A lot of efficiency hacks I see help improve short tasks that consume a minute portion of an average day. What these pieces of advice assume is that the bigger picture items are taken care of, and I increasingly find that I need to work on these obvious items before delving into the fine details. With that, I’d like to elaborate on three obvious areas for daily efficiency, and perhaps the three most crucial.
1. Sleep
You’ve done it (nearly) every day for years, but it’s quite possible you aren’t regularly getting great sleep. I’ve come to appreciate how much of a positive effect a good night’s rest can provide to the upcoming day, though only because I’m too familiar with the alternative scenario. I attribute my difficulty of achieving a consistently early bedtime to hyperbolic discounting (one of many cognitive biases). One simple step that can be taken, no matter the amount of sleep possible, is to create the preferred setting to consistent sleep. Blackout curtains, a white noise machine, and a hotel-grade pillow are a few options I’ve tried. However, there’s certainly a point at which quantity of sleep becomes a necessary variable to experiment with, which requires prioritizing sleep over other tasks.
2. Diet and hydration
With an increasing variety of vegetarian and vegan options becoming available, at least in the USA, diet is increasingly examined as a critical focal point of daily life. There’s many schools of thought out there on how to approach diet, but something that should be agreed upon is that a proper diet can improve individual performance throughout the day, whatever that diet may be. I’ve experimented a bit and am currently in favor of eating more plant-based food while limiting processed food consumption. Despite the variety of food options available, I would argue that hydration is often overlooked. The proper approach to hydration is again something that can’t easily be prescribed, but a quick search shows between 2-4 L of daily water consumption is recommended, depending on body type and exercise levels. Given how plentiful water is for most readers here, there’s little excuse not to try this recommendation and see the results!
3. Screen time
In part due to the dramatic rise in worldwide smartphone consumption and overall internet usage, the average time spent looking at a screen each day is only on the rise. The real question is whether the value received from doing so supersedes alternatives uses of time. And if the answer to that question is yes, then great, carry on! However, I’ve often wasted valuable time after clicking through a sequences of hyperlinks that distract me from my original intentions, which isn’t necessarily a problem but is certainly a time sink. I aim to take additional steps in the near future to reduce the amount of time I spend staring at screens. One approach will be to add timers when I’m on my computer to keep checking whether I’m focused or distracted. Another will be to forgo the screen altogether at a certain point each week to allow for more time in the non-virtual world.
Weekly Extreme Exception
I believe that it takes new perspectives and ideas to come up with improvements to the status quo, even if these ideas aren’t practical 100% of the time. This week’s entertainment features parkour in a very literal sense (as opposed to freerunning). The footage should be self-explanatory in demonstrating how dull or unglamorous urban structures can be traversed in new ways. Instead of assuming a stairwell or wall is designed for a single use case, many different approaches can be taken to moving with or around these ordinary features. Compared to many other sports, the creativity and unique locations for parkour is only limited by the traceur’s imagination and abilities, as opposed to any physical boundaries or equipment limitations.
