Do It Today: Overcome Procrastination, Improve Productivity, and Achieve More Meaningful Things

Eliminate Mindless Browsing
We all have days we feel unproductive or that we did not do
anything. When you feel you are not productive, the
chances are that it is because interruptions and multitasking
drain your energy.
When you juggle multiple things simultaneously, like;
sending an email, text a friend and checking your Facebook
while you are in a meeting, you engage in context
switching. In a research done by Gloria Mark of the
University of California, Irvine, it showed that it takes an
average of 25 minutes to return to the original task after an
interruption. Since we are interrupted more than once, this
adds up quickly, and before you know it, you feel like you
have done nothing that day.
Clifford Nass, a sociologist from Stanford University, has
researched the impact of multitasking and found that
people who engage in multitasking are “suckers for
irrelevancy.” We engage in multitasking because we are
distracted by notifications, which are addictive.
We cannot control ourselves; we must look at the
notification to see who or what wants our attention. Every
time a notification pops up on our screen, we get a rush that
releases dopamine.
Dopamine is one of the body’s happy chemicals; it controls
the “pleasure” systems of the brain and makes you feel joy.
This joyous feeling is addictive and makes us seek out
behaviors that stimulate dopamine. You can think about
food, sex, drugs and the notifications you receive on your
screen.

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While dopamine may cause a rush, it also exhausts us. That
is why you still feel tired at the end of the day while you
have not been productive. This is a harmful process, and we
need to stop this pattern.
The Fix: Eliminate Browsing
Being productive can be as simple as taking control over
your day. What harms your productivity the most is
browsing
. It absolutely kills it. We’ve all experienced a
distortion in time when we are browsing. “What?! I just did
NOTHING for 2 hours.” Yes, we even do this at work. Take
control of your attention and time. The point is; do
something that’s worth your time
. Be conscious about your
time. And spend so it improves the quality of your life.

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