How To Be More Productive At Work

Lemonade Life Hacks by Chief Behavioral Officer Prof. Dan Ariely

Maybe the simplest productivity trick is to think about our productive hours. Most people are productive between 9–11 AM. That’s it.

We only have about two hours of productivity a day. What that means is that we have to be extra careful with those two hours.

Imagine you come to work and you start by checking email. And then you move to Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, and all kinds of other things. and by the time you’re kind of ready to work, it’s 10:30 AM.

What you’ve done is you’ve taken this hour and a half of your two hours, that are the most precious, incredible productivity time, and you’ve allocated to something that doesn’t need much attention.

So, the first trick is to treat those hours as holy. Think about them as a separate time, and try to not do anything that doesn’t require high cognitive capacity during those two hours.

Later on, go ahead and waste some time, but not during that time.