It sounds a bit contradictory, but I’ve found that working hard might clear your mind better than a movie, a short nap, or anything else might. Especially if you enjoy your work you can become so absorbed that you forget everything else, which may do a world of good for your head.

The point of trying to work to clear you mind is not the same as when you clear your head with rest. The reason we do the later is to actually be able to rest. The point of the former is simply to clear our heads, to get away from the thousands of things running around in our head, our ideas, our problems, our tasks and so on.

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I hear it time and time again, patience is a virtue. Is it? I mean I can clearly see why in some cases this may apply, but some of the best decisions of my life were bought on the spot, or without thinking. In many of these cases some risk was involved, but not always. I’ll grant you that probably some of my worst decisions were also made because I don’t have too much patience, but there wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. All in all, I would modify the saying to “It is a virtue to know when to be patient”.

I decided to explore the nature of patience a bit more, when you should be patient, when you shouldn’t, when it’s advisable, and when perhaps a little hot headed decision making does a world of good. Keep in mind that whatever you read here should be applied to yourself, don’t try to follow others to the letter. Being somewhat impatient has worked for me, but may be a bad move for you.

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If you are one of those people who feel their life ends each morning, and waking up is like the worst torture ever, you have my total sympathies, I’m probably worse. About once or twice a year I wake up refreshed and ready for action, and it feels so good. I believe I can hunt down how this is done and reproduce it willingly, but until then, I have to make do with what I have.

I found that the easy way of waking up is to do it immediately. Don’t think about it, you’ll just go back for that “5 minutes more” that you can’t live without. Just get up and start doing the things you can in automatic mode. Drink a cup of Ice Tea, wash your teeth and so on. The more you’re up, the fresher you feel.

In reality the best way to be fresh right away is to wash your face with cold water. I know it sounds drastic, but it works. Usually the period when you feel really bad is about 5 minutes, but the more you go back to bed, the more you try and sleep more, the longer you make it. Just get out of bed, start the day productively, and the rest will follow.

I’ve noticed in myself and others that there are some factors in their (and my) life that trigger much more productivity than usual. I think everyone experiences this, but you may only think of it as simply being in a good mood. A good night’s sleep, a delicious lunch will make you work better because you feel better and thus feel more like working.

But the trick is to feel better and more inspired when the conditions are not the best right? In truth, people are quite ambivalent to most conditions. Sunny weather might make you soar today, but it may bring you down the next day. To achieve maximum productivity you shouldn’t try and change the conditions, but find out what you need to do to enjoy those conditions.

For example, I of course love sunshine, so when the weather is nice I take a quick shower, open my balcony door, sit close to it with my laptop, feel the gentle breeze, the warm sun and I feel awesome and work away productively all day. On the other hand I can find enjoyment in rainy weather too. I open the door a bit to experience the cold weather, I go and take a warm shower, put on my warm slippers, sit close to the window, with the room nice and hot, prepare some tea, and enjoy the cold weather from my warm cozy room.

The reason I can enjoy both states is that I go through different processes in each case. Adjusting myself to conditions I can’t alter makes me much more productive because I find enjoyment anywhere. I agree, this takes a fair amount of optimism, but it’s learnable. If you can find what motivates you in a given situation, you don’t need to feel positive or optimistic at all, that action will do the work for you.

Finding these actions may be tough work. You may hate loud music, but it may be the only getaway when you’re really sick. In this case listening to awfully loud music may be the one thing that can increase your productivity. You need to find these things for yourself, but in the end you will be able to find your way and your productivity in all situations

Medical studies have concluded and I myself have seen the effect that working in the morning is better than in the afternoon. Many people say that they like working or studying at night because all is quiet and there’s nothing to distract them. I used to be like that, but then I tried going to bed regularly at 10pm and getting up at 6am. I can safely say that it works and you will feel much better all the time overall. You will get much more done, and you will feel refreshed most of the time.

The reason few people actually convert to this lifestyle is that they miss the key word in the sentence, which is “regularly”. If you are used to a night lifestyle don’t expect to be able to convert in a day or two. It takes at least a week, but you will feel better by day three at least.

There are many benefits, possibly the best is that it allows more flexibility. Sometimes I am up until 3am or 4am (poker party), and I can still get up reasonably early (8-10), but more importantly, I can sleep well at night afterwards. Getting up at 6am is also great because there are similarly few distractions, and you will feel much more alert.

I can’t really link to a study here, but I know that sleeping 7 hours going to bed before midnight is more restull than sleeping the same 7 hours, but going to bed after midnight. This has to do with certain body functions starting at determined times. Also, sunshine is an important factor in life, so the body’s bio-clock is set to beat in time with the natural start of the day.

Procrastination is definitely the evil brother of productivity. While it doesn’t necessarily mean you do nothing, it means that you concentrate on things you don’t need to do, or don’t need to do now.

I’ve noticed in my daily routine a special kind of procrastination, which would probably be called borderline procrastination if I had to put a medical term to it. Often when I have to do some work I don’t feel like doing, I will actually go off and do something else, that is still work, but not that important. If I decide for example to write a huge roundup of email applications, I may get bored and start writing another, short post. This is a kind of procrastination, because you are not doing what you’re supposed to, you are giving yourself only the feeling of work, while in fact, you are just escaping your tasks.

This is probably more common than I expect, but since theoretically you are still working I would guess most people don’t notice this, or don’t really think about it as something counter-productive. In some contexts it could raise your productivity by changing your setting, but in most cases people are just trying to get away with not doing work.

My suggestion, if you suffer from this, is to phase it out gradually, as this is a behavioral trait. When you decide to switch to a different kind of work, just work on it for five more minutes and then change. Next week, continue working for 10 minutes and so on and so forth. After a month or so, you will be able to phase out this type of distraction, and hopefully you will be more productive every day.