Jeroen Sangers

A 5-minute unstructured break can be sufficient to restore your concentration. Research from the University of Sydney has shown that a short interruption of just five minutes, without specific activities or structure, is enough to bring your attention back to optimal levels. This means you don’t necessarily have to take a walk or watch a relaxing video; simply doing nothing for a short period can be effective. This finding supports the theory that a short, unstructured break is a powerful way to combat mental fatigue and increase productivity.

The attention restoration theory suggests that our brains need periodic rest to function optimally. Unstructured breaks, where you step away from your work without specific tasks or goals, can help restore your cognitive resources. These types of breaks offer a moment of mental rest and can therefore contribute to better focus and concentration when you return to work. It is a simple but effective strategy to improve the quality of your work without needing extensive or planned activities.

Related:

• Take regular ‘thinking walks’ to change your brain to enhance thinking, creativity and memory
• Work cycle
• Time to flow

Research shows that mindfulness meditation, even in short sessions, helps you distribute your attention better. This means that your brain handles the attention needed for difficult tasks more efficiently. In a study, people who meditated briefly performed better on attention tests, such as the Flanker Task and the Attention Network Test, without their reaction time worsening. This shows that meditation helps you concentrate better, even if you don’t have much experience with it yet. Although we don’t know exactly how long this improved concentration lasts, the results suggest that even a short meditation can enhance your concentration ability.

Related:

• Mindfulness meditation reduces the size of your amygdala, making you less prone to distractions and procrastination
• Scatterfocus

Active noise cancelling headphones have no effect on your concentration capacity in open office spaces.

Related:

• An increase of 10 dB noise in the workplace reduces productivity by 5%
• Open-plan workspace

Research shows that there is a correlation between income and happiness, but this relationship is complex and not straightforward. According to a study by Kahneman and Deaton (2010), happiness increases with income up to a certain point, after which the effect diminishes. This means that there is a threshold above which additional income does not significantly contribute to more happiness. On the other hand, research by Killingsworth (2021) indicates that happiness continues to increase with income, even at higher income levels. However, this effect is stronger among people who are already happier.

A joint reanalysis of these studies showed that the level of happiness mainly stabilizes among the least happy 20% of people. For the rest of the population, happiness continues to increase with higher income, and among the happiest people, this effect even accelerates. This means that the relationship between income and happiness is not the same for everyone and depends on how happy someone already is. The misinterpretation of earlier studies may partly be due to limitations in research methods and the way happiness was measured.

Money is not the only factor that contributes to happiness, but a higher income can help. It provides financial security, better healthcare, and more opportunities for relaxation and personal growth. However, the pursuit of more money can also lead to constant comparison with wealthier people, which can make you unhappy. Therefore, it is important to find a balance between financial goals and other sources of happiness, such as friendships and personal fulfillment.

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

I rely on Kill the newsletter! to manage all my newsletter subscriptions, as I prefer reading them in my feed reader rather than my email app.

However, I’ve encountered an issue recently with Substack. They are not allowing me to subscribe using a kill-the-newsletter.com email address, stating that they cannot validate the email domain. This is quite disappointing. ☹️

I attempted to find information on how to validate an email domain on their support site, but there is no relevant information available. Even if there were, it wouldn’t make a difference since it’s not my domain.

Nevertheless, I still do not want those newsletters cluttering my email inbox, so I have decided not to subscribe for now…