The Zen Of Productivity: Use Your Brain To Be Productive

Learn why you are productive at some tasks and why you aren't productive at other tasks.

In this video we'll address the general structure of the brain and make an exercise that will explain how our knowledge and skills are "stored" in the brain.

You will learn that there are different patterns that are responsible for knowing and performing the same thing. Also you'll become familiar with "neuroplasticity".

There is no user manual written on how to use our brains more efficiently. There are, however, things we do know about the Brain, that will help us increase our productivity.

In this lecture, students will find out how much energy the brain need to function properly and will learn some tips on how to be more productive based on just the brain's physiology.

Do you still think that we are using our brain on 10%? Watch the video and learn why that's nothing more than a myth.

No matter how different we are on psychological level, on the physiological one we are the same. So, the principles we learn throughout this course are absolutely true for every person.

A simple analogy on how our brain works and how easy we can be distracted from doing the things the right way.

Wrapping up the Brain chapter and extracting conclusions that will be used in framing the Productivity Framework at the end of the course.

Being surrounded with an enormous amount of information, only attention gives us the possibility to focus on the things that are really important in a certain moment of time (just like a satellite dish). So, make yourself familiar with Goal Directed and Stimulus Driven Attention as this knowledge will be an integral part of your productivity's increment strategy

A short explanation of the fight or flight response and the principle of our Stimulus Driven Attention at work. 

Later in this course, students will see how huge the impact on productivity the Stimulus Driven Attention has.

Some fairly simple scientific explanation of the processes that happen in our brain at every moment. This lecture helps explain the processes that stand behind the Stimulus Driven Attention at work.

With better knowledge of what Stimulus Driven Attention is and how it works, describe its effect on productivity in the context of working on a simple task while some common things like a flashing bulb or a broken plate happen.

Productivity requires us to focus on the task, but in this lecture, students learn that the Goal Directed Attention is pretty narrow. Thus, by our own nature, productivity is harder to achieve, because besides being easily distracted, our attention is very narrow.

Introduction to Memory. Students will rehearse what happens when we form a new memory and will learn by recalling own experiences the fact that memory is associative.

Productivity can be in many areas, one of which is learning. This lecture is based on an exercise that will later help explain important concepts on productivity in general.

This lecture is based on a similar exercise that will later help explain important concepts on productivity.

Learning two conclusions from the previous exercises.

We are tuned to patterns and, when no patterns found in place, we seek to optimize our productivity by creating rules that we further follow.

This lecture addresses the fact that there are 2 types of memory: Working Memory and Long Term Memory. Both of these affect our productivity and in this lecture students will get to know these 2 types.

An exercise lecture focused to demonstrate the longevity of our memories. It shows how strong some of our memories can be, as the students will be recalling 10, 20 or even more years old memories.

One of the key elements in strong memory formation are emotions. Attitude is also important in efficiently learning new material

An introduction to the theories about Working Memory capacities and an exercise that demonstrates the processing capacity of our Working Memory and how it affects our productivity. 

A simple and clear demonstration of how our Working Memory functions based on an exercise of learning to program from a snippet of existing code.

In this lecture, students will debunk the biggest myth about productivity. Multitasking does not work. In contrast, it even hinders one's productivity by switching between tasks and not actually doing them in parallel.

A short video on productivity from Fast Company that addresses the same multitasking myth and how it affects our productivity.

This lecture addresses an important detail of multitasking - it doesn't work if there are 2 tasks that both require our attention. In case there's one that requires our Goal Directed Attention and one that doesn't (walking, running, eating ice-cream), then it's perfectly fine. However, when we need to accomplish 2 tasks that require our attention - we have a problem and we are not being productive at all in this case.

In this lecture, students will learn a simple, yet effective advice on how to boost your productivity. By using a piece of paper where they can write their ideas and thoughts, they free up their Working Memory capacity to be able to process the task and at the same time the ideas on the paper won't be forgotten. This tip is present in a lot of productivity techniques that promote organizing your thoughts on paper.

In this lecture, students will learn another important productivity tip that can be explained using the knowledge they've learned so far. When there is a huge task someone should work on, consider splitting it into smaller subtasks, so that the Working Memory can efficiently process one subtask at a time. This tip alone can have a huge impact on one's productivity if used regularly.

In this lecture, students learn how to cope with the situations when we forget a brilliant idea that we came up with earlier. This explanation is based on the knowledge about how Working Memory works.

Wrapping up the Memory chapter and extracting conclusions that will be used in framing the Productivity Framework at the end of the course.

This lecture describes what comes next in the course.

This lecture introduces human senses. Students will learn how many senses are there and some interesting answers from other students to the question on "How many senses a human has."

Conscious throughput is high for vision and hearing. So, to increase our learning productivity, students need to combine several senses in the learning process.

Students will learn that the unconscious throughput has a tremendous impact on productivity, as unconsciously we receive tons of information that may distract us from the task, so we won't be as efficient and productive as we can.

This lecture contains concrete solutions for increasing one's productivity. The specific tips are based on each sense out of 5 human senses and each tip acts toward decreasing distractions and focusing better on the task at hand.

Wrapping up the Senses chapter and extracting conclusions that will be used in framing the Productivity Framework at the end of the course.

Students will find out that there is no Wikipedia page on Personal Productivity. There are, however, many pages that describe other types of productivity.

Defining what Personal Productivity is. Making an analogy to the Economic Productivity and then adjusting the concept to fit better how people work, learn and generally speaking are being productive.

Aggregating everything what we've learned into The Productivity Framework. Students will see how Attention, Memory and Senses combine together into a diagram, based on which the framework is built. In the end - productivity is simple, given you know how it works behind the curtains.

In this text based lecture, students learn what they can do with the Productivity Framework document.

A framework means that we can explain how existing techniques work and create our own productivity techniques.

In this lecture, students will learn how existing productivity techniques can be explained using The Productivity Framework that they've just learned.

This lecture makes an important point to the students - they must implement everything they've learned so far. 

As knowledge does not equal skills, they need to implement the productivity tips and techniques that they have learned during this course in their lives. Even if they will implement only a part of what they have learned in this course, they will become much more productive and efficient in their work.