What if I told you there’s a way to boost your productivity by as much as 31% and all it would take you is two minutes a day for twenty one days straight?
That’s right.
2 minutes/day x 21 days straight = 31% increase in productivity.
That formula sounds a little too good to be true, huh?
And to be clear, no, we’re not talking about hooking you up to a steady IV drip of caffeine. Though that might achieve the same end goal, I posit that taking caffeine via a hole poked in your arm is more tedious, and uncomfortable, than what I’ve got in store for you to today.
Then again, maybe not.
So what’s this magical trick capable of unearthing oodles of your untold potential upon the world?
It’s real simple:
Happiness
That’s right.
Studies consistently show that your brain in a positive state is 31% more productive than your brain in a negative, neutral, or even stressed state.
That’s a staggering amount of potential productivity just waiting to be unleashed, and all it’ll cost you is a positive attitude.
What is happiness anyways?
Here’s the real issue: Most of us these days are bad at being happy.
I know I am.
I’m always projecting forward, connecting my happiness with the completion of some task or obtainment of some key metric.
In school that was getting good grades. Later that was getting a good job.
But when your happiness is tied up in the future, in the attainment or accomplishment of something, then that means happiness is always lurking on the other side of success.
And when that is the case, our brain never truly arrives at happiness.
Why?
Because our brain cheats and constantly moves the goal-post. As soon as we arrive at the completion of a task (at success), our brain is already remodeling its expectations.
You got good grades? Great. Now get even better grades.
You wrote a book? Fantastic. Now write an even better book.
Linking success with happiness pushes both beyond our reach. It’s a carrot forever lingering just beyond our grasp.
But don’t worry (remember, your brain is less effective when operating from a negative mind-state), for this broken cycle is not a function of genetics, but rather, one of society.
Ever since we were children we’ve been trained in an environment where happiness and success and recognition were linked.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
When we unlock the means to express positivity and happiness in the present-moment, then our brains get supercharged. They are suddenly able to work harder, faster, and more intelligently.
There are two reasons for this, and it all traces back to chemistry.
Remember when I said the trick didn’t involve caffeine or performance enhancing substances?
I lied.
Plot twist. Time to get out that IV.
Just kidding!
About the IV, that is. Not the performance enhancing substances.
Our brain is one squishy factory of performance enhancing substances. To understand how to maximize our productivity, intelligence, and energy levels, it’s important to first grasp what’s happening inside our cranium on at least a very basic level.
Dopamine makes everything better!
Truly.
Most of you out there will have heard about this little chemical the brain emits. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with (among other things) reward-motivation behavior.
Rewards typically elicit a squirt of dopamine, which reinforces the behavior and makes you want to do that activity again in the future.
Drugs artificially boost dopamine production, which is why drugs (in a broad general sense) are so damn addictive.
It’s science, yo.
Science we can use to our advantage.
Dopamine has two functions when it comes to positivity and happiness.
First is the obvious function we’ve already discussed:
Dopamine simply makes you happier.
But happiness in and of itself doesn’t account for the staggering boost in cognitive capacities.
No, that comes from the second function of dopamine.
Dopamine activates the learning centers in your brain, allowing you to adapt and grow in new, exciting ways.
That’s right, those little dopamine shots don’t just make you happy, they make you more productive and able to learn.
Reverse-Engineering Happiness
Earlier we discussed how society has trained us to associate happiness with success, and how both are living beyond the cognitive horizon, forever beyond our grasp but for the fleeting moments immediately following obtainment.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Remember at the beginning of the article when I told you that by investing 2 minutes a day for 21 days in a row, you could boost your overall productivity by as much as 31%?
Well my patiently persistent reader, we’ve arrived at the howportion of today’s proceedings.
Here are the 3 steps to boosting your productivity/positivity
Every day for the next 21 days, I want you to:
- Start your morning by writing down 3 things you’re grateful for.
- Journal about one positive experince you had in the past 24 hours.
- Write one positive email praising somebody in your support network, every single day.
That’s it.
Substantially less cumbersome than an IV of caffeine trailing you all day.
Seriously, it’s that easy.
These steps help relive positive experiences which in turn uses those meditations towards reqiring the stimuli your brain chooses to prioritize.
This exercise programs your brain to recognize that behavior matters.
Eventually your brain starts changing the patterns it seeks out in its day-to-day interactions. It no longer searches first for the negative, but the positive.
We all have those people in our lives who are constantly negative. They look at the world through a pessimistic lens infecting everything with a cynicism and close-mindedness that, if you let it, will infect and overwhelm you.
Hell, we don’t even have to look beyond ourselves to find that person. Often we are that person.
But what we’re going to do over the course of the next 21 days is break that cycle. With intentionality we are going to focus on positive patterns in our behavior, thought processes, and interpersonal interactions.
So don’t wait, don’t put it off. Invest two minutes every single day towards your happiness.
What do you really have to lose?
