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Rise And (Really) Shine!
It's Q&A day at 10almonds
❝To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone, and a funnybone.❞
It’s Q&A Thursday here at 10almonds, where we get interactive! In today’s edition:
How to fall asleep in two minutes
Q&A
Tips, other than supplements, for improving memory
Best morning routine for time management and productivity
What are your “small life-changers”?
100 Things Productive People Do
👀 WATCH AND LEARN
How To Fall Asleep In 2 Minutes
No more “if I fall asleep right now, I’ll still have 5 hours 37 minutes sleep…”
1:22 Warm bed, cool room
2:08 Hot shower before
2:37 Hide the clock (especially: no red numbers of doom!)
2:52 Avoid nicotine and caffeine (we know, you guessed “stimulants don’t help you fall asleep”, but hey, it’s in the video)
3:16 Do exercise! (but not in the 2–3 hours before bed)
3:34 Relax… Use a special ritual (e.g. reading, so long as it’s something relaxing, not stress-inducing. So, your favorite escapist fiction sure, a treatise on mergers and acquisition or insolvency management, probably not)
3:47 Sun exposure during the day (at least 30 minutes, climate/latitude permitting!)
🗣 MAIN FEATURE
Q&A with 10almonds Subscribers!
Q: Any tips, other than supplements, for improving memory?
A: So many tips! Certainly enough to do a main feature on, so again maybe we’ll do that in another issue soon. Meanwhile, here are the absolute most critical things for you to know, understand, and apply:
Memory is a muscle. Not literally, but in the sense that it will grow stronger if exercised and will atrophy if neglected.
Counterpart of the above: your memory is not a finite vessel. You can’t “fill it up with useless things”, so no need to fear doing so.
Your memory is the product of countless connections in your brain. The more connections lead to a given memory, the more memorable it will be. What use is this knowledge to you? It means that if you want to remember something, try to make as many connections to it as possible, so:
Involve as many senses as possible.
When you learn things, try to learn them in context. Then when your mind has reason to think about the context, it’ll be more likely to remember the thing itself too.
Rehearsal matters. A lot. This means repeatedly going over something in your head. This brings about the neural equivalent of “muscle memory”.
Enjoy yourself if you can. The more fun something is, the more you will mentally rehearse it, and the more mental connections you’ll make to it.
Q: Would love to hear more ideas about effective first thing in the morning time management to get a great start on your day.
A: There are a lot of schools of thought about what’s best in this regard! Maybe we’ll do a main feature sometime. But some things that are almost universally agreed upon are:
Prepare your to-do list the night before
Have some sort of buffer between waking up and getting to productivity.
For me (hi, your writer here) it’s my first coffee of the day. It’s not even about the caffeine, it’s about the ritual of it, it’s a marker that separates my night from the day and tells my brain what gear to get into.
Others may like to exercise first thing in the morning
For still yet others, it could be a shower, cold or otherwise
Some people like a tall glass of lemon water to rehydrate after sleeping!
If you take drinkable morning supplements such as this pretty awesome nootropic stack, it’s a great time for that and an excellent way to get the brain-juices flowing!
When you do get to productivity: eat the frog first! What this means is: if eating a frog is the hardest thing you’ll have to do all day, do that first. Basically, tackle the most intimidating task first. That way, you won’t spend your day stressed/anxious and/or subconsciously wasting time in order to procrastinate and avoid it.
Counterpart to the above: a great idea is to also plan something to look forward to when your working day is done. It doesn’t matter much what it is, provided it’s rewarding to you, that makes you keen to finish your tasks to get to it.
Have a question you’d like to see answered here? Hit reply to this email, or use the feedback widget at the bottom! We always love to hear from you 😎
What very small (non-book) purchase were you not sure about at the time, but it made a big difference to your everyday life? By “small”, let’s say under $20.
For example: this (genuinely, robustly, idiotproofedly) leakproof insulated steel coffee cup fits in my purse and has been my trusty companion, with hot coffee in winter and iced in summer, since I got it—and I’ve been really glad of it!
We’d love to feature your “small life-changers” in a future edition of 10almonds, so please do let us know! (Don’t worry if you don’t have a link; a description will do)
📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
100 Things Productive People Do: Little lessons in getting things done - by Nigel Cumberland
This is a book of a hundred small chapters (the book is 396 pages, so 2–3 pages per chapter) which makes for a feeling of quick reading, and definitely gives an option of “light bites”, dipping into the book here and there.
Cumberland offers a wide range of practical wisdom here, and while the book is (per the title) focused on productivity, it also includes all due weight to not burning out and/or breaking down. Because things productive people do does not, it turns out, include working themselves directly into an early grave.
But—despite the author’s considerable and obvious starting point of social privilege—nor is this a tome of “offer your genius leadership and otherwise just coast while everyone does your work for you”, either. This is a “brass tacks” book and highly relatable whether your to-do list most prominently features “personally manage the merger of these Fortune 500 companies” or “sort out that junk in the spare room”
Bottom line: we’d be surprised if this book with 100 pieces of advice failed to bring you enough value to more than pay for itself!
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Wishing you the healthiest productivity,
The 10almonds Team