement, other factors such as work processes and technology are likely more important.

Related:

• Ensure that your computer screen is large enough so that you can view both the work document and the reference material at the same time