4 Rebellious Productivity Rules to Declutter Your Brain

I recently staged a rebellion. It was a rebellion of one person, but the results were nothing short of life changing — which is why I’m doing my darndest to convince you to stage a rebellion of your own, too.

Here’s how it all started.

After many attempts at joining the 5am club and failing miserably at it, I decided that I was going to reject this snobby, very exclusive club before it could reject me. So, I decided to violently defy the dogma of the 5am club.

As a former scientist, I wanted validation for my decision and lucky for me, science is totally on my side. One of the largest studies ever performed on circadian rhythms (on over 700,000 individuals!) showed that whether you are productive in the morning or not is not a question of willpower but of genetics. See, wasn’t my fault.

More importantly, night owls who force themselves to wake up early will not only be unhappy, but they will also actually experience higher levels of stress and inflammation.

In an interview with the BBC, Oxford biologist Katharina Wulff explained that night owls who are forcing themselves to wake up early are unproductive because they are still producing melatonin later in the morning while the early birds stop secreting the hormone earlier. Worse still, by forcing themselves out of their natural cycles, night owls could also be causing physiological harm and increasing the likelihood of weight gain.

Good enough for me!

Once I made that decision, my productivity skyrocketed. So, I began asking myself, “What else was I taking as gospel and failing miserably to force myself to do?”

I watched with glee as my productivity continued to skyrocket with each conventional productivity rule I challenged that didn’t feel right for me.

Then something strange happened.

I picked up a major, nay — über-big project at work and thought it would derail my newly started productivity train. But contrary to my expectation, it actually increased it! Mind blown!

What was going on here? Well, being the curious self-experimenter that I am, I did figure this out, but you’ll have to read to the end to find out my life-changing epiphany.

But enough about me. I’ve been told that my most important job as a writer is to talk about you. Specifically, how I can improve your life. I have figured out many different things since I began my rebellion but, in this article, I have set the intention of helping you declutter your mind or to make you laugh. I’ll take one of the two.

You ready? Let’s go!

1. Schedule Time to Worry

Sometimes I think, “Don’t worry, be happy” is the biggest insult to our prefrontal cortex. I mean, our prefrontal cortex literally evolved to help us worry about the future so that we can plan ahead and not be eaten by lions.

The issue is that our prefrontal cortex is a bit like a clingy partner. One of its built-in functions is to constantly remind us that it exists and that its feelings are important. And no, breaking up is not an option. So, just as you would with a clingy partner, sometimes the best thing you can do is to schedule quality time with it and make sure it feels heard.

An example of this is worrying about money. I own a property that requires some repairs at the moment. I also have some random one-off expenses that I need to think about. In the past, every time some expense hit, my prefrontal cortex will hijack at least 30 minutes of my life and spiral into a rabbit hole. It was so good at spinning the story that my reptilian brain would totally believe it was reality and get all jacked up with emotion. All while I neither had the time, intention or information to deal with the thing it was worrying about. And this could happen an unlimited number of times per day.

Previously, I would try to breathe through it in an attempt to abide by the conventional wisdom to let things go. I decided that my success rate at this was worse than a tech startup, so I tried the opposite thing.

Instead of letting it go, I would specifically schedule time to allow my mind to do what it does best — worry about various scenarios and plan for the best course of action. I make sure that I will have time to gather all the information and to analyze the best outcome. More importantly, what I’m doing is not just scheduling tasks, but scheduling my emotions.

Takeaway

Schedule time to worry about things so that when the worry appears randomly, instead of suppressing it or allowing it to hijack the present moment, you can say, “I promise I’ll give you my full attention at our date night.”

2. The 2-Minute Rule

I feel like 2-minute task has gotten an unfairly bad rep in recent years. Conventional wisdom tends to glorify the bigger, sexier, brother of the two-minute tasks — “The Hard Thing”. Entire books have been written about how we must “Do The Hard Thing First” and “Eat that Frog.”

Meanwhile, the 2-minute tasks which demands so little of us are repeatedly ignored and relegated to the waiting room of our brains. Resigned to being a waste of space, they gather en masse in our brains, collectively taking up precious mental energy to simply remember that each one exists.

To be fair, I am not immune to the charms of the “The Hard Thing” but I have come to appreciate an empty waiting room in my brain. I began realizing that taking 30 minutes each day to deal with small 2-minute tasks, means that they don’t sit in my brain for 6 months — occasionally piping up to remind me that they are “still” there.

I now use these 2-minute tasks as warm up for The Hard Thing. And, let’s be honest, one-on-one time with “The Hard Thing” is pretty blissful.

Takeaway

Allocate some time each day to deal with items that you can clear in less than 2 minutes, even if it is less urgent or important than another more time-consuming task. The mental clarity you achieve by doing this will allow you to focus much easier on the important tasks you need to complete.

3. Get a (Little) Bit Busier

I recently discovered that I’m a chronic sufferer of Parkinsons. The Law, that is, not the disease. A simplification of Parkinson’s Law is that work will expand to fill the time allotted.

I recently had a lull at work between projects. In my mind, I fantasized that this would allow me to write twice as many articles. The reality was that I ended up taking twice as long to complete an article.

I was forced to confront the truth that I am quite lazy, undisciplined, and a complete hedonist. It turns out, my desire for fun, recreation and socialization always expanded to fill the time available.

Then I got hit with a project that required 150% more effort than any previous role and surprisingly found myself to be even more productive with my writing than before.

I soon realized that because I knew that I would only have a limited amount of time to work out or write, each time block was far more intentional and well-planned than before. If I had a whole day to write, I found it was far easier to spend a few more hours lost in my phone or hanging out with a friend and I was far less intentional about saying, “No” to things that had less value.

Takeaway

If you have too much unstructured time, start plugging in things that will force you to physically be somewhere else (e.g., accountability meetings, regular classes, etc.).

If you have the opposite problem and don’t have a lot of free time, start being more intentional about what you do with each block of time. For example, when you go to the gym, do you have a workout planned that align with your goals or are you just winging it? Are you always reacting, or do you have at least a 1-week lookahead?

4. Touch It Once

Have you ever received a text that just said, “Hey”? Does it immediately annoy you and make you wonder why that person reached out but refused to declare their intentions?

That’s how that email/letter/text feels when you open it, glance at it only to ignore it for an indeterminate period of time. Worse still when they refused to be so easily ignored and also join your anxieties in the waiting room of your brain — conveniently pushing out important things like the annual tax due date.

For the longest time, I used to read emails from readers and make a mental (aka useless) reminder to respond later. Then real-life people would crowd my physical space, and I would (suprise!) forget about that very important reader.

Four months later, I would remember that this really sweet person wrote me the most wonderful email and now I’m kicking myself because they could have been a lifelong true fan but now, I’ve just become the snob who didn’t respond to their incredibly thoughtful email.

P.S. If that’s you, I’m sorry — I promise there is an equally effusive response sitting in my draft folder that you will receive should you choose to forgive me.

Takeaway

Touching things twice is the definition of inefficiency. If you are not planning to deal with it in anyway, then resist the urge to glance at it. Remember that sorting it into a distinct pile counts as dealing with it as long as you follow through.

For example, I put all email from readers that require more thoughtful responses into a separate folder and designate a time to respond. Again, the key is following through on the second part. This is a huge contrast to the past where I would simply read it and leave it in the inbox amongst all the other emails.

The Epiphany

The other day, my colleague heard me describe a memory technique and told me that he thought that would significantly improve his life. I then suggested that he read a book about it. He proceeded to tell me a line I hear often, “Oh, I don’t have time to read.”

Later the same day, he mentioned his love for watching baking shows and how he spent at least two hours a day watching them. Now, we can all do the math here. Reading is an option, as is a baking show. If you have two hours to watch a baking show, you have two hours to read.

Most times, when we say we don’t have time, what we “really” mean is that we don’t have mental space. After his 16-hour day, my colleague didn’t have the mental space to read and process a non-fiction book.

It’s a lot like when you have too many tabs and your computer slows all the way down. If you make an effort to close a couple of the tabs down, your computer will speed right back up.

This was the epiphany — less time didn’t slow down my productivity because my problem wasn’t that I didn’t have enough time in the first place. It was that I didn’t have mental space.

When a work project forced me to develop systems to declutter my brain, I ended up having more mental space than before and hence was able to increase my productivity even though I actually had less time.

But the best thing about decluttering my mind is to be able to enjoy the bliss of being singularly focused on one mental task. It’s like the difference between going on a dozen mediocre dates versus one date with the love of your life.

So, try these steps, and find more of your own. I challenge you to stage your own rebellion and confront your own deeply held beliefs of productivity.

Also, pro tip — do your taxes.