These Science-Backed Approaches May 10x Your Productivity (Give it a Try)
The secret to boost productivity and dopamine well-being
You will never lack passion again!
Most people like to quadruple their productivity — in fact, why won’t they? It makes you more creative, boosts your confidence, and saves you hours of work.
But the truth is you don’t actually know what can boost it (productivity) or what may decrease it.
You just like it for goodness and nothing else. You just want to improve it for your own better functioning.
Reading books may help you — but that’ll consume 100s of days for you to understand more about productivity.
That’s why I’m here for you to save you all those days and hours…. I went ahead, held conversions 1:1 with some of the psychological lecturers of my school, and ran into others’ DMs asking and searching for more lights about it.
Watched tons of videos. Read tons of articles and the rest.
Here are the science-backed ways to boost your productivity and pass 99% of other humans:
1. Dopamine
It is like the network access of your device.
Here’s what I literally mean; it is what sends signals to your brain when doing a particular work at a particular point in time.
Lemme break it down further for you.
Dopamine is located in the brain and it’s one of the most vital parts of the brain that send commands (impulse) to the brain.
According to research, your dopamine tends to work better when you are doing a particular work for the purpose of the love of it not for the purpose of reward. Simple and clear.
Almost everything you do every day is for the purpose of something, did I lie, my friend?
And that’s why it is difficult for you to gain a boost in productivity — but you can, yes, I’m sure I can help you do that by showing you how exactly I eliminated my own want of reward over passion.
As you can see, I still couldn’t join MPP to earn, yet I keep writing. And writing. And writing. Because of my passion not for the reward. Now, let’s fight yours, I’m going to show you right now:
- Think of why you hate the passion and hunt for reward.
- Replace it with remembering how the work may help you in the future.
- Apply the 5-second rule
- Close your eyes
- Jump into the thing, the work.
Another important part is to adopt Growth Mindset.
It’s clear dopamine is not about reward but rather about motivation & drive, & a willingness to persist in a given mode of action & thoughts. — Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D.
2. Hard work
I know you hate it, but it won’t kill you.
Remember: it is just for a time. The more you focus on the hard work or the reward, the less energy you’d put into the work. And that’s why you find it hard.
Now, what can you do? I said you shouldn’t focus on reward and should not focus on the work. What do you think would be better? It seems impossible, you may say, right?
Well, let’s take a look at the research done at Stanford University:
Some kids were told to draw pictures on their own. They were children who were passionate about it.
They were given board and paints and started drawing pictures.
On the first day, they were confident. So the second day. The third. The fourth.
Then the researchers began to reward the kids for drawing. They gave them Gold Stars.
Later on, they stopped giving them the reward. Guess what happened? They lacked the energy, confidence, passion, and zeal to draw on their own as they did before.
It’s also the action of dopamine over the brain.
When you work for a reward you lose motivation and energy. More especially energy, because you will be sending and highlighting signals to your brain you’re about to get something.
Your brain will start waiting for it. Waiting. Waiting. And waiting. Nothing comes — ah!
If you would change your mind and stop focusing on reward while you’re doing anything you’d become much more productive than now.
Take an example with me:
Growing up in an African town where things are tough. Many things.
In a society that doesn’t take studies as a good option, just a minor stupid thing. A society where young children hawk to earn, young girls are raped, boys become street gangs, smoking at young ages, commit filthy acts at a very young age — and all those sorts of things.
In that situation, all I love was to study (totally ironic to them). Read books. Gain knowledge. That’s what makes me happy.
To read, at that time, I had to trek for long kilometers to reach the library. Sweating. Panting. Tired. Exhausted. But I love it! Passionately.
One day, while trekking to the library, I met someone I knew, driving a car and he offered me a lift there. To the library.
The next time again, the same thing happened. Gradually I started going there through that car lift for several days.
Then three days passed, and I couldn’t see him. Four days. Five. Six. The whole week. I literally began to lose hope and found the trekking tedious work. I lost that enthusiasm I had before!
No matter what you do some people might intervene, do not put all faith in them because when something happens, you’d lose control of your dopamine that’ll boost your productivity. Just do the work.
Stop concentrating on the end result, focus on the work first.
3. Desire
The desire of seeing results prior to getting the results is bad.
To boost your productivity, let your desire stay focused on believing that ‘Yes, I can!’.
The moment you begin to send these signals to the dopamine it will begin to release impulses that will boost your willpower and belief.
The less desire you put into results, the more energy you’ll have to do what’s required of getting much more incredible results.
Now, here’s the bigger part:
There are many things likely to decrease your desire to work, you have to take serious note.
Remember the above research done at Stanford University and what had really happened to me.
Right now, I’ll show you how I dealt with boosting my productivity after that incident happened which took away almost 60.8% passion to trek to the place I had a passion for.
If you’re ready, let’s start!
- Belief
Control your belief.
When something intervene in your work (like that lift and Gold Stars), do not put all belief in it.
The first thing to remember is this:
“This reward I’m getting from someone right now might end sooner or later.”
If you don’t tell yourself this, the person may disappear suddenly as those researchers and The Man did. And guess what? It will affect your dopamine system. It will release impulses and hormones of low-hope, low-passion which will definitely decrease your productivity.
Then you’d lack the desire to keep striving hard for growth.
- Dependency
Stop leaning on things you’ve no ownership over!
You never know when the owner may take it away from you. Stop being too much dependent on others.
I was depending on that man, kids depend on the Gold Stars we both had no right over. No ownership. No control.
Later when the rewards disappeared, we lacked zeal to keep going. And it affected our dopamine system, thus our productivity.
Wise people don’t depend on others, they depend on their goals, resiliency and tenacity.
