Ultimate Guide - Amazon S3 · 2016-03-27 · Ultimate Guide to Double your Productivity Achieve...

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7 EASY HABITS TO REACH OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE Ultimate Guide to Double your Productivity ACHIEVE OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE

Transcript of Ultimate Guide - Amazon S3 · 2016-03-27 · Ultimate Guide to Double your Productivity Achieve...

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7 Easy Habits to rEacH optimal pErformancE

Ultimate Guide

to Double your Productivity

Achieve optimAl performAnce

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Introduction

ImagIne If you could optImIze a few sImple habIts In your lIfe to 2X, 5X or even 10X your productIvIty levels and really start gettIng thIngs done?

You don’t need to be born with any special traits or super intelligent powers to be become a top performer in life. Nor do you need to somehow get lucky or be an extremely extroverted, outgoing person.

In fact a lot of high performers you now see gracing the cover of magazines and on TV actually started life at a disadvantage.

Most anyone seen as a high performer, the type who just seems to be “on” and super productive all the time have found it through practicing systems and lifestyle habits that anyone can learn.

This guide is for people who want to know how to optimize their body and lifestyle to create a life of higher productivity, focus, energy and well-being.

You may be a busy entrepreneur struggling to get as much done each day as you want.

You may be an aspiring corporate executive looking for how to boost your daily performance above your peers to fast track you to success.

You may just quite simply want to know how to get more shit done each day.

Do any of the following sound familiar?• Doyoustartsomethingbutneverfinishit?• Ifyoufindyourselftootiredtotakeonanythingelse.• If you are struggling to focus and lack clarity in your work.• Ifyoufindyourselfoverwhelmed,distractedandprocrastinatedaily.• If you want to know how to be more productive.• If you are lacking energy and feel like a zombie every-time you wake up.• Or if you just want to know lifestyle habits to help fast track your path to

success in your business or career.

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If they do, I guarantee you will get at least one piece of advice from this guide to upgrade yourself and your performance in life. What I like to call, hitting Optimal Performance.

That is what this guide is all about. A kick start guide for you to start feeling better, looking better and getting more shit done in the process.

Allittakesisawillingnesstolearn,ahumblingabilitytoreflectonyourcurrentchoicesin life and decide if they are really going to take you where you want to go, and the open mindedness to change them.

in this guide you will learn:

How to create a high performing mindset and open up your

potential to do more

optimize your work place and home to increase your

productive output

How to eat to upgrade your hardware and mind to boost

your performance

How to dramatically improve your sleep so you can wake up ready

to take the world on

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Who am i?

My name is Paul Milano, I help people learn systems and habits to create a more productive and charged life. I’ve coached entrepreneurs, CEO’s, Vice Presidents andanyone looking to get ahead on how to build a lifestyle of high performance and productivity through step by step systems.

Why Did i write this?

This guide is a cultivation of years of learning and experimenting. A lot of people want to know how to be more productive, focused and energetic but don’t know where to start. The habits in this guide are your start guide to getting more done.

Upgrading yourself to “You version 2.0” starts within, with the habits you take each day, the food you choose to eat and the choices you make. A few years back I had hit areally low point in my life and pulling myself out of that did not happen overnight.The lifestyle habits and changes I started taking on each day to upgrade myself and persisting with them are what made it happen. That’s what this guide is about.

I wrote this guide as I wanted to give out a no nonsense, no BS guide on simple habits you can implement right now that are PROVEN to impact your productivity and performance in life.

You can implement them all at once (and you’d be a rock star if you did) or you can do them one at a time which is much easier to handle for most. In either case, mastering any one of these will help take you to the next level.

Let’s keep the productivity up and get started!

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#1How to sleep like a champion to massively improve your energy.

how often do you wake up feelIng totally energIzed and ready to go each day?

If you were like me, the answer wasn’t good! I would roll out of bed in a sloth like state. I, like many others underappreciated and didn’t respect how powerful sleep actually is for basically every single function you do each day.

Putting sleep as a priority has been one of the biggest game changers for me in my productivity and daily energy.

I’m fanatical on my sleep now after seeing how much it changed my performance. If you negatively impact my sleep schedule you will probably hear about it…

This doesn’t just mean getting to sleep early or sleeping in once or twice a week, it means making it a daily practice consistently day in and day out.

How do you optimize your hormones and master your sleep? Let’s dig into it below. (By the way, if you do wake up each morning charged and ready to go, these tips will help to further amplify that).

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• 10PM to 10:30PM Bed time every night. Getting in the habit of going to bed by 10:30PM almost every night is one of the best things I’ve ever done for feeling good and improving my energy. This is the time of night where everything just starts to click if you are lights out by this time. A lot of people will pull back here, saying how boring or challenging it may be but once you get in the habit of doing it you won’t ever want to miss that time. I used to be a night owl and a late riser and never thought I could be a morning person… I’ve now turned this totally around. I love being an early riser now.

Worried about messing up your social life? Don’t be. After that time are you ever really accomplishing or doing anything that is going to propel you forward in life? Make this time your “standard” bed time and then allow a few exceptions for special events each month.

• Follow the Circadian Ryhtmn. As humans, we are meant to sleep after the sun goes down and wake when it rises. There are a whole host of hormones in your body that also follow and RELY on this cycle. This cycle isn’t unique to humans; pretty much every animal on the planet follows this.

These hormones control your sleep, your metabolism, your ability to burn fat, build muscle, your immune system and a whole host of other things.(1) Knowing all that, is this an area we really want to mess around with?

We’ve been following this pattern for thousands of years it is only recently with modern light and electronics that we have started to stray. This leads into the next point to help keep us in the Circadian Rythmn.

• Remove exposure to electronics 1-2 hours before bed. When the sun starts to set, if everything is going as it should our body starts producing the sleep hormone melatonin to get us ready to catch some zzz’s. This used to work great without issue for a long long time. The sun would set and the world would go dark. Then a man named Edison invited the light bulb, then came TV’s, computers, tablets and smart phones and our sleep hormones have been going haywire ever since.

“ There’s almost nothing you can do that is more important to your overall well-being and metabolic health then getting a really good nights sleep, every single night.”

CHARLES POLIQUIN

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What happened? As we keep exposing the light receptors in our eyes to artificiallightsthroughTV,Mobilephonesandtabletsthehormonesinourbodyinterpret that as “the sun is still shining” and as such keep we producing daytime hormones.(4)

The light receptors in our eyes are particular sensitive to blue lights which just so happen to be the strongest on these small electronic devices we used every single day. During the day this is no problem. After the sun sets though the more we suppress the production of melatonin through these type of lights the more negatively our sleep will be impacted.

Isitpossibleourbodieswilladapttothisoverabundanceofartificiallightintheworld now? Probably… but this tends to take hundreds or thousands of years and we are not there yet.

Itendtoturnoffanyelectronicsby9PMlatest(includingwatchingNetflix)andtend to dim the lights and read a book. There is just something so calming about reading before bed that has me sleeping like a baby (and doesn’t interrupt my melatonin production).

Sometimes we have to look at our laptops or check emails before bed… I get it. Urgent matters can pull us in. If this is the case there are a number of apps we can utilize to reduce the impact. These apps regulate and slowly switch your devicescolorprofilefromabluelightspectrumtoaredlightspectrumwhichhasbeen studied to interfere far less with melatonin. The best part is once they are installed they do this all automatically in the background without you having to do anything. I have these apps installed on all my devices.

Check out F Lux or Twilight for your laptop and smartphones.

• Go to bed at the same time consistently throughout the week. Going to bedearly one night of the week isn’t going to do anything... A lot of us may read this and make an effort to do this for a few nights a week, but really you are only going to experience the dramatic difference if it becomes part of your daily routine. Spending a few nights a month later than usual generally won’t have any harm but believe me once you get into the habit of getting to bed early and the energy difference it makes you won’t want to miss it.

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• Wake up immediately and at the same time each day. When you start exploring the tasks your body does in the background it is truly amazing with how much it puts up with all that we put it through.

I had no idea that 2 hours before you slip out of bed each day your body has been preparing you for your wakeup.

This is why similar to going to bed at the same time each night, it is important to wake up at the same time each day. It’s also why waking up to an alarm as opposed to naturally always feels far worse. Your hormones will start your wake process and prepare you to wake up naturally which is far more graceful then a loud annoying sound doing it.

Waking up at different times each day will confuse the natural hormone process as they won’t have a set schedule on when to begin.(2) This is also why it’s not a good idea to ever hit the snooze button. Your body has just spent the past two hours preparing you to wake up. By hitting the snooze button and falling back to sleep for a few minutes you’re basically undoing all the work your body just did to prepare you for wake. Your hormones then get confused and start saying (are we waking up or sleeping?)(3) Ever wonder why you tend to feel even worse after hitting the snooze button a couple times?

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#2Take control of your mind – create filters for

what goes in and out of your mind.

ever had a bad eXperIence that just stuck wIth you for the rest of the day?

You tried to work but your thoughts kept bringing it up over and over.

You can’t be at your most productive when you are in a negative state. This is why muchlikewetrainandtakecontrolofourphysicalfitnessit’sessentialwealsotakecontrolofourMIND.Morespecificallywewanttofilterwhatisreceivedandprocessedby our mind.

Pessimism isn’t really an ingredient to being successful in business or life. We want tomaximizetheamountofPOSITIVITYflowingintousanddecreasetheamountofnegativity.

How can we do that?

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Wecanfirststartwithsettingourownpersonalfiltersonthefollowingthings:

• Mainstream News – Have you ever really stopped to watch the mainstream news? It is like getting repeatedly punched in the face with the most negative stories possible. It can slowly turn us into believing the world is a negative, dreadful place instead of one of hope, opportunity and curiosity. A number of research has even been done on the mental health effects of this constant negative exposure. What should we do? Easy, if we really want to take control back of our mind stop focusing and paying attention to mainstream news. Believe me, if somethingcomesupyoureallyneedtoknowabout,youwillfindout.

• Negative Nancies - Everyone has had or has one of these people in their life. You can come up with the most awesome, exciting adventure or idea and they willbethefirstonestotellyouwhyitwon’tworkandshouldn’tdoit.Ifyoureallywant to break from the status quo and push forward in your life, having a number ofthesepeoplearoundcanbedisastroustoourmentalconfidence.Itdoesn’thappen in a dramatic fashion, but is far more subtle. Their continuous negativity towards our goals and ideas will have us start questioning ourselves whether we are aware of it or not. Take an audit of these people in your life and truly decide if you need to start limiting the time with some of these individuals.

• Whiners / complainers on your social feeds – When is the last time you were scrolling through your Facebook feed and came across a post or share that just absolutely enraged you? You then try to get back to getting things done and this is just sitting in the back of your mind derailing your focus. It’s happened to me a number of times so I decided to take action. I personally believe the more the content of your social feed aligns with your goals in life the more in “harmony” you will be. Unfollow negative pages or friends who post things that aggravate you. Instead follow positive, empowering people you can be inspired and learn from so each time you scroll through your feed you come back feeling invigorated and motivated.

Oncethenegativeisfiltered,let’sincreasethedosageofpositivityflowingin:

• Join positive meetup groups - There is a fantastic website called meetup.com whereyoucanfindgroupsandeventsinyourlocalareathatalignwithwhatinterests you have. This could be anything from entrepreneur groups, Facebook marketinggroups,fitnessgroups,yogaclasses,younameitanditisprobablyon there. It is a great way to meet and align yourself with like-minded people on the same journey as you. One of the fastest ways to reach your goals is to meet someone who has already done what you’re striving for.

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• Increase your network of positive, driven friends – I know you’ve heard this one before, “your network is your net worth”. No? How about “You are the average of the 5 people you hang out with most”? The idea is the same.

Who we choose to surround ourselves with and how THEY approach their daily lives rubs off on us whether we like it or not. Knowing this we should probably pay careful attention to which friends we hang out with and how often if we really want to maximize are performance in life. A good ratio I like to follow is to spend most of my time with people with the same drive and positive energy as myself, spend less time with more “negative folks” (but are still close friends) and spend the last bit of time with those who look up and aspire to be like you to help give back.

• Feed your mind with wisdom – I didn’t read any books after graduating from University for a number of years. I never really saw the need too. Contrast that today where my goal is to read 30 books this year (audio books count as well). What changed? I started understanding the power of constant improvement. Themajorityofpeopleaftertheirschoolingiscompletewillfinishmaybe1orsobook a year. Imagine if you read 3 books a year on a skill you wanted to improve? Imagine if it was 10? How far ahead would this put you ahead of the general population to quickly become an expert or master of that skill? Reading is in fact one of the biggest commonalities linked to success. The statistics show it.

You can see the percentage of readers grows just as the income levels grow:

Income Percentage who read 1 or more book In the last 12 months

Below $30,000 %60$30,000 to $49,000 %77$50,000 to $74,999 %79

$75,000 + %86

The top end of this chart would probably end with Bill Gates who reads 1 book a day. With Amazon and tools like Audible we can be learning all the time in commute or while working out. Find a skill you want to 10x your growth in and then go buy the top 5 books on Amazon or Audible for it.

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#3 Prioritize your fitness to charge your

productive batteries.

How many time’s have you brought your gym clothes with you but ended up getting so swamped in your day you completely missed your workout? We then justify this by telling ourselves that we are just “too busy to workout”.

Let’s go over what to do the next time the thought of “I’m too busy to workout” comes into your head (and learn some cool things in the process). Most of us start out with great intentions. We start the day fully intent on getting in a killer workout, bringing our gym clothes with us ready to crush the weights and then things seem to go downhill from there. Email’s pile up, some errands need to be run, it’s cold outside, we feel lethargic and beforeweknowitwe’reonthecouchwithNetflixonandit’sgameover. I’ve heard this story many times and I’ve lived it myself! The vast majority view working out as more of a luxury of having free time and treat it as such.Whenthingsgethectic,it’susuallythefirstthingtogo… We don’t make it a priority.

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We see spending time in the gym as a detractor of time, taking away from our precious minutes where we could be getting more work done. Are you ready for a total mindset change? Working out actually does the opposite… it set’s your body and mind up for MORE productive time. I know of a number of highly successful people who will never cut into their workout time no matter how busy they get. They are way busier than me and most of us as well! These aren’t just pro body builders or the Arnolds of the world either. A certain flamboyantbillionairealwaysschedulesinhisworkouttimebecauseheestimatesitgives him an extra 4 hours of heightened productivity each day. This is Sir Richard Branson. Vast amounts of other highly productive, successful people never miss a beat in their workouts. Why? Theyunderstandthemassivementalbenefitsthatcomealongwithworkingoutroutinely… there is far more to it than just getting those bicep veins popping (though that’s pretty awesome too).

“ Tim Ferriss wrote in his book The Four Hour Body about an occasion where a group of people were assembled on Richard Branson’s private island to brainstorm growth options for Branson’s Virgin Unite project.

Branson was posed with the question, “How do you become more productive?”Branson leaned back and thought for a second. Then he said, “Work out.”

He said that working out gave him at least four additional hours of productive time every day.”

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Can you be at your most productive when you feel stressed or anxious? No. Working out releases endorphins and hormones proven to lower stress and both calm and empower the mind. The Anxiety and depression association of America reports that evenjust5MinutesofAerboicExercisecanstimulateanti-anxietyeffects.Weallcanfitin 5 minutes no matter how busy. Even doing bodyweight squats at your desk works… though much to the awkward look of your co-workers. Can you be at your most productive when you feel lethargic? No. Getting into a stride of working out will have your energy levels soaring during the day. I don’t want to bore you citing studies but it is quite proven that working out is very effective at reducing fatigue, improving alertness and concentration, and at enhancing overall cognitive function. The trick is to ensure your workouts are consistent and scheduled. You may feel awesome after working out just once, but it will subside. When youcreateanon-negotiablehabitofit,youwillgetthesebenefitsallthetime. Canyoubeyourmostproductiveandchargedselfwhenyouarelowonconfidence?No. Fitnessisamassiveconfidencebooster.I’vehaddayswhereI’vefelttotallydownbut after putting in a good session at the gym I left feeling on top of the world. The endorphinsreleasedfromhavinganawesomeworkoutisoneofthebestconfidenceboosters around and will carry with you into your other tasks for the day. Whenyoutrulyprioritizeyourfitnessonyourschedule,youwillfindyouranxietydropping,yourenergylevelssoaringandyourconfidencehittingallnewlevelssoyoucan tackle any obstacle ahead and CRUSH your tasks ahead for the day If 40-60 minutes of gym time gives me an extra 3-4 hours of heightened, energized and productive time each day that is a return on my investment I would gladly take. So the next time you’re mind starts thinking, “I am just too busy to workout today” you should really be changing that too. “I am way too busy to NOT workout today”.

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#4 De-clutter your physical and virtual worlds.

one of the bIggest productIvIty tIps I ever receIved was sImply to clean up the clutter we carry In our lIves, so we can take back our mental energy and focus and put them toward tasks that really matter.

It is hard to be at our most productive when our mind is bombarded by all of our “clutter” around us.

When we have 100 things in front of us calling for our attention it can easily lead to overwhelm and anxiety. This then leads to not knowing where to start (procrastination) and when we don’t know where to start, we usually put things off even further and don’t end up doing anything.

At the end of the day looking back, we are then both disappointed and now feel even more overwhelmed and anxious because we got nothing done and our to-do list is even larger.

Sound familiar?

Ready to learn how to open up the potential for more productivity by reducing our mentalandvirtualclutter?Let’sdigintowhatitisfirst,thenafterwardaseriousofACTION steps for you to take.

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What is Virtual Clutter:Virtual clutter can be summed up as small, subtle distractions from the electronic world that slowly chip away at our focus and attention until it consumes so much space in our mind thatit’schallengingtofocusonanyonespecifictask.Thesecancomeinmanyforms.

Uncheckedemails,Facebookandsocialmedianotifications,notetakingsoftware,textmessages or anything else your phone, tablet or PC can throw your way. We tend to filealltheseawaythinking“ohIcanusethislater”,ofcourseweneverdoandthenevery time we open these up again we see a mountain of stuff we never actioned. All of which are now taking up space in our mind again and causing us some serious overwhelm and anxiety.

What is Physical Clutter:Physical clutter has the same effects of virtual, except you can actually see and touch it.Here is a typical scenario:

I will be at home trying to get some work done. There are some dishes sitting on the counter from when I made breakfast that I know I need to clean, a pile of laundry I know needs to be done at some point, a book sitting on the table that I want to read and so on…

I’ll be trying to focus but my mind is totally distracted by all the “clutter” around me.

A Princeton University Neuroscience study was actually done on this stating the following:

Or in simpler terms, when your environment is cluttered, the chaos negatively affects your ability to focus and process information.

Action steps to declutter your life to 2X your productivity potential:

1. Practice Inbox zero – If you have an inbox with thousands of emails in it like I did, archive the important ones you need to separate folders and then delete the rest. The objective to get your inbox down to ZERO and keep it that way. As emails come in, archive them to organized sub folders after you’ve actioned them or simply delete them if they are not important.

“ Multiple stimuli present in the visual field at the same time compete for neural representation by mutually suppressing their evoked activity throughout visual cortex, providing a neural correlate for the limited processing capacity of the visual system.”

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2. Unfollow emails – Do you get a lot of garbage emails you never read? I used to subscribe to Groupon and all those discount coupon service until I realized I never actually buy anything from them. I then promptly unsubscribed to all of them.Onlykeepsubscriptionsyoufindyouaregettinggreatvaluefrom.Whenyou clean this up practicing step #1 above becomes much easier.

3. Control your Social Feeds - Much like we can control and organize our email, we can do the same for our social feeds. This one usually gets folks a bit more onedgebutifsomeoneisconstantlypostingreallynegativeupdatesthatflareup your emotion and negative energy, you need to ask if you are better off not seeing them. While you don’t need to unfriend these people, you can just unfollow them. Create your news feed to be one of positivity and energy boosting messages as opposed to ones that drain you. Along with that, don’t engage in pointless arguments or comment wars on Facebook, in almost all cases your energy could be used to far more productive things.

4. Cleanupyourhomeofficeorgetout – If you are trying to work from home and suffer from the same problems I did above, you essentially have two options. Drop everything and clean up the clutter, or get out and go work somewhere you won’t think about it, like a coffee shop or library. As long as that clutter is present and in your mind you will not be at your most focused.

5. Remove your physical clutter – Invest some time going through everything in your possession and auditing if it is truly needed or not. I also implement systems to maintain this. For example for clothing, if I have not worn it in the past 12 months I donate it to charity. This same thing can be applied to pots, pans, glasses, electronics etc. In most cases with a few exceptions, if you haven’t used something in the past year you will probably never use it again.

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#5 Clean Body. Clean Mind. Upgrade your hardware.

If you owned a champIon race horse, would you feed It the cheapest feed possIble you could buy? no way, you’d be spendIng top dollar to get the best!

Now you are not a horse… but the idea is the same.

I constantly see people who have no problems spending tons of cash on the latest shoes, hand bags, cars, TV’s and other entertainment but when it comes to taking care of themselves, all of a sudden that organic apple that costs 25 cents more is too expensive.

Newsflash–yourbodywillbewithyourfarlongerthananymerchandiseitemyoubuy.

Yourbodyislikeyourvehicleinlife.Yourmindcanbeallfireduponanideaandsay“alright let’s go”! Then when you step on the gas, if your body isn’t as well taken care of if it could be, you are probably not going to go as far or as fast as you want. Worse, if you really push it, you may even do some damage in the process.

OneofmyfriendsDrSachinPatelIfindputsitbest.

“ If your body is only operating at 70%, you can only operate at 70% in your business, relations and life.”

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Taking care of our body is one area in life we should NEVER cheap out on… If a car breaks down you can go buy a new one. If you’re body breaks down there is no store or showroom you can walk in and get a new model.

Want to double your productivity?

Start treating and fueling your body like the Rolls Royce it is. Tony Robbins is going on 60 years old but he still has the energy on stage of someone 1/3rd his age. He is fanatical about how he takes care of his body and has a carefully crafted morning routine and nutrition game. There are countless other high end entrepreneurs and executives who have the similar habits

A healthy body leads to a healthy, higher performing mind which leads to more success in our careers and work.

The biggest takeaway here is to embrace and cherish the mindset that when you take care of your body, it will take care of you.

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#6 Control where you put your energy.

have you ever saId yes to somethIng you dIdn’t really want to do? was It because you dIdn’t want to dIsappoInt someone or sImply because you dIdn’t want to go through the whole process of havIng to justIfy why you dIdn’t want to do It?

One of the best life lessons I ever got was to not be afraid to say no to things. When you’re afraid to say no, you are really no longer in control of your schedule, your energy or life and this can lead to some serious resentment and negative feelings.

From a productivity perspective, if you really want to become a top performer you absolutely need to say NO and say it often! Think about it, if you are saying yes to everythingyourenergyandtimeisgoingtobeflyingalloverindifferentdirections.Thismakesitexceedinglydifficulttogetanyonethingdone.

What you focus on grows.

You need to consciously control where you are putting your energy if you truly want toexcel in an area. Don’t be afraid to say no to things that don’t align with your objectives and goals.

The magic number seems to be 3…

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Having sat down and learned in seminars and presentations from some of the productivity greats (Darren Hardy, Richard Branson) the maximum number of initiatives you should be pursuing at one time is 3. Any more so and your production seems to decrease and overwhelm / anxiety seems to increase.

When Richard Branson is locked into his 3 strategic objectives, he won’t even accept any calls or meetings if it is not related to any of those.

If we want to hit our greatest potential for performance and productivity, we should approach our life with this same tenacity and focus.

Right down your big 3 objectives you need to get done ASAP, throw away the rest for now.Asonegetsfinished,youcanaddonanotherbutNEVERtrytotacklemorethan3at once.

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#7 Optimize where and how you work.

where do you typIcally work and what does It look lIke?

We already talked about the importance of having a de-cluttered work environment to help maximize our productivity. Here are a few other tips to help you get the most productivity and energy:

• Create a standing desk option - Sitting is kind of like putting your car in neutral. It’s still running but at the absolute bare minimum. Prolonged sitting comes with awholehostofhealthandenergydrainingproblems.Youcanbeallfiredupbutaftersittingforawhileyouwillprobablyfindyourenergywillquicklyfade.

Not good for being productive! Optimize your work place by creating space you canchoosetostandandworkifyouwant.IpersonallyfindIcanbangoutatleast an extra hour or 2 of work a day simply by standing instead of sitting.

• Plan Productivity Intervals – Ever tried to really sit down for hours on end to get a task done? I bet after about an hour, you start to drain and your brain slowly turnstomush.It’sincrediblydifficulttoworkfor2-3hoursnon-stopinonesittingwithout getting distracted and hindering your productive and creative thoughts.

Try planning Productivity Intervals in the following format: 50-15-50-15. This is where we purposely plan 50 minutes of heads down non-stop work, followed by 15 minutes completely removed from that work. Take the 15 minutes to go for a walk, grab a coffee, check your emails / social feeds do some pushups, or whatever you need to do to mentally re-charge for a bit.

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• Add some plants –I’llbehonestIcan’treallyseeanyscientificreasontohavethesehere.SomeindoorplantsdohavegreatairfilteringqualitiesbutforthemostpartIjustfindtheyaddmorelifeandvibrancytoaworkspace(assumingyou take care of them). Some of my favorite, really low maintenance one I currently have are a Snake Plant and a Ponytail Palm. Go search how cool that second one looks!

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Resources

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• http://www.businessinsider.com/proof-standing-desks-you-more-productive-2013-9

• http://stress.about.com/od/stresshealth/a/cortisol.htm

• http://lifehacker.com/the-many-benefits-of-taking-cold-showers-1610414167

• http://www.naturalhealth365.com/natural_healing/cold-showers.html

• http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/issa23.htm

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/19/violent-media-anxiety_n_6671732.html

• http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/233270

• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1531487/The-greater-your-weight-the-lower-your-IQ-say-scientists.html

• http://www.insurancebusiness.ca/news/healthy-body-plus-healthy-mind-equals-healthy-career-202868.aspx

• http://www.adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/related-illnesses/other-related-conditions/stress/physical-activity-reduces-st