Think Tank: The Neuro Blog
Top Five Ways to Stop Procrastinating
When procrastination gets out of hand, it can truly take on the feeling of having a genuine mental illness, because it can spiral badly. If procrastinating makes you doubt yourself and become depressed, and depression notoriously makes people procrastinate, then you can wind up with some serious attitude problems quickly without realizing where they started.
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How Can I Improve My Study Skills?
Here’s the thing: studying is one of the least glamorous parts of life. It takes a lot of time, and it means going over the same material again and again. Sometimes, you’re stuck having to learn something that feels pointless. Even if you use every trick in the book, studying is intense work, and there’s just no way to make it look cool. But there are ways you can make it a lot more effective. Once you develop good study habits, you’ll become a lot more confident and you’ll be ready to take on new challenges. Here are some questions you have to ask yourself:
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The Overworked Millenial: Time Management Vs Attention Management
I've spent years trying to optimize my schedule and goal setting process to be able to accomplish the things I've set out to do. In that process, I realized that my issue wasn't dividing my time between my different tasks, but maintaining attention while doing the tasks. Here's some tips.
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Best Tips to Improve Your Public Speaking Skills
Public speaking is a skill rather than natural ability. That means you can become more proficient at it over time even if you’re uneasy now. Many people who have a fear of public speaking eventually manage to get it under control and incorporate speeches into their professional life. Here are some tips that can help you become a better public speaker:
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How to Wake Up More Refreshed
We’ve all experienced those days when we wake up exhausted, almost as if we hadn’t even slept. To make matters worse, the brain fog that sets in doesn’t go away as we carry on with our daily tasks. So we pretty much sleepwalk our way through the day, unable to focus on anything but the thought of going back to bed and getting some sleep we so desperately need. If this only happens occasionally, a good night’s sleep will usually take care of it. Meanwhile, you just have to find a way to remain productive despite feeling tired. But if it goes on for days or weeks, it can seriously hamper your results at work or at school. Some changes to your lifestyle are thus in order if you want to start waking up well-rested again. To make them, you will first need to determine what’s causing your problem. Why Do We Wake Up Tired? As a rule, poor-quality sleep is the main reason why people wake up tired. This can be the result of a number of different factors. For starters, you might not be getting enough sleep. As you know, eight hours of sleep should be the gold standard for adults, whereas children often need at least an hour more. But if you get eight hours of sleep each night and still feel tired, perhaps you need to find a schedule that’s more in tune with your body. Researchers thus suggest sleeping for about six hours at night and then taking a 90-minute siesta in the afternoon, like people in some other cultures do. If the temperature in your bedroom is too high, you’ll also have trouble falling asleep. The same is true if the light in the room is too bright because it’s sending your body the message to stay awake. If you share your bed with your pet, like many of us do, their tossing and turning and the noises they make at night could also be disrupting your sleep schedule. In rare cases, your lack of sleep could also be the result of a medical condition known as sleep apnea. People who suffer from it have trouble breathing while they sleep, which keeps them awake throughout the night. If that’s the case, your doctor should take a look at your symptoms and devise a treatment plan. Steps to Waking Up Well-Rested If environmental or lifestyle factors are causing your lack of quality sleep, it’s time to make some changes. Here are some things you can do to sort out your sleeping pattern and start waking up refreshed again. Go to Bed on Time We know that we need about eight hours of sleep each night. Yet many of us decide to cut down on sleep to try and squeeze more activities into a single day. Needless to say, this is the wrong approach that’s only setting us up for a failure the next day. If you have to be up by 7 am, you should be showered and in bed by 11 pm at the latest. You might not fall asleep right away, but you can ease your body into sleep mode by reading a good book or reflecting on the events of the day. Don’t take your phone or gadgets to the bed, as they will keep your brain alert and thus disrupt your sleep cycle. Learn how to become a morning person Adjust the Temperature Do you find yourself turning your pillow over to the “cold side” at night? That’s because the pillow warms up in contact with your skin and even the slightest oscillation in temperature affects the quality of your sleep. When you go to sleep, your brain will decrease the body temperature to help you fall asleep faster. The temperature of your bedroom needs to be lower, too. Experts suggest setting to between 60 and 67 degrees. Anything above or below this will cause discomfort and may, in fact, keep you awake at night. Let Some Light In If you tend to close the blinds before going to bed to prevent the sunlight from waking you up in the morning, you should stop doing that. While a dark environment stimulates your brain to fall asleep in the evening, the lack of light will keep you in sleep mode when it’s time to wake up and get out of bed. With the blinds closed, your body can’t tell night from day. As such, the exposure to natural light in the morning allows your body to wake up and become alert. This will make it much easier to get up and work up the energy to start your day right. Don’t Hit That Snooze Button You know the story: the alarm goes off, but you decide to hit the snooze button and give yourself five or ten more minutes of sleep. Before you know it, it’s an hour later, and you’re already running late for work. And even if you’ve slept like a baby before the alarm went off, you’ll still feel like you’ve had a rough night. That’s because your body has its own rhythm that it sticks to. But if you stay in bed after the alarm goes off for the first time, you’re effectively telling your brain that it’s not yet time to wake up. So, the moment you hear the alarm, it’s not enough to just wake up – you need to get out of bed. Watch What You Eat and Drink Are you getting all the important nutrients from your food? In some cases, a lack of sleep isn’t the result of your bedtime rituals, but rather your poor dietary habits. This includes the consumption of alcohol and sugar, as well as eating shortly before going to bed. To maintain a proper daily routine, your brain and your body need access to certain important natural ingredients. They will help you achieve focus, be more alert, and deal with everyday stress in a more efficient way. As a result, your brain will function better, thus also allowing you to fall asleep more easily. So, to start your day right, have a fresh cup of coffee or green tea in the morning. Better yet, a good choice of nootropic will provide your brain with all the active ingredients it needs to function well at all times. See: Optimize your caffeine schedule Hi! We’re Team Neuro, aficionados of all things brain-related, from creativity to working out. With backgrounds in art, science, and athletics, we love delving into all the potentials of the human body. We also created the world's first sugar-free nootropic caffeine gum that utilizes the effects of caffeine and L-theanine, made to help you optimize your mind — anywhere, anytime. Find out more here.
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Top Productivity Hacks
What can you do to make your day longer? Short of getting a time machine off eBay, your only choice is to become more efficient. Productive people get to take on the most interesting jobs, and they also have enough free time to discover new passions. So how do you get more productive? You probably have some tricks of your own. But here are some tried and tested approaches that will increase your productivity.
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What Are Some Ways to Function While Tired?
Exhaustion is like an invisible weight that holds you down. You just can’t reach the maximum of your cognitive and physical capabilities when you’re tired. So what happens when you have to finish a task knowing you can’t give it your all? Too many of us have to deal with working through exhaustion. If you do it too often, working while exhausted can cause major problems at work or at school. But talking about it will help, so here are some things you should consider about exhaustion and performance.
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What Everyday Habits Drain Our Energy?
Are you tired? You’ve got a lot going on. You can’t make it to social events, you can’t get your work done on time. How could you consider taking on new challenges? You’re even too tired to sleep! The more you exhaust yourself with minutiae, the harder it is to do something worthwhile. We’re all under a lot of pressure to work to exhaustion, but there are ways you can stop this cycle of listlessness. If you can cut back on habits that mess with your energy levels, your body and your mind will both thank you.
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Pursuing Productivity One Baby Step at a Time
The Zeigarnik Effect shows that "when we don’t finish a task, we experience discomfort and elusive thoughts because of it.” As humans, we cope with this discomfort by either escaping into a mode of complacency or taking action. If you're caught in between, take it one step at a time. Your brain and body will thank you. Taking a few nootropic compounds doesn’t suddenly lead to a better lifestyle. Healthy sleep schedules, diet, and exercise all contribute to a healthy brain, but there’s a few things you can do now to increase your productivity:
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