concentration Archives • RememberEverything

How to March Through Your Day Productively and Not Get Lost in Cyberspace

February 8, 2019 by Helmut

Have you just returned from an extended Facebook or web surfing session, wondering where all your time went? You just followed a status update notification and “boom,” an hour is gone!

Perhaps you feel you have nothing to show for all that time spent.

On the contrary, now your mind feels cluttered and devoid of energy, and you feel guilty.

You are asking yourself, “How do I stop wasting time on the Internet?”

I have to admit I have been there many times. I have gotten sucked into Cyberspace and afterwards regretted having wasted all my precious time and energy.

Sometimes I got stuck trying to solve a problem while at other times I simply went on the Internet on purpose to distract myself.

So this post is about how to march through your day productively and not get sucked into Cyberspace.

It is also about putting some backstops in place that’ll bring you back when it did happen despite your best efforts.

What I am outlining below has helped my productivity and sense of accomplishment tremendously. I believe it can help you too.

Before going into the details, here is what I a recommend in a nutshell

Paced Time Boxing (PTB): One of My All-Time Favorite Productivity Hacks

December 17, 2018 by Helmut

For several years now, I have been an enthusiastic practitioner of time boxing—working in fixed time intervals (time boxes) of 25 to 40 minutes, interspersed with short breaks during which I get up from my desk and do some physical activity.

Over the years, I have tweaked my time box length several times to optimize my productivity.

If I made it too short, I would interrupt work too often; if I made it too long the time box would drag on and exceed my attention span.

I also needed a shorter time box length for reading than for writing, in particular when learning complicated material.

What you should also know is that I usually wear noise cancelling headphones or earmuffs to block out distractions.

But that also means that I might miss the alarm going off at the end of a time box. Often, I just didn’t hear it.

So I started using the vibration alarm of my Fitbit. That worked great because a brief vibration would always alert me to the end of a time box. I also didn’t disturb others with audible alarms.

Paced Time Boxing (PTB): Augmenting time boxing with intermediate reminders to pace yourself

Many fitness trackers, such as the Fitbit, have an interval timer, designed for high intensity interval training (HIIT), where you alternate between move and rest intervals.

This got me thinking:

“I could solve the problem of dealing with different time box lengths for different tasks and at the same time introduce a pace setter.”

So this is how I have been doing for a while now:

I set both the move and the rest interval in my Fitbit to 20 minutes (the maximum) to make up a time box with a total length of 40 minutes. In other words, I use both the move and the rest interval to make up a time box.

To begin a time box I start my interval timer, and it starts counting down. After 20 minutes I get two brief vibrations on my wrist.

But this first vibration alert only signals that half of my time box is over.

My Top 6 Noise Blocking Earmuffs Review

July 6, 2017July 6, 2017 by Helmut

In this post, I want to provide an overview and detailed review of noise blocking earmuffs.

Regular readers of my Blog know that I am into blocking noise to reduce stress and improve cognitive performance and sleep. Many studies show a large positive impact of noise reduction on all kinds of mental tasks, including studying, reading comprehension, writing, serial memory, proof reading, mental math, and so on.

As a student and as a professional, you can improve your performance on almost any task by controlling the noise you are exposed to while working. In addition, by removing disturbing noise from your environment, you can reduce stress levels, improve general well-being, and prevent permanent hearing impairment.

Earmuffs are also becoming increasingly popular with people who are hypersensitive to noise, and sufferers from hyperacusis, misophonia, autism and ADHD.

I have found noise cancelling earmuffs to be among the most effective tools for studying. And it’s not only me: Search Google Images for memory championships and you will see participants wearing industrial earmuffs.

This review looks at general noise blocking effectiveness of different earmuffs and comfort and suitability for different types of noises, including low frequency noise and human speech. I focus on enhancing cognitive performance and general well-being rather than hearing protection in industrial settings and on the shooting range. That being said, you will find an in-depth comparison of manufacturers’ attenuation data.

In my quest to find the most effective, most comfortable and most fashionable earmuffs, I have purchased and used quite a number of different models. In this review I am going to look at the following:

Overall noise blocking effectiveness
Low-frequency and human speech blocking effectiveness
Comfort
Manufacturing quality and durability
Discreteness
Earmuffs for sleeping

The models in this review include:

3M Peltor X5A
3M Peltor X4A
3M Peltor Optime 105
3M Peltor Optime 98
3M Peltor Optime 95
Howard Leight Leightning L3 (with some references to the Leighting L2 and Leightning L1)

My personal earmuffs ranking

Before I delve into the details about which earmuffs are best for which application, here is my overall ranking. Please note that this ranking is personal and does not only account for noise reduction, but also general usability, comfort, weight, build quality, and price.

Is White Noise Good for Studying and Work?

January 26, 2018December 3, 2016 by Helmut

Generally Yes, but it depends…

It depends on you, the kind of white noise you are using, the task you are working on, where you work, and even the time of day. This post looks at some of the intricacies and helps you to decide whether, when, and how to use white noise for your work and studying.

Speech and varying-state noise (e.g., typical office noise) are distracting and can significantly impair mental performance:

Experiments have shown that cognitive abilities important for both studying and cognitive work are negatively affected by noise: This includes serial memory (remembering the order of things), reading comprehension, mental arithmetic, proof-reading, and writing.

Most of these studies have included silence as a control condition. Some experiments have also included white noise for comparison. The results for white noise were ambiguous: White noise was mostly but not always benign.

My take is, compared to silence, it didn’t affect the average (!) participant’s performance negatively, but it also didn’t boost it.

However, people respond differently to white noise. Some people and tasks thrive on it, while others are slightly negatively affected. Read on to find out who benefits.

How to Block out Noise before It Kills Your Work and Study Performance

October 21, 2016October 21, 2016 by Helmut

Noise affects you as a professional, office worker, teacher, and student. It impairs your ability to read and write effectively, remember what you have learned, and do math. Everyday noise can cause a performance loss of 50 percent or more. This is easily the difference between an A and an F. Luckily there are some smart ways to block out and mask noise so it doesn’t disrupt you.

A good 18 months ago, I was sitting on my balcony watching an online lecture on my computer. My balcony is facing a small aisle, but the traffic noise from a nearby road is still very noticeable. I was wearing decent earbuds, so the noise wasn’t bothering me – or so I thought.

Just out of curiosity, I put on a pair of earmuffs, which I had purchased earlier to block out noises that often startle me during my early-afternoon naps.

Well, they did a hell of a job with the traffic noise: I was sitting there, and all the honking, squeaking and rumbling had receded into the background. It wasn’t completely quiet, but everything was so faint. That’s very nice indeed, I thought.

Why not try continuing the lecture with my earbuds underneath the earmuffs?

The first thing I noticed was that the voice of the lecturer was now way too loud. Annoyingly loud.

I had to turn down the volume from 10 to 3 to make it comfortable again. I also noticed that I could hear the finer nuances of the lecturer’s voice. I could even understand other students’ questions. These students weren’t equipped with microphones as this was a normal computer science lecture recorded at MIT in a big lecture hall (part of MIT’s Open Courseware program).

Wow – it was so much easier to follow the lecture and take in the whole experience. One of the great advantages of watching a recorded lecture is that you can stop it and re-listen to parts you couldn’t comprehend the first time. After putting on the earmuffs, this became almost completely unnecessary. Not only was I able to listen at a much lower volume and make out previously unheard details, I was also comprehending faster!

Bolstered by that experience, I experienced with earmuffs in other learning and reading situations as well

How to Take the Perfect Nap for Performance, Mood and Memory

October 8, 2016September 24, 2016 by Helmut

I have been an afternoon napper for more than 14 years. I started napping after moving to a country where most people took a siesta. For various reasons, I just couldn’t get enough sleep during the night, so it was easy to fall asleep.

Over the years, I have tried short power naps, 60-minute naps, and occasionally 90-minute mid-afternoon sleeps. In this post, I would like to share with you how to nap for better mood, alertness, concentration, improved memory, and restoration of learning capacity. We will cover how long and when to nap for maximum benefit, how to avoid after-nap grogginess (sleep inertia), and the possible risks associated with longer naps.

As a final point, I am going to share my personal napping experience and my favorite napping hacks.

The benefits of napping are numerous

For me personally, the most important benefits are improved mood and decreased sleepiness. I just feel happier and ready to tackle my afternoon after a nap.

Napping studies have found a large number and variety of benefits of napping in all kinds of workplace and operational settings. Studies looked at drivers, commercial airliner pilots, shift workers, doctors and nurses, students, children, senior citizens…

Here is a non-exhaustive list of research-proven benefits:

Improved cognitive performance
- Increased alertness and concentration
- Decreased reaction time
- Speed and accuracy improvement on cognitive tasks
Better mood
Less sleepiness and fatigue
Significantly reduced number of driving incidents such as drifting out of one’s lane in a car simulator experiment: the number of incidents caused by drivers who had taken a 15-minute coffee nap (see below for details) was 91% less than for drivers who had just taken a break. Coffee alone reduced the number of incidents by 66%.
In a NASA study, pilots who took naps were able to maintain their performance and reduce incidents during a demanding multi-day schedule. Pilots who weren’t allowed to nap experienced deceasing performance and a significantly larger number of incidents, including during the descent and landing.
Significantly Improved memory and protection of learned information from interference: a study that focused on declarative learning found a 60% increased memory retention for nappers at a final test one week after initial learning, compared to learners who hadn’t napped.
Nappers perform better at abstracting general concepts and making connections that weren’t directly learned but can be inferred from what was learned (relational memory).
A nap can restore the capacity to learn, which otherwise deteriorates considerably with time awake.
Performance on a creative problem solving task where subjects had to find a linking word between three seemingly unrelated words was improved by more than 40% after a 90-minute nap containing REM sleep (see below) compared to rest and naps containing only non-REM sleep.

To better understand what nap length you should aim for, here is a sleep architecture primer

How to Improve Focus and Concentration and Enjoy a Happy Morning

March 26, 2016March 26, 2016 by Helmut

In this post, I want to share my secret to enjoyable and productive days. The short form of the formula goes like this: prepare and drink a strong cup of butter coffee; meditate for 10 to 30 minutes; eat a protein-rich breakfast on some days and skip breakfast on other days; and finally, use timeboxing to alternate between 30-minute bursts of work and 5-to-10-minute breaks.

This formula keeps my energy levels up and helps to maintain focus and concentration throughout the day. Best of all, when I consequently apply it, I still have plenty of energy to spare in the evening.

Does this sound too good to be true? If you suffer from brain fog, low energy, or a lack of focus and concentration, or crave sugar or food to keep you going, give it a try.

Here is how I implement the different steps of my formula: