Dur­ing dif­fi­cult eco­nomic times, com­pa­nies are forced to make tough deci­sions to keep stock­hold­ers happy and to spend less money. They’re also expected to cre­ate big results with fewer resources. Work­ers are being asked to do more with less, and the com­pe­ti­tion for the cov­eted jobs is unlike it’s ever been before. Under­stand­ing that most of us have lim­ited con­trol over our company’s deci­sions or the global econ­omy — the one thing we can con­trol is our per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity. As a result, there’s no bet­ter time to explore cre­ative ways to increase your pro­duc­tiv­ity with­out sac­ri­fic­ing your health, well being, or family.

Do you ever won­der why some peo­ple just seem to get things done and always leave the office early? Per­haps they’ve just found their rhythm. Stud­ies show that per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity might be more about nat­ural rhythm, rather than con­tin­u­ous “busyness.”

Ultra­dian Rhythms & Ultra­dian Sprints

There are sev­eral meth­ods for increas­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity, cov­ered by our Life Blog and other resources. Many of these pro­duc­tiv­ity tips cen­ter around focus­ing on one related task at a time, and tak­ing breaks. In an effort to learn more about focus­ing on one task at a time and fewer inter­rup­tions, I began research about Ultra­dian Rhythms and Ultra­dian Sprints.

Ultra­dian Rhythms are the nat­ural switch­ing of brain hemi­spheric dom­i­nance, from left brain to right brain, which hap­pens about every 90–120 min­utes. Switch­ing over to right brain dom­i­nance lasts approx­i­mately 20 min­utes. Ultra­dian Sprints are a method for tak­ing advan­tage of Ultra­dian Rhythms. With an Ultra­dian Sprint, you focus on one task at hand and com­plete it within the 90–120 minute inter­val — avoid­ing all dis­trac­tions. It’s the oppo­site of multitasking.

The left hemi­sphere of the brain han­dles orga­ni­za­tion and logic and is more suited for lin­ear, log­i­cal thoughts. The right side of the brain assists with intu­itive­ness and curios­ity and cor­re­lates with parasym­pa­thetic acti­va­tion. Acti­vat­ing the parasym­pa­thetic ner­vous sys­tem can cre­ate a pos­i­tive feel­ing, which can reduce stress and strengthen your body’s defenses. When you switch to right brain dom­i­nance, you can recover, boost the immune sys­tem, and clear your thoughts.

Accord­ing to Ernest Rossi, an expert about Ultra­dian Rhythms and the author of “The Twenty Minute Break: Reduce Stress, Max­i­mize Per­for­mance, Improve Health and Emo­tional Well-Being Using the New Sci­ence of Ultra­dian Rhythms” tak­ing a 20 minute break can con­vert your stress into the “Ultra­dian Heal­ing Response.” This can improve your cre­ativ­ity and pro­duc­tiv­ity, pre­vent mis­takes, and improve health and well being.

The Down­side of Multitasking

Most pro­duc­tiv­ity experts agree that mul­ti­task­ing, or switch­ing among dif­fer­ent projects, is counter-productive. Keep­ing inter­rup­tions at bay, as well as tak­ing breaks can improve your out­put. Mul­ti­task­ing seems to be in fash­ion, and makes peo­ple feel smart and supe­rior. It’s usu­ally the “busy peo­ple” who tout that they’re the best multi-taskers. Well — I have a news flash. Mul­ti­task­ing is out like last year’s bub­ble skirts. Single-tasking is in, and all the cool kids are doing it.

Have you ever expe­ri­enced a sit­u­a­tion where a man­ager answered email or text mes­sages dur­ing a meet­ing and missed impor­tant infor­ma­tion that you were required to repeat at a later time? Per­haps, you’re guilty of this? Con­sider the impli­ca­tions when you’re mak­ing deci­sions — yet lack­ing rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion for those deci­sions to be informed. Accord­ing to research at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, “Peo­ple who are reg­u­larly bom­barded with sev­eral streams of elec­tronic infor­ma­tion do not pay atten­tion, con­trol their mem­ory or switch from one job to another as well as those who pre­fer to com­plete one task at a time.”

Fur­ther­more, in an inter­view with Fast Com­pany, Glo­ria Mark from the Depart­ment of Infor­mat­ics at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, states that from her research “we found about 82 per­cent of all inter­rupted work is resumed on the same day. But here’s the bad news — it takes an aver­age of 23 min­utes and 15 sec­onds to get back to the task.” In addi­tion, Mark states that those in a study who were asked to answer an email and were inter­rupted with phone calls and instant mes­sages “had higher lev­els of stress, frus­tra­tion, men­tal effort, feel­ing of time pres­sure and men­tal work­load. So that’s the cost.”

Tips for Ultra­dian Sprints

The fol­low­ing tips can help you avoid dis­trac­tions and tur­bocharge your pro­duc­tiv­ity. Of course, ensure these tac­tics are accept­able within your par­tic­u­lar work environment.

• Estab­lish your pri­or­i­ties — If your pri­or­i­ties aren’t clear or mis­di­rected, all actions for improv­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity are futile.
• Sched­ule tasks into blocks — Eval­u­ate your day and sched­ule sim­i­lar tasks together. For exam­ple, answer email dur­ing ses­sions; sched­ule meet­ings on sim­i­lar top­ics together; and review reports dur­ing blocks of time. Keep in mind, these items should fol­low the cul­ture and rhythm of your business.
• Find your nat­ural rhythm — When do you nat­u­rally get things done? Be aware of your pro­duc­tive times and take advan­tage of them.
• Turn off noti­fi­ca­tions — Turn off social media, text, your phone ringer, or email noti­fi­ca­tions to avoid inter­rup­tions dur­ing 90 minute inter­vals (unless those noti­fi­ca­tions are essen­tial to your job or per­sonal life).
• Close your office door or put up a sign — Let oth­ers know when inter­rup­tions can­not occur so oth­ers respect your time. Head­phones with white noise can also be useful.
• Use a timer — Set a timer for 90 –120 min­utes. Take a 20 minute break after that time period.
• Be a role model — As a leader or man­ager, under­stand your employ­ees’ rhythm and respect it. Don’t inter­rupt their time unless necessary.

The Ultra­dian Break

Don’t for­get to take a 20 minute Ultra­dian Break — med­i­tate, have some herbal tea, lis­ten to music, take a walk, have a power nap, peo­ple watch, drink some­thing with olives, or do yoga — what­ever tick­les your fancy. How­ever, don’t engage in think­ing about the task you were work­ing on dur­ing the pre­vi­ous Ultra­dian Sprint. If you can­not take a 20 minute break because of dreaded all-day meet­ings or other fac­tors, try to fit in a shorter break. Accord­ing to Ernest Lawrence Rossi, “Many really cre­ative peo­ple through­out his­tory — Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edi­son — have noted how their best inspi­ra­tions seem to come after they have made a great con­scious effort to solve a prob­lem and then taken a break when they were ini­tially frus­trated with fail­ure.” I’ve per­son­ally expe­ri­enced this — espe­cially when work­ing on a dif­fi­cult issue, solv­ing a com­plex prob­lem, or find­ing a tech­ni­cal solu­tion to a prob­lem — always result­ing in the highly-regarded “aha” moment.

If you have cowork­ers or employ­ees who could use a lit­tle pro­duc­tiv­ity boost, I’d rec­om­mend you shoot them the link to this blog. Please com­ment and let us know if we helped you find your rhythm.