A change in scenery to stimulate the brain

Lately, I have realized that my location makes a big difference when it comes to productivity fluctuations.

Take a scenario where you wake up early in the morning, let’s say 5 AM? and you do concentrated work at your home study for 2 hours.

The desk you work at and the arrangement around it will be registered by your brain as a place where you usually work on a particular activity. If you always do your writing at this desk, the next time you sit down at this desk to write, words will come flowing out of you. You wouldn’t be procrastinating for hours like you usually would.

Associated Memories

The thing about locations is that the brain has an associated memory for every type of task you do.

Let’s say you have a particular spot in your office where you usually take your sales calls. When you have more and more calls in this same spot, you’d start to get better at it cause you associate your outgoing nature to this particular location.

This is also why you really need to avoid working in bed. You won’t be able to get any sleep because your brain will be confused — do I sleep or do I work now?

You need a bit of variety

As of late, I’ve started to look closely at the location variation in my calendar.

I have a couple of coffee shops I go to, to do different types of work.

Barefoot cafe is the place I go to do my investor or fundraising activities and I go to the Barista near the office to work on administrative activities.

Whenever I vary the location in between some tasks, I get a boost in my productivity. If I work for more than 2 hours at a single location, I start to feel the fatigue.

So I switch my location and I am refreshed again.

How can you get started?

The trick at first is to put your work schedule in a calendar.

Once you have it in a calendar, you can use it as a visual guide to figure out the types of tasks you have. Do they involve a particular skill such as writing? Do they require a certain temperament, such as having an outgoing nature?

When you notice the categories your tasks fall into, you start to realize which locations are ideal for those types of tasks. Then you slowly get into the habit of doing that type of work in the said location.

In summary

I am not saying that this would increase your productivity a thousandfold. However, you’ll start to realize that as your progress, you will be more productive, more consistently.

Let me know if you have been following a similar approach or if you have a different tactic to avoid procrastination.

If you’ve ever tried my approach, let me know in the comments below how you fared. I’m sure we could all learn something from your experience as well!

Originally written on https://dulitha.me/move-your-butt-to-increase-productivity/