Many of us have this notion that creativity is all about adopting a Zen state of mind. Oscillate your mind in synchronization with the universe and brilliant ideas will spontaneously appear in your brain. And sometimes that happens!

But usually, there are simpler and more effective ways to spark creativity.

Creativity is how our brain responds to problems. Whenever we have a need to “be creative”, it’s to overcome some kind of obstacle. When considered from this perspective, we realize that creativity doesn’t have to mean “inventing” things on the spot—it can simply means identifying the method that most effectively solves the problem.

In this article we’re going to look at 5 fundamental habits which can increase your base creativity level forever. We’ll follow that up with 10 instantly actionable tips for unleashing your creative inspiration right now.

Get more and better sleep

According to Matthew Walker, the world’s preeminent expert on the subject, sleep is fundamental to creative thinking on every level. On the one hand, his latest research found that our brains proactively solve problems on our behalf while we’re dreaming. The lesson here is that consistent REM sleep is important, on a biological level, for creativity.

But what about when we’re awake? More than a third of US workers are chronically sleep deprived—that is, they’re getting 6 or fewer hours’ sleep per night. Sleep deprivation means we generate solutions to problems more slowly, less accurately, and less often. We have significantly impaired decision making and our brain struggles to interpret data and make intuitive leaps—two crucial aspects of creative thinking.

In order for our brains to be consistently able to generate new ideas and analyze problems, we need to be well-rested. Horrendously simple as it sounds, having a consistent sleep schedule and bagging your 7-9 hours every night will transform your creativity.

Prioritize quantity of ideas over quality

If you’re facing a problem, it’s extremely rare that a powerful and innovative solution just pops into your head. The truth is that some of the most “creative” people are those who produce the biggest mass of ideas—and then filter them effectively.

Say you work in advertising and you just can’t figure out that killer headline. Your brain is best at producing new ideas when the old ones are stored away. So write down or record yourself saying any potential solution that comes into your head.

Seriously. “There are no bad ideas” and all that. Set a timer and keep going until you’ve got nothing left.

Then take time away from the project and distract yourself with something else. Come back to your brainstorm and start filtering out the ideas that have real potential. Discuss them with the team, start testing hypotheses—it’s almost certain that by generating 100 ideas, at least a handful will have serious basis for consideration. They’ll be original, innovative, left-field or unexpected enough to be perfect.

Even if you wouldn’t recognize this process as traditional creativity, the results speak for themselves.

Ask more questions—lots of them

Or in other words, get more data.

First thing’s first, when we use “data” in this context we aren’t talking about big data: ones and zeroes and cookies and phishing. We mean getting more information about the problem you’re facing.

You’re in advertising again. Now you’re trying to figure out which product benefits to include in your ads, to build the most effective message for selling. Rather than throwing spaghetti at wall, focus on clarifying the problem you’re trying to solve: getting more people to buy your product after seeing the ad.

Then seek out information related to the problem. Information like:

• Why would people not be convinced to buy?
• What assumptions have we made about our customers?
• What quality of leads are we getting?
• Are our page/product views by viable leads?
• How are we driving traffic there?
• Why did past customers decide to buy? Did they have any hesitations? What convinced them?
• What are we doing differently to competitors?

By questions like this, you can identify areas for improvement for any problem, not just adverts. By gathering more “data”, the problem and its potential solutions becomes much clearer. You enable “creativity” not by waiting on divine intervention, but by taking proactive action.

Make distracting yourself a habit

Creative ideas rarely come to us while we’re intensely focused on finding them. Instead, they pop up while we’re doing something totally unrelated. For example:

• Going for a run or walk
• Washing some dishes
• Playing with the office dog
• Take a shower
• Chatting with colleagues in person
• Cooking some food
• Meditating
• Running some errands…

And doing these unrelated activities stimulates creativity incredibly well. The idea is that your subconscious mind will keep working on a problem long after you’re consciously finished. When you do something like playing video games, your whole brain is consumed by this dopamine machine. When you go for a walk (without stimulus like music or podcasts) your brain works away at processing everything that’s happened to you that day.

It’s no coincidence that so many “eureka” moments occur when we’re entirely un-engaged with a problem. One of the most popular exercises for clearing the mind like this is the cold shower. The combination of shock, adrenaline, nervous system reaction and a totally blank mind are a creative recipe many swear by.

Make any of these activities a regular habit and you’ll find brilliant, creative ideas coming out your ears.

Spend more time doing absolutely nothing

The modern brain is a highway of whirring thoughts, stimulus and activity. And that’s fine. But a powerful method for sparking creativity is to simply allow everything in your brain to just…run its course. The goal here isn’t to control or manipulate or react to your thoughts; just observe them.

No need to stick at this for long, 5 or 10 minutes at a time is enough. It can very quickly give your brain the quiet space it needs to generate new ideas, recognize the bad ideas you’re already pursuing, and generally quiet down the noise.

If you end up daydreaming about random stuff that’s totally unrelated to your problem, don’t fight it. Let the mind do what it wants and set a timer if you’re worried about drifting off somewhere. If you’ve never tried this, you’ll be amazed at how quickly it can lead to ideas and perspectives you had never considered before.

If this doesn’t come easy to you, consider structured meditation. You will do essentially what we’ve outlined above, but with someone telling you exactly how to do it. Consider downloading an app like Headspace and follow a guided meditation for a few minutes.

Doing this regularly will free up your mind on a consistent basis, allowing you to unleash your inner creative beast at will.

Quick-fire tips for sparking creativity right now

#1 Declutter your physical space

Empirical data tells us that a messy desk makes for a messy brain. Wherever you work, make a conscious effort to declutter and put things away so they’re not in your field of view. This can dramatically improve our clarity of thought because we’re no longer stressed about the disaster that is our work environment.

(If possible, try to create a routine of cleaning up your workstation at the end of each working day; that way, when you return the next morning, you have one less hurdle to overcome on your road to creative thinking!)

#2 Declutter your mental space

When your mind is so clogged full of stimulus all the time, it’s impossible to foster any real creativity or clarity of thought. Managing apps, websites, phones, people and other stimuli will actively relax your brain—and then the good juices start flowing again. Try turning off all distractions for 30 minutes (without cheating!) and see if you can’t obliterate that creative blockade.

#3 Breathe

Twenty deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth and pausing to hold the breath before releasing. Do this for the full twenty breaths and wonder at how much more clear and focused your brain is—the exact state you need for creative thought.

#4 Copy other people

There’s no such thing as a truly original idea. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, go and see what others have done to solve similar problems. This applies to any problem in any industry.

You can directly rip off competitors or random companies or strangers on the internet; ask colleagues or friends what they would do (or have done in similar situations) or, if it’s a larger-scale problem, look for case studies or interviews online where other solutions or processes are presented.

This won’t always provide a gift-wrapped solution to your problem, but it allows your brain to process a ton of different ideas and get its creative juices flowing. You’ll start to connect dots you hadn’t considered before.

(Being creative doesn’t have to mean being original. Being original is very overrated. Being effective is where it’s at.)

#5 Turn off the internet

Most of our minds are constantly overloaded with stimuli, especially online. Social media, messaging apps, smartphones, every website imaginable… There’s a lot of distractions out there.

But we can choose to eliminate all of these distractions by simply turning off the internet or enabling airplane mode. Your mind is going to rebel and feel anxious for a few minutes…and then it’s going to go quiet.

Having eliminated other distractions, your brain will actually want to examine your problem and come up with ideas. Why? Because successfully doing so will give it a little hit of dopamine—the same chemical it usually gets from Facebook, chatting to colleagues, reading the news and compulsively picking up your phone.

#6 Exercise.

Getting away from the problem and working up your heart rate is a masterful way of stimulating creativity. A misconception is that we need to be doing intense 60-minute workouts and really punish the body, but this isn’t true. Anything from a brisk walk to a long run is absolutely effective.

Sometimes the brilliant idea comes while we’re exercising, but more likely you’ll return to work feeling positive, invigorated and optimistic, and creative solutions will come to you with far greater ease.

#7 “Do Something”

This is one for those moments where you’re staring at the (metaphorical or physical) wall and have no idea how to move forward. Just do something. Anything. Force your brain into gear and attempt to apply a solution for even a few minutes.

This idea was popularized by blogger Mark Manson as a way of getting out of a creative rut. More often than not, this seemingly pointless action will lead you down a path towards better ideas and solutions.

#8 Do creative work early

Waiting until late in the day to tackle your creative work is a recipe for frustration and failure. It is a simple truth that we’re far more creative and capable of solving problems when we’re refreshed and energized—once you’ve already been working for 5, 6, or 7 hours, your creative reserves are probably exhausted.

By planning your creative work early in the day, where possible, you’ll find those game-changing ideas far easier to access.

After the last 2 years, it’s understandable that people are struggling to practice gratitude or even find things to be grateful for. It seems like the world is on fire but there are ways to initiate the process of making space for gratitude.

For starters, you are reading this article on some kind of smart device with a decent internet connection, likely sheltered from the elements, and with food in your belly. Given that 40% of the world’s population is still offline, 1.6 billion people lack adequate housing, and one in four people are food insecure, it seems kind of silly to not feel at least somewhat grateful… doesn’t it?

The ability to be grateful is powerful and will have a ripple effect across all aspects of your life, professional and personal.

If practicing gratitude was easy, everyone would be doing it. In order to be successful in this venture, you will need to understand the barriers that tend to stop people in their tracks.

Barriers to Gratitude

Even if you acknowledge that you have quite a bit to be grateful for at this present moment, gratitude doesn’t always come naturally… on the contrary actually. Gratitude goes against our human nature because our brains are hardwired to give more weight to negative experiences.

This is called negativity bias.

The psychology behind this phenomenon is why we place so much pressure on making a good first impression because we know that bad impressions stay with us longer. If you find yourself still thinking of the kid in middle school who picked his nose as… well… the kid from middle school who picked his nose even though he is now a successful pilot, you are experiencing the negativity bias.

What this also means is that we tend to learn more effectively from our bad experiences instead of positive ones because the bad ones stick out in our mind. We tend to remember the consequence more than we remember the reward and this is called loss aversion. We’re much more likely to perform a task if we’ll lose something from not doing it as opposed to gaining something from doing it.

We have all heard the saying that comparison is the thief of joy, it also steals our ability to be grateful for what we have. This saying has never been more true in a time that makes it easier than ever to see what others are up to. In our pockets, we have 24/7 access to everyone we have ever known and their life highlights grace our news feeds multiple times a day.

We see that Jennifer bought a new car, Jason is skidooing at his summer home, and the Jones’s just welcomed their third child in a beautiful and professionally photographed home birth.

While these things could all be true and certainly make for great social media content, we may not see that Jennifer is drowning in debt, Jason is battling depression, and the Jones’s had experienced 3 miscarriages prior to this healthy birth. What people post online rarely tells the full story but we still find ourselves in a comparison competition that no one can win because no one is competing in the same arena.

It is important to understand that people are (generally) only sharing their highlights. Because of this, we form unrealistic expectations of our own lives and strive to compete with the unattainable standards of what we think other people are doing and achieving on a regular basis. This additional pressure leads to unrealistic goals set by people who don’t even know our priorities or passions. Always being told to hustle for future goals that are not even yours makes it significantly harder to live in the present and be grateful for what you have.

Professionally, you may follow CEOs or other successful business people and be in awe of their status and accomplishments. What you don’t see is all the hard work and failure they experienced along their journey to get to where you see them, you are only ever getting a small part of the whole story.

This additional exposure to other people’s perceived success has real implications in our everyday lives. You don’t have to look very far to find studies that show that less social media time directly correlates to increased happiness.

All of this to say, people who wish to make more space for gratitude are fighting an uphill battle against human psychology and the nature of social media… but that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible!

Health Benefits of Gratitude

Before we dig into some actual ways to practice gratitude, it is important to understand the health benefits that may help motivate ourselves into action.

Gratitude is an incredibly powerful human emotion, the physical responses of which have been measured and studied extensively. It affects the brain in a number of positive ways that manifest in real mental and physical responses including:

• Pain Reduction: A study by Emmons & McCullough in 2003 found that patients who kept gratitude journals saw an impressive 16% reduction in their pain! This is an incredible finding and, looking deeper, we understand this to be because gratitude allows for better regulation of dopamine (the happy chemical) in our brains which helps us better deal with pain and heal.
• Sleep Quality: Keep that gratitude journal on your nightstand and you just may find that you sleep better. Taking a moment to jot down a couple of things you were grateful for in your day will set the tone for your night but also helps to activate your hypothalamus (the part of your brain that regulates a number of body functions) to better regulate your sleep.
• Better Mood: It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or brain surgeon) to conclude that practising being grateful will put you in a good mood. The parts of the brain responsible for emotions are activated when we feel gratitude which causes us to feel good.
• Reduction in Stress and Anxiety: Cortisol, the stress hormone, is greatly reduced when someone practices gratitude. That isn’t to say that you will never feel stress or anxiety if you are grateful but what it does do is allow people to better respond to stressful situations and manage negative experiences.
• Changes Brain Structure: The Mindfulness Awareness Research Center has some pretty impressive research on the physical changes that happen in your brain when you practice or are on the receiving end of gratitude. Neurochemicals in the brain that catalyze your feel good neurotransmitters are more responsive and the result is that you feel happier.

10 Ways to Start Practicing Gratitude Today

1. Start a Gratitude Journal

Do not dismiss gratitude journals as childish or fluffy, there is power in words and they are even stronger when you write them down. Gratitude journals are tried and true, and the easiest way to start practising gratitude immediately. Physical or digital, plain notepad or bedazzled journal, the goal is simply to start somewhere. Some people like to start with writing 3 things down in point form, and some people prefer to doodle and really elaborate their thoughts. Even a couple of sentences at the bottom of your planner counts!

2. Get an Accountability Buddy

Find someone who would also like to get some practice expressing and receiving gratitude and form an alliance. It is helpful if this is someone that you interact with regularly so that you can practice with them. Think of everyday interactions that could involve gratitude, like feedback on presentations or reports. Take a moment to express gratitude for their work and be as specific as possible.

3. Write Thank You Notes

Never underestimate the power of a handwritten note. While an email or a text is a great way to send a quick message, take a moment once a week to write a short note expressing gratitude and mail (snail mail) or hand deliver this message. If you have a team of 4 people and write a note once a week, each person will be on the receiving end of your gratitude at least once a month! Buy a pack of generic thank you cards or even a lined notepad and keep it handy for when inspiration strikes.

4. Take In Good News Stories

Everywhere we look, we see bad news: natural disasters, crime, environmental injustice… it’s draining. While it is important to be informed and not ignore important information, bad news 24/7 is not good for our mental health and certainly doesn’t help people practice gratitude. Unfortunately, mainstream media tends to focus on bad news and the feel good stories seem to be few and far between. Do yourself a favour and take initiative to seek out some good news for once, check out sites like Good News Network that curate positive and inspiring content that won’t drain every ounce of happiness from your body.

5. Give and Receive Compliments

I bet you can remember a specific moment in time that someone went out of their way to give you a compliment. Maybe the lady on the bus loved your jacket, or someone swooned over your handwriting, or you nailed a presentation and someone pulled you aside to congratulate you… it felt good right? It also feels great to be the one giving the compliments. Don’t be quiet, speak up if you see something you like and you could very well make someone’s day.

6. Keep a Positive Feedback File

This can be a physical or digital digital space, you only need to be able to save documents or open a drawer to add to it. Having a place where you can store thank you cards or nice emails will make it easy to go back and reference them when you need a boost. It’s also helpful to remind yourself that there are people in your circle who are grateful for you. While you are working on making space for gratitude, remember that there are other people who are trying to do the same. Being reminded that your note or email or feedback stayed with someone enough that they chose to save it to review is pretty special and will help motivate you to do the same.

7. Surround Yourself with Quotes and Images that Inspire You

Your mind probably went straight to the inspirational posters with the black border that can be found in every single classroom across the country. As corny as it wounds, sometimes, a pithy saying by an influential person is just what we need to hear and there is science to back that up. Motivational expert Jonathan Fader likens inspiration quotes to self coaching. It is known that you are likely to perform better when someone believes in you so unless you have access to an actual coach, a great quote from someone who inspires you will work surprisingly well. Humans are wired to look to the people around us for inspiration, we tend to trust people who have achieved some sort of success and their words resonate with us.

8. Say Thank You

When we talk about gratitude, the words “thank you” are usually the first thing that comes to mind. Just because it seems simple, doesn’t mean that it isn’t important. While we are often quick to thank the person serving us coffee or holding open a door, it takes more practice to thank people for less overt actions. Consider a time that someone gave you a compliment, was your first instinct to brush it off or did you reply with a “thank you”? Too often, the notion of being humble takes over but saying thank you takes practice, practice it every day.

9. Practice Mindfulness

For some reason, people tend to check out when they hear the word “mindfulness”. This may be because they have this image in their mind of someone sitting on a pillow, legs crossed, hands resting on their knees and breathing in the smell of diffused essential oils. While that can absolutely be true, the act of being mindful looks different for each person. In essence, mindfulness is simply being fully present where we are. Start small by recognizing the feeling of the clothes on your skin or the smell of the air. Pausing and taking a deep breath before engaging in a task is also a form of mindfulness and is a great place to start. There are great resources available online for more tips and you can even check out How Can Mindfulness Improve Your Time Management.

10. Volunteer

After a gratitude journal, volunteering is one of the most tangible and effective ways to practice gratitude and give back at the same time. Volgistics lists a number of health benefits of volunteering, most notably:

• Connection with others and your community: connecting not just with other volunteers but the people that you may be serving is a great way to build your network and practice gratitude.
• Contribution outside of yourself: what better way to express gratitude than to give your time and energy to a worthy cause? Whether it is serving food at a shelter or walking dogs, contribution increases your sense of worth, belonging, and increases self confidence.
• Encourages development: chances are that you will need to learn a thing or two when you first start volunteering: brushing up on cooking skills, speaking in a second language, or even your handy work.
• Increased in overall physical wellbeing: getting out of the house and moving your body is a great start. Maybe your volunteer commitment isn’t very physical but every little bit helps. We know that volunteering reduces stress and stress is directly correlated to heart health. Volunteering is good for your heart!

Volunteering one hour a week is a great place to start. You may just find yourself offering more time as you reap the benefits of engaging with a cause and give back at the same time.

Gratitude in the Workplace

It is obvious that practising gratitude has some serious health benefits but it can also foster a healthier work environment. Check out the blog Want a Healthier Workplace? Begin With Gratitude for all the details but, in summary, gratitude can transform an organization and its culture by:

• Increasing job satisfaction
• Encouraging employees to feel motivated, engaged, and productive
• Drives greater organizational innovation and performance

Gratitude is foundational to everything you do. Start with implementing just one of the 10 tips listed above and you will see improvements in both your personal and professional welling.

Everyone knows a procrastinator… or maybe you are the procrastinator that everyone knows.

Merriam-Webster defines procrastination as intentionally putting off doing something that should and can be done. The key to procrastination is that you have the means to do the task but you are intentionally choosing to delay for a number of possible reasons. If the statistics are correct, about 20% of adults self identify as a procrastinator.

Hands up if this describes you.

The good news is that being a procrastinator isn’t all bad, even some of the most successful people are guilty of leaving things to the last minute. Margaret Atwood herself admits to spending her mornings worrying and puttering around before finally digging into her writing late in the afternoon. Considering she has pumped out dozens of novels (fiction and nonfiction), scripts, and poems, procrastination has certainly not hindered her success.

Of course, we are not all Margaret Atwood. For the average procrastinator, passing in an assignment or a report one minute before the deadline is a win worth celebrating.

Many procrastinators will say that there is a method to their madness… and they may be on to something. From the outside looking in, a non-procrastinator will see chaos and stress but that is not the whole picture and there are some interesting benefits to procrastination that merit a bit more attention.

Procrastination Encourages Creativity

While procrastinators tend to leave the actual work until the last minute, their brains may still send them reminders about the pending project, working diligently behind the scenes.

Mundane tasks in our everyday life represent opportunities to think, and there is great value in being idle. Psychologists have found that creative inspiration often comes after being incubated by unrelated tasks like walking, chores, or even in the shower. Keeping a notebook handy is a great way to capture ideas as they come (even for non-procrastinators) and can serve as a springboard on the night before the task is due.

That said, there are a number of tried and true ways to increase creativity that don’t involve procrastination that are worth a shot. Verywellmind.com has a great list of suggestions if you are looking for inspiration. Their list includes rewarding your curiosity, building your confidence, and brainstorming just to name a few.

In the hustle of modern life, the opportunities to just sit and think are rare. Some people may confuse intentional pause with procrastination as they can often look the same.

Procrastination (Initially) Decreases Stress

Ignorance is bliss, right?

You can give yourself permission to not stress about a task when you know that it exists in some distant future and there really are people who work best under pressure. While some people can count on internal motivation to jump into action as they need to, a looming deadline represents external motivation to procrastinators to get the job done.

In all seriousness, the ability to ignore a task until such a time that you chose to dedicate your attention to it may not be procrastination at all but an intentional and purposeful delay, the intention and motivation matters when it comes to distinguishing between the two.

The logic behind delaying action may actually be built on a subconscious understanding of a procrastinator’s unique time management techniques. If you know, from experience, that you can produce a solid report in one evening, why spend days stressing when you can channel your energy in a shorter period of time and produce the same or even better result? This mindset is certainly risky but it obviously works for some people.

Keep in mind though, stress has a way of catching up with us. While procrastinators may find peace in advance of a deadline, there is growing evidence that the stress compounds in the rush of getting things done.

Procrastination Can Lead To Better Decision Making

The key word here being can, it is not always the case but let’s talk about when it is the case.

Decision making is an essential skill. Our ability to make good decisions is pressed by the need to move through life as fast as we can and hustle. There is growing evidence that slowing down is better for our health but is also better when it comes to our decision making abilities.

Frank Partnoy, a professor at the University of San Diego, covers the topic of delaying decision making and wrote an insightful book on his findings called Wait: The Art and Science of Delay. He challenges the notion of trusting your gut feeling and instead advocates waiting until the last possible minute and gathering as much information and insight as possible before making a decision.

Of course, his assumption is that the time used to procrastinate is productive which may not always be the case.

Procrastination Can Help Conserve Resources

In time, some issues may resolve themselves without your input. Someone else with more appropriate expertise may pick up the issue or maybe new solutions present themselves that are much less demanding on your time and energy.

Better yet, the project is canceled altogether!

Contrary to popular belief, procrastination (in some cases) may actually help you save time and conserve your resources for more pressing or important matters. In this way, procrastination may help you prioritize your work to focus on the most important and pressing of tasks.

In the fast paced world we live in, we often have to pick and choose what we focus on anyway, which usually means some items get neglected even for the most ambitious of us. If you possess decent executive functioning skills, the tasks that you chose to focus on will be the most important.

Whether some procrastinators possess a higher level executive functioning abilities or simply luck out may be hard to say but if you are having consistent results, you may just be purposely delaying as opposed to procrastinating.

Procrastination Can Initiate Your Flow State

For some people, there is a sense of excitement when they know they have to push through to complete a project on time, this can drive or paralyze people. This additional pressure and excitement can also help to initiate your flow state.

In case the concept of flow is new to you, psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jeanne Nakamura describe it as a sense of fluidity between your body and your mind. People with ADHD may recognize this feeling as hyper focus.

Being in a flow state is also known as being “in the zone”. When you are in this zone, the world around you appears to dissolve and the task at hand is the only thing in front of you.

Magic (and productivity) happens when your mind and your body work together.

Check out How to Induce Flow State for Heightened Performance for more information on how to initiate flow state… with or without procrastination.

Why Do People Procrastinate?

There are a million reasons why someone may delay performing a task. Some common reasons people procrastinate include:

• Overwhelm: sometimes, a task can seem so big that you don’t know where to start… so you don’t start at all.
• Anxiety: certain tasks may be uncomfortable and cause anxiety or distress.
• Perfectionism: ever hear of perfection paralysis? Basically, the idea that you won’t complete the task perfectly stops you from even trying at all.
• Fear: the idea that you may fail or underperform is common and the thought of someone criticizing your work can cause you to freeze and resist starting it.
• Lack of motivation: if the task seems irrelevant or is just uninteresting, it is even harder to initiate let alone complete.

These are just a few reasons that people may procrastinate… unintentionally. There are also reasons that people may choose to procrastinate in an intentional way. Deciding what to focus on and when is a practise in autonomy and has its benefits when it is done in a thoughtful way. The purposeful delay of one task in favour of another that is a better use of your time and attention can help you produce better work in the same timeframe.

Delaying a task that you don’t like in favour of one that you do like can also help build your confidence to tackle the less desirable activity. With a win under your belt, you can then tackle other work with the positive momentum of a completed project.

Understanding the Role of Deadlines in Procrastination

Parkinson’s law states that work will expand to fit the allotted time for its completion. What this means is that if you have a task that is due in an hour, you will complete it in that time. If that same task has a due date of the end of the week, you are more likely to pick at it for a week even though it may only take you an hour of focused work to complete.

Setting your own deadlines regardless of the ones that are imposed on you is a great trick to hack your procrastinating tendencies.

Using Procrastination to Your Advantage

While procrastination is not for everyone, if you have found that it works for you, there are ways that you can harness this power for good. To do that though, you need to distinguish between two types of procrastination: active or passive. Researchers Angela Hsin Chun Chu and Jin Nam Choi are responsible for defining active and passive procrastination and it has to do with your intentions.

Imagine that it is Monday morning and you have a report due by the end of day on Friday. Active procrastination would be understanding that you can draft that report under pressure in 3 hours and decide to delay it until lunch time on Friday. Passive procrastination in the same situation might involve a lot of stress and uncertainty, perhaps even questioning your ability to do the report at all.

Research has shown that people who are active procrastinators can reap some of the same benefits of those who are not prone to procrastination. If you are an active procrastinator, chances are that you can step back and weigh the pros and cons of procrastinating a certain task. You likely understand that you may experience short term stress relief followed by a culmination of stress for a short period of time prior to the due date.

Intention matters.

Are you putting off something simply because you don’t want to do it or are you putting it off because you recognize that it is a better use of your time and your energy? Does your task require the flow of creative juices or are you putting off booking a doctor’s appointment that you are dreading?

I guarantee that putting off doctors appointments is not a good form of procrastination.

If you are a procrastinator, you can make use of hard and soft deadlines. Break up a task into more manageable pieces so that when it comes time for the final push, you can compile what you have and focus your creative attention. By setting tight deadlines, based on Parkinson’s law as mentioned above, you will complete the task in the time that you are allotted.

Sometimes, a task will stress you out no matter what. In order to fully use procrastination to your advantage, you need to be able to determine if procrastination will cause you more stress than it is worth.

Proceed with Caution

While procrastination works for some people, there are a number of studies that show that it can do more harm that is good.

The research is clear that procrastination more often causes additional stress in the long term which has overall negative health implications. You may also be giving yourself more credit than you deserve in thinking that you work better under pressure.

Do you really? Have you tried the alternative?

If you are already a procrastinator, you may want to investigate purposeful delay and how you can hack your tendency to procrastinate and be more intentional. Work smarter, not harder, right?

Mindfulness is a very elusive concept—some people say that practicing it’s more complicated than it appears, more experienced meditators say it’s much easier than people think. The beauty of investing time in mindfulness exercises is that you’ll benefit significantly from them, even if it’s your first time meditating.

People get really worked up during office hours. We have to interact and often disagree with our colleagues and customers—for many, anxiety is just part of the job.

However, there are also things outside our jobs that contribute to our mindlessness—you know, stuff like social media, a generally fast-paced life, and many other things. As a result, this makes us extremely unproductive at work, causing more anxiety and distress.

In today’s blog post, we’ll take a quick look at a few simple and very effective mindfulness exercises to help you stay happy and productive at work.

Alright, what’s mindfulness?

Mindfulness has been a buzzword for the last ten years or so. It’s a practice that goes back thousands of years, originating from ancient Eastern and Buddhist philosophy. The modern mindfulness practice is more straightforward and goal-oriented, allowing practitioners to reap its benefits without having to learn the intricacies of Buddhism.

A very simple definition of mindfulness is: “Intentionally directing attention to present moment experiences with an attitude of curiosity and acceptance.” So it’s pretty much being right here and right now, acknowledging how you feel and what you’re thinking about, but in a non-judgmental way. A big part of the modern mindfulness practice revolves around breathing exercises, guided imagery, and other practices that will help you induce a sense of calm in the mind and body.

How can that help you at work?

• It will significantly improve your focus. Learning to concentrate on one thing at a time is an awesome skill that will help you become more efficient at work.
• I will enhance your creativity. Mindfulness allows people to enter a creative frame of mind by removing judgment. This will enable you to explore innovative solutions that you would have otherwise scrapped.
• It will help you reduce stress. Mindfulness allows people to see that the things that made them anxious or upset are just…things. That is not to say that mindfulness promotes indifference. Instead, it calls for doing the right things at the right time while also understanding how unnecessary our suffering is most of the time. So it’s not about eliminating thought or emptying the mind—it’s all about clarity and self-control.

So how do I practice mindfulness at work?

Before we dive into the specifics, let’s take a second to explore what it actually means to be mindful. To many, this is a confusing concept due to its overwhelming simplicity—we typically expect something that has so many benefits to be extremely convoluted. Well, it’s not. For beginners, at least.

Yes, meditation and mindfulness are incredibly broad practices, and many people dedicate their entire lives to understanding them. However, when it comes to applying mindfulness to concentrate, relax, and become consciously present, you don’t really need a degree to do that. The best part is the more you practice it, the greater the benefits you’ll reap. Try your best not to be intimidated by any of these exercises. You’ll do just fine. When in doubt, just go with the flow.

Okay, now, let’s start with something very simple. The first exercise is pretty much unstructured, but it does demand some diligence to do it right.

1. Effortlessly present

Often, when we’re really focused on work, we tend to lose sight of how we feel and the environment around us. This isn’t ideal since this allows stress to slowly creep into our lives.

Start off by being mindful of what you’re doing. Pay close attention to what you’re doing and how you’re feeling, but do so in an effortless manner. Whenever you feel that your mind has wandered elsewhere, gently bring it back to the object of your attention.

I’ve mentioned above that mindfulness is like a muscle. At the very beginning, you won’t even notice that your mind has gone astray. In time, you’ll be able to identify mindlessness much quicker and bring your attention to where it’s supposed to be.

2. One thing at a time

Multitasking is a scam. Whatever you do—please don’t fall for it. Nobody really knows when or how this harmful practice earned its popularity, but it’s been nothing but a letdown for many, and if anyone may think otherwise, chances are that they’re mistaken.

This isn’t a personal grudge I have with doing multiple things at the same time—there’s plenty of research that refutes any semblance of an argument for its usefulness. This isn’t a mindfulness exercise per se. Instead, it’s a precursor to a more present and less stressful workday.

Whenever you catch yourself alternating tasks to save time, bring yourself back to doing just one thing at a time. Not only will this be a more efficient decision, in the long run, you’ll also incur less damage to your brain in the process. Yes, multitasking does literally affect parts of your frontal lobe and might decrease your IQ for a while. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

3. Use distractions to your advantage

We’re used to slipping into mindlessness since we haven’t learned to do otherwise. But what if we used the distractions that steer our minds elsewhere to our benefit?

Think of the things that usually distract you. For many, it’s the constant notifications that make your phone vibrate. If you choose to have your phone on your desk and not have it entirely muted, consider using these notifications as a call to mindfulness.

Whenever you notice that your phone is vibrating, instead of instantly picking it up, pause for a second and take a few moments to be mindful.

4. Breathe in and out

One of the fundamental meditation techniques that most practitioners start with is Anapana, which roughly translates as “inhalation and exhalation”. The main idea behind this practice is to concentrate on your breath and the qualities of the air that you breathe. This meditation is normally used as a stepping stone for other exercises since its simplicity and one-pointedness helps you sharpen your focus.

Start by inhaling and exhaling slowly through your nose. While you’re at it, focus on the air that you breathe. Then, concentrate on the sensations in your nostrils as the air moves in and out. Notice how it’s cold when you breathe in and warm as you breathe out.

After a few minutes, you can shift your attention towards your chest and stomach and how your body behaves as you breathe.

At a certain point, you may realize that your mind has wandered off—that’s absolutely fine. Remember, meditation and mindfulness are not practices where you have to “perform.” The critical part here is to bring your attention back to your breathing without judgment.

Practice Anapana for at least five minutes.

5. Mindful walking

Meditation can be done in a variety of postures—seated, lying down, standing, walking, and anything in between. However, it’s important to underline that the posture you practice in will affect the quality of your meditation. When meditating seated or lying down, it’ll be easier to achieve a peaceful and mindful state of mind, while standing and walking meditations are more active—they help you concentrate better and provide a slightly more lasting effect.

While walking meditation has a wide array of rules and principles as to how a person should walk and breathe during the practice, we’ll just focus on the basics. Whenever you can afford a short walk, try moving slightly slower than you normally would—think of it as a very relaxed stroll in the park.

As you’re walking, focus on the sensations in your feet as you make every individual step. Keep your gaze directed forward so that you can see the path ahead of you, but don’t look up as you normally would since this is where most of the distractions are.

And speaking of distractions, they’re totally fine. If you see a beautiful bird or flower, feel free to stop and inspect it—but do so slowly and mindfully.

Practice walking meditation for at least 10 minutes.