Five tips on making every day count, by Richard Branson
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5. Do something fun as you start your day
4. Just do it!
3. Set goals and challenge yourself (and write them down)
2. Have a break
1. Do some good
With regards to exercise and breaks (two of the items in here), I think it is pretty much proven to be beneficial for productivity as well, but just to add my anecdotal success...:
I used to hit the gym at around 18-19 in the evening. I would often be tired and the gym would be crowded.
Then I switched to going around 13-14, breaking up my day. I found it gave me tremendous energy coming back from the gym to the office - and I would often have new ideas on how to solve, whatever I was working on.
So if you have this kind of freedom in planning your workday, I encourage you to try it out - exercise in the middle of the day.
It's my anecdotal experience that the trend of people 'feeling tired all the time' in modern American society is a result of the extremely large caloric intake that's become common for most meals.
On days I run I wash my face and put on a fresh pair of underwear/socks. Maybe I'm gross but I think the shower is honestly unnecessary.
Using water as cold as you'll tolerate helps keep the shower very short though!
I think this applies to many things, not just for fitness. Our time is limited, depending on how much money you have and where you live you even spend more (or less) time in some things.
But in the end, there's some time that we choose on how to spend.
"There are many different ways to think of failure, most of which seem designed to soften the sting of it. In Courage to Soar, Ms. Biles unpacks her own thoughts on the matter. This memoir, "written" by a 19 year-old and published three months into her explosive post-Olympic popularity, is a pretty blatant cash-grab. Still, the book's purpose, beyond racking up sales, seems to be to inspire younger readers, young girls in particular. But why do we look for advice from the most talented in society? What do they know of our struggles to rise up, dripping and stinking, from the swamp of mediocrity? Here, for example, is Ms. Biles describing how, after some initial struggles, she finally managed to nail a tricky skill – a release move on the uneven bars called a Tkatchev in which you let go of the bar on the upswing and fly backward, usually straddled, over the bar before catching it. "And then, just before practice ended, I said to myself, I'm going to do it this time. And you know what? I actually did!" Must be nice."
Kitesurf, Be confident, Jot notes on a notepad whilst flying first class Relax Cut a cheque to charity
First thing every morning, eat a live frog. Nothing worse will happen to you all day.[1]
How much attention do you think anyone is going to pay?
[1] Or to the frog.
He didn't suggest you jet off in your private plane for a quick refreshing week on your private island. He suggested you take breaks, start your day doing something you enjoy, exercise a bit, write down your goals, and work hard. I fail to see where money comes into it.
Money plays a huge role in a person's ability to find a peace and calm moment in their day. And it doesn't help when some rich jerk walks in and says "what's the problem, too hard to wake up feeling happy and able to do something fun? ha, never had that problem! good day!". Ick.
Money plays a huge role in all of this. Yes, writing down your goals is basically free. Taking breaks isn't. Taking breaks can often include a risk of someone yelling at you, or you missing an important phone call that would have been really useful to get, etc.
Money is really important. Yeah, you don't need $5B to do this, but the point is that the advice is tone-deaf considering it comes from someone who does not have the common worries or problems of the common person.
Edit: The article is extra tone-deaf because it indeed does suggest you "jet off in your private plane for a quick refreshing week on your private island" like you quipped. The pictures he included in the article make it clear what his idea of a break is.
It may be psychologically hard. If you're tired and worn out, yes, you'll find it hard to buy that you should make space to rest or exercise or have fun, but that's exactly when you need it the most, and when it will benefit you the most.
Not taking breaks and setting aside time like this is more costly than taking them. Yes, it may be logistically hard to do it in ways that prevent a boss from yelling at you - I've had times when I resorted to going to the toilets to get a few minutes breathing space. But if it isn't possible? That's a strong signal you need to find something else (and yes, I know it is hard for many, but it is rarely impossible).
A lot of these are traps in that it's very easy to get into a cycle where you think you don't have time. But if you think you don't have time for exercise, for example, you'll soon find yourself with even less time as your energy levels drop and your performance tanks.
That's not really what I said, though. I said that having money plays a big role in someone's ability to simply do these 5 things. It matters - having money or not makes a difference. I was responding to, "I fail to see where money comes into it" by explaining how, for hundreds of millions of people in the USA who are not well-off, money does come into it. It it out-of-touch with America and the world to say it doesn't.
> It may be psychologically hard.
It may also be physically hard. You are discounting the struggles of so many Americans by dismissing that these things can be hard for people. They are good advice, but it does't make it easy, especially "easy to do when you have no money".
> Not taking breaks and setting aside time like this is more costly than taking them.
Absolutely agreed. It is a privilege of the rich to optimize for the long term and to ignore short-term problems. Not taking breaks isn't something a lot of people do by choice - they are forced into it by circumstance and have a hard time getting out of it.
What I have seen are lots of people who argue they have no time because they are tired and prioritize choices that are mentally easier and get stuck in a vicious circle that way. It may sounds like this advice is not meant for them, but I'd argue the opposite: It's exactly when you're in those kind of circumstances you need to learn to make time for these things. Learning how to make time to rest and reflect is one of the most essential skills you can learn if you want to find ways of improving your life.
And that applies just as much to poor people as to people with lots of money but stressful jobs - very few people think they have plenty of spare time.
If this was easy it'd be pointless advice - we'd all be doing it.
> Absolutely agreed. It is a privilege of the rich to optimize for the long term and to ignore short-term problems. Not taking breaks isn't something a lot of people do by choice - they are forced into it by circumstance and have a hard time getting out of it.
I disagree. There will always be corner cases, but I've been in plenty of situations where it was tempting to think I don't have time for breaks. But the moment you start thinking you don't have time for breaks it's doubly important to take them, because it implies you're too caught up in what you're doing to realize how you're affecting your own productivity. You'll do a shitty job not just in the long term but in the short term too.
A lot of people think they are forced into not taking breaks, but my experience is that most people who think they can't, very much can. You'll find even highly paid people in senior jobs insist they can't take breaks, and then spend hours acting like zombies instead, rather than take a break and keep their productivity up. Yes, there are the odd corner case with bad bosses that'll count every second you're not doing your job, but there are most certainly not hundreds of millions of people in those kind of circumstances in the US.
This applies to a huge proportion of the advice one might find on Hacker News.