It may seem unusual, but science is, as always, taking us to new frontiers…

Caffeine Protects from Brain Damage in Multiple Sclerosis

By Sarah Vasques

Scientists with the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation have found that when consumed in large amounts, coffee was found to protect against multiple sclerosis. It appears that caffeine blocks key steps in the development of the disease. The stimulant found in coffee blocked a compound called adenosine, which led, in mice, to the protection of brain cells from immune system cells which destroy the protective coating that surrounds the nerve cells, myelin.

The research will be published in the July 8 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, but the results were already presented at the 95th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Immunologists in San Diego, which took place in April.

In mid-June, a study carried on at the Autonoma University of Madrid, Spain, found that people who are dinking up to six cups of coffee a day do not have an increase chance of dying compared to people who don’t drink or drink less coffee. Furthermore, if you are a woman, drinking coffee might even diminish the chance of you dying of heart disease. Also, coffee seems to not influence cancer in any way, the Spanish study concluded.

An interesting thing was that both women who drank decaf and normal coffee had the same chance of getting a disease. What this means is that caffeine doesn’t seem to be the substance responsible for these good effects.

Also, in January, another study found that caffeine consumption could have a negative effect on people suffering from type 2 diabetes, raising blood sugar levels and possibly exposing them to other risks, US researchers revealed. The study’s conclusions appeared to be in stark contrast with previous research which showed that people who drink more coffee are less likely to develop type 2 diabetes.

Caffeine is a xanthine alkaloid which behaves like a psychoactive stimulant drug. The substance can be found in coffee, hence its name, but also in guarana, mate, and tea. The alkaloid protects these plants and dozens more from most insects.

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune condition which is characterized by the damaging of the central nervous system by the immune system, through demyelination.

Read this story….© 2007 - 2008 - eFluxMedia

Canada Day celebrations range from silly to sombre

Coast-to-coast festivities ring in 141st birthday

Canwest News Service                                            Published: Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Across the country, Canadians came out to celebrate the nation’s 141st birthday on Tuesday in their own distinct ways, from embracing silliness to remembering those who gave their lives.

Before ending in a burst of fireworks and jubilation, there were bittersweet moments.

At the National War Memorial in downtown St. John’s, N.L., veterans, officials, Legion members, peace officers, nurses and military personnel gathered to honour soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice during the Battle of Beaumont Hamel in the First World War.More than 230 soldiers were killed, 386 wounded and 91 went missing in action on July 1, 1916, when soldiers of the Newfoundland Regiment started to cross 200 metres of no man’s land toward a German position near the French town.

At Halifax’s Pier 21, the historic entry point for immigrants was packed as family and friends celebrated the country’s newest citizens. Sixty-one people were sworn in Tuesday from 27 different countries.

Florencia Berakha said she felt "proud and grateful" of acquiring her citizenship, adding she was "very happy and willing to contribute to my community and this province in particular."

In Montreal, organizers said a crowd of at least 100,000 attended the annual loud-and-proud Canada Day parade. Enthusiastic, flag-bedecked spectators, many in family groups, lined up patiently for slices of the traditional birthday cake at the end of the event.

A total of about 60 groups participated, including several marching bands. "It was very smooth," said Leo Fauvel, one of the organizers.

In Vancouver, German-born Katja Magarin, 30, was sworn in as a new Canadian at Canada Place.

After she and the 79 others had taken the oath of citizenship with its three promises — faithfulness to the Queen of Canada, adherence to the laws of Canada and fulfilling the duties of a good citizen — they were invited to approach the platform that included B.C.

Lt.-Gov. Steven Point and Rear Admiral Tyrone Pile, commander of the Joint Task Force Pacific region.

As the admiral shook Magarin’s hand, she leaned towards him and whispered: "I’m joining up tomorrow."

Magarin is applying for a commission in the Canadian Forces as an artillery officer. She already has military experience serving with the German military.

"But all they will allow women to be are medics," she said.

In Regina, partygoers flocked to the shores of Wascana Lake on the legislative grounds for free birthday cake and the fourth annual Plywood Cup competition.

Enterprising boatsmen armed with duct tape and plywood took up the challenge of building a water-worthy craft which they then attempted to paddle across the lake. Twenty teams took part — many of them sinking before they reached lan d.

And in Edmonton, thousands of revellers, including one wearing a Superman costume, crammed into the downtown for the city’s annual Silly Summer parade.

In Ottawa, tens of thousands of flag-waving people in red and white gathered on Parliament Hill, joining Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean and Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Mounties escorted a carriage carrying Jean, her husband and daughter, who waved to the cheering crowd. Jean then inspected a ceremonial guard as a 21-gun salute marked the occasion.

Shortly after CF-18s and Snowbird jets roared above the gathering, the prime minister spoke to the crowd on the Hill.

"On behalf of Canada, I wish you all a happy Canada Day," said Harper. "Today is the day we celebrate our home and native land."

The Governor General also spoke to the crowds. "Happy Birthday, Canada, I love you," said Jean.

© The Calgary Herald 2008

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

If you found the previous article last week useful, this is the continuation of the article on finances from UsaToday.com…

10 things you may not know about your finances

By Stephanie Armour, Anna Bahney, Sandra Block, Kathy Chu, Christine Dugas and John Waggoner, USA TODAY

1. You can’t just give away your money and then immediately ask Medicaid to pay for nursing home care

If you want Medicaid to pay for your nursing care, without touching your assets, you’ll have to give that money away at least five years before you apply for care. An elder-law attorney can suggest asset-protection strategies.

But if you use Medicaid to cover your long-term care, you’ll face a more limited choice of nursing homes. And Medicaid doesn’t normally cover at-home care. You might be better off using your money to buy long-term care insurance. Or save enough to cover at least a year in a facility. By law, a nursing home that accepts private-pay and Medicaid patients can’t force you to move to another nursing home once you run out of money.

2. Your best investment? T.I.M.E.

Thanks to the extraordinary magic of compounded returns, saving early is the easy way to a rich retirement.

Let’s assume your goal is to amass $1 million by the time you retire at 65. If you start saving at 22, and your investments return, on average, 6% a year, you’ll need to invest $413 a month to reach your goal. But if you wait till age 35 to start saving? You’ll need to invest far more each month to reach the same goal: $996 a month. And if you start at 50, you’d better have a high-paying job: You’ll need to save $3,439 a month to reach $1 million by age 65.

3. Grace periods on credit cards apply only to people who don’t carry a balance

If you pay the full amount you owe on your card each month, you’re basically enjoying an interest-free loan from the bank. But card users often don’t realize that if you’re carrying any balance at the end of the month, the card issuer will charge you interest starting from the day you borrowed the money, says Megan Bramlette, managing associate at Auriemma Consulting Group, which consults with banks.

4. You can find fascinating things in your mutual fund’s prospectus

Buried in a fund’s official literature are such nuggets as how much money the fund’s manager has personally invested in the fund. It’s nice to know if his or her money is at stake along with yours.

Or you can find out how much you’re paying a fund company to invest your money. If you invest $10,000 in Fidelity Contrafund, for instance, and it returns an average of 5% a year, you’ll fork over $1,096 to Fidelity over 10 years. Dodge & Cox Stock will charge you less — $653. The Vanguard 500 Index fund will charge just $192.

5. Mortgage lenders will question a cash gift used for a down payment

A cash gift from a parent can help a young adult buy a home. But it may come as a surprise that many lenders will raise questions when such gifts are to be used as part of down payments. Some see a big recent infusion of cash into a buyer’s account as a red flag that a cash-poor buyer may lack steady income. Many banks will want to see the origin of a cash gift.

In any case, parents should try to make any cash transfer at least a month — and preferably up to six months, some suggest — before a buyer begins applying for mortgages.

This story is courtesy of www.usatoday.com; read it by clicking here…

WASHINGTON (AP) —

Researchers have uncovered a new clue to the cause of Alzheimer’s disease.

The brains of people with the memory-robbing form of dementia are cluttered with a plaque made up of beta-amyloid, a sticky protein. But there long has been a question whether this is a cause of the disease or a side effect. Also involved are tangles of a protein called tau; some scientists suspect this is the cause.

Now, researchers have caused Alzheimer’s symptoms in rats by injecting them with one particular form of beta-amyloid. Injections with other forms of beta-amyloid did not cause illness, which may explain why some people have beta-amyloid plaque in their brains but do not show disease symptoms.

The findings by a team led by Dr. Ganesh M. Shankar and Dr. Dennis J. Selkoe of Harvard Medical School were reported in Sunday’s online edition of the journal Nature Medicine.

The researchers used extracts from the brains of people who donated their bodies to medicine.

Forms of soluble beta-amyloid containing different numbers of molecules, as well as insoluble cores of the brain plaque, were injected into the brains of mice. There was no detectable effect from the insoluble plaque or the soluble one-molecule or three-molecule forms, the researchers found.

But the two-molecule form of soluble beta-amyloid produced characteristics of Alzheimer’s in the rats, they reported.

Those rats had impaired memory function, especially for newly learned behaviors. When the mouse brains were inspected, the density brain cells was reduced by 47% with the beta-amyloid seeming to affect synapses, the connections between cells that are essential for communication between them.

The research, for the first time, showed the effect of a particular type of beta-amyloid in the brain, said Dr. Marcelle Morrison-Bogorad, director of the division of neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging, which helped fund the research.

It was surprising that only one of the three types had an effect, she said in a telephone interview.

Morrison-Bogorad said the findings may help explain the discovery of plaque in the brains of people who do not develop dementia. For some time, doctors have wondered why they find some brains in autopsy that are heavily coated with beta-amyloid, but the person did not have Alzheimer’s.

The answer may lie in the two types of beta-amyloid that did not cause symptoms.

Now, the question is why one has the damaging effect and not others.

"A lot of work needs to be done," Morrison-Bogorad said. "Nature keeps sending us down paths that look straight at the beginning, but there are a lot of curves before we get to the end."

Dr. Richard J. Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, said that "while more research is needed to replicate and extend these findings, this study has put yet one more piece into place in the puzzle that is Alzheimer’s."

In addition to the Institute on Aging, the research was funded by Science Foundation Ireland, Wellcome Trust, the McKnight and Ellison foundations and the Lefler Small Grant Fund.

___________________________________________________

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Read this article here >>>

Do you know these basic but potentially eye-opening facts about your money? Below is an excerpt from UsaToday.com that might just help you keep an eye on your nest-egg and maybe even help it grow…

10 things you may not know about your finances

By Stephanie Armour, Anna Bahney, Sandra Block, Kathy Chu, Christine Dugas and John Waggoner, USA TODAY

1. Medicare doesn’t cover nursing home care

Nearly 60% of Americans think Medicare pays for nursing care, and 52% assume that it covers assisted living, according to a 2006 survey by AARP.

Not so. Medicare’s coverage of long-term care is extremely limited. It’ll cover part of the cost of a skilled nursing facility while you recover from an injury or illness. But this coverage lasts just 100 days.

Medicare doesn’t cover custodial care, such as help with bathing and dressing. Need to enter a nursing home because you’re no longer able to take care of yourself? Medicare won’t cover any of your costs. Medicaid, by contrast, will cover nursing home costs — but only for people with little or no assets.

2. The way banks process checks and debit-card transactions can cost you BIG

Banks tend to process transactions from the largest to the smallest dollar amount, rather than in the order they’re received. This policy is another way for banks to boost profits, says Ellen Cannon, managing editor of Bankrate.com. That’s because processing first high, then low, dollar amounts makes it easier for banks to hit consumers with multiple overdraft fees.

Say you have $100 in your account, and you have four transactions processed one day, for, in order, $20, $45, $30 and $90. The bank will process the $90 transaction first, so it can charge you a fee — of up to $39 — for each of the three transactions that will then bounce. If the transactions had been processed in the order in which they’d been received, you’d face only one fee. Most banks charge more than $30 each time you overdraw. Some also charge a fee of $5 or more for each day that your account remains overdrawn.

3. Once you turn 50, you can put away more pretax money for retirement than younger workers can

Many older workers fail to exploit the 401(k) "catch-up" rule, which lets people 50 and older contribute an additional $5,000 a year to their 401(k) accounts.

At some companies, higher-paid workers aren’t allowed to contribute this year’s full $15,500 maximum to a 401(k) if not enough lower-paid workers at their company invest in the plan. But the catch-up rule lets all older workers — even the higher-paid ones — boost their annual contribution by $5,000. This is especially beneficial if only one member of a couple has access to a 401(k) plan, and the couple would like to boost their family retirement savings. It’s also helpful to women who return to work after an extended absence.

4. If you didn’t get a tax rebate this year, you might be able to claim it when you file your 2008 tax return

Millions of taxpayers have received rebates, or will by mid-July. But many others will get only a reduced amount, or none at all, because their 2007 income was too high. Congress phased out the rebates for single taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes of more than $75,000, and married taxpayers with AGIs of more than $150,000.

Here’s what many taxpayers don’t realize: Some of them will get a second chance to claim the rebate. The rebate is actually an advance credit on 2008 taxes. But since the Bush administration wanted to get money into consumers’ wallets as fast as possible, the rebates were calculated using 2007 tax returns.

So if your income has dropped this year, you can claim the rebate when you file your 2008 return. This second-chance provision will also benefit those whose rebates were shrunk or eliminated because their 2007 income was too low.

5. Real estate isn’t a very lucrative investment over the long run

The real estate party over the past decade or so — even when you factor in the recent price drops — has left many people assuming that real estate is the surest long-term investment out there. Not so. Over the long haul, on average nationwide, returns from real estate fall far short compared with other investment categories.

Housing has returned a 4.7% average annually over the past 25 years, according to an analysis for USA TODAY by Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com. Over the same period, the S&P 500-stock index produced an average return of 13.3%. Other investment options also outperformed real estate. The three-month Treasury bill produced a 5.4% annual return and the 10-year T-bond 7.1%.

This story is courtesy of www.usatoday.com; read it by clicking here…

Below are some beautifully crafted and well-thought out questions from Ode Magazine. According to theirs About Us page, Ode is

"A print and online publication about positive news, about the people and ideas that are changing our world for the better."

Hats off to them for their vision and hope.

The article below is by Michael Sean Symonds, a self published author and facilitator of personal growth and spirituality

10 questions for an emerging new world

1) What aspirations do you have for your life that if pursued, could provide the preamble for more passion, inspiration and transformation in your life and the world you live in?

1. 2) Do those dreams, desires, gifts, skills, and talents enhance and elevate the resilience you have too your own inner wisdom and the service you could provide to the one greater Earth community?
2.  
3. 3) How can the visions and aspirations you have for your life be synchronized in solidarity and kinship with others?
4.  
5. 4) What changes do you need to make in the way you live your life that if made, could improve the quality of your own well being and the larger living world?
6.  
7. 5) How can you live your life with greater admiration towards yourself and others?
8.  
9. 6) What unspoken words and conversations do you need to hear or have to foster a culture of peace in your experience and surroundings?
10.  
11. 7) What values do you need to enhance or adopt to form a solid foundation and personal sacred trust towards sustaining a new life and new world?
12.  
13. Recognizing that you are both interdependent and interconnected with all people and things, what three principles are you willing to commit too, affirm and cultivate in your life that will elevate a sustainable, ethical way of being for yourself and the planet you live on?
14.  
15. 9) How can you live your life with a greater reverence and humility, for the mystery of Being; for gratitude in the gift of life and for humility regarding your place in nature?
16.  
1. 10) What can you do to elevate the shared responsibility you have in the stewardship of the Earth and humanity towards a just, sustainable and peaceful global society?
2.  

3. The legacy of your life will not be what you have done or gained, but in who you have been while journeying on this little blue planet called Earth. The courage and risk needed for the success of this rare journey and adventure can only be enhanced once you acknowledge and recognize the only change you ever needed was not outside yourself, but in fact within.

   In the finding, cultivation and practice of innocence, you rediscover the divinity and peace that lies within you and the emergence of a new life and humanity dawns. The unfolding experience of awareness and inner wisdom is the only true door to the freedom and peace you seek.

Michael Sean Symonds is a self published author and facilitator of personal growth and spirituality. http://zenshredding.wordpress.com/

In a recent study, researchers at NASA showed that a thirty to forty-minute power nap increased cognitive faculties by approximately 40%!

What Exactly Is a Power Nap?

A power nap is a short nap, normally between 10 and 30 minutes long, taken in the middle of the day in order to reinvigorate and refresh you for the next part of the day.

Power naps are not similar to normal sleep, so you will not be groggy after taking one.

While you might have “dreams”, power naps are more similar to meditation, where thoughts are allowed to move from the sub-conscious mind to the conscious mind and back again without you concentrating on them.

Some famous self-proclaimed nappers include people like Albert Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci , Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Johannes Brahms, John D. Rockefeller, Eleanor Roosevelt, Gene Autry, Nikola Tesla, Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy, Napoleon Bonaparte, Salvador Dali and Sylvester Stallone.

Why Take a Power Nap?

Research also says that taking a nap of 30 minutes a day is better than sleeping in for 30 minutes in the morning.

Sleep is a daily need, as it is during this time that your body carries out cell repair, and it helps memory and hormonal functioning.

If you go short of a night’s sleep, your physical coordination (including reactions while driving); memory and judgment; energy level; patience; and general stress-tolerance drops. Lack of sleep affects all your bodily, mental, and emotional elements.

A power nap of 15 to 20 minutes can, surprisingly, bring all those functions back to or much closer to normal functioning than we might imagine.

10 Reasons Why the Power Nap is Beneficial and Healthy

• boost in productivity and energy at work
• increased motivation
• improved ability to concentrate,
• better mood
• improved hand-eye coordination
• improve emotional state
• increased learning
• maintain peak brain activity during the course of the day
• protect yourself from sleepiness
• decrease and eliminate stress

How To Take a Healthy and Effective Power Nap

• Time: choose a mid-morning or in the middle of the afternoon when everything is usually lulled.
• Have a silence place to power nap without interruptions or distractions, eg turn off the phone.
• Avoid eating too much caffeinated or sugary products before your power nap
• Use a blanket to stay warm if necessary, since your body temperature drops during sleep.
• Darkness is known to help you fall asleep faster.
• Plan the length of your nap and make sure you wake up at the planned awakening time
• Light sounds such as classical or jazz music help relax your mind so you can go to sleep especially if you’ve had a stressful day.
• Be proud of your nap - don’t be ashamed of telling people and asking them to help you separate naptime from the rest of the day by leaving you alone to rest.

This article is courtesy the Sleep Aid Centre’s guest writer Andy SZEN of www.egodevelopment.com

The question: to sleep, or not to sleep?

More sleep, or less sleep? 6 hours, or 9 hours?

Finally… an answer. Yes, too much or too little sleep are BOTH risks to your health!

How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?

Friday, Jun. 06, 2008 By LAURA BLUE

Sleep is one of the richest topics in science today: why we need it, why it can be hard to get, and how that affects everything from our athletic performance to our income.

Daniel Kripke, co-director of research at the Scripps Clinic Sleep Center in La Jolla, Calif., has looked at the most important question of all. In 2002, he compared death rates among more than 1 million American adults who, as part of a study on cancer prevention, reported their average nightly amount of sleep. To many, his results were surprising, but they’ve since been corroborated by similar studies in Europe and East Asia. Kripke explains.

Q: How much sleep is ideal?

A: Studies show that people who sleep between 6.5 hr. and 7.5 hr. a night, as they report, live the longest. And people who sleep 8 hr. or more, or less than 6.5 hr., they don’t live quite as long. There is just as much risk associated with sleeping too long as with sleeping too short. The big surprise is that long sleep seems to start at 8 hr. Sleeping 8.5 hr. might really be a little worse than sleeping 5 hr..

Morbidity [or sickness] is also “U-shaped” in the sense that both very short sleep and very long sleep are associated with many illnesses—with depression, with obesity—and therefore with heart disease—and so forth. But the [ideal amount of sleep] for different health measures isn’t all in the same place. Most of the low points are at 7 or 8 hr., but there are some at 6 hr. and even at 9 hr. I think diabetes is lowest in 7-hr. sleepers [for example]. But these measures aren’t as clear as the mortality data.

I think we can speculate [about why people who sleep from 6.5 to 7.5 hr. live longer], but we have to admit that we don’t really understand the reasons. We don’t really know yet what is cause and what is effect. So we don’t know if a short sleeper can live longer by extending their sleep, and we don’t know if a long sleeper can live longer by setting the alarm clock a bit earlier. We’re hoping to organize tests of those questions.

One of the reasons I like to publicize these facts is that I think we can prevent a lot of insomnia and distress just by telling people that short sleep is O.K. We’ve all been told you ought to sleep 8 hr., but there was never any evidence. A very common problem we see at sleep clinics is people who spend too long in bed. They think they should sleep 8 or 9 hr., so they spend [that amount of time] in bed, with the result that they have trouble falling asleep and wake up a lot during the night.

Oddly enough, a lot of the problem [of insomnia] is lying in bed awake, worrying about it. There have been many controlled studies in the U.S., Great Britain and other parts of Europe that show that an insomnia treatment that involves getting out of bed when you’re not sleepy and restricting your time in bed actually helps people to sleep more. They get over their fear of the bed. They get over the worry, and become confident that when they go to bed, they will sleep. So spending less time in bed actually makes sleep better. It is in fact a more powerful and effective long-term treatment for insomnia than sleeping pills.

The Great Sleep Deficit Podcast: TIME talks to Daniel Kripke, of California’s Scripps Clinic Sleep Center, about how a night’s sleep can prolong—or shorten—your life.

Listen to the Podcast by clicking HERE >>

Wow, this really drives home the power of positive thought!

Low self-esteem ’shrinks brain’

By Pallab Ghosh, BBC Science Correspondent

People with a low sense of self worth are more likely to suffer from memory loss as they get older, say researchers.

The study, presented at a conference at the Royal Society in London, also found that the brains of these people were more likely to shrink compared with those who have a high sense of self esteem.

Dr Sonia Lupien, of McGill University in Montreal surveyed 92 senior citizens over 15 years and studied their brain scans.

She found that the brains of those with low self-worth were up to a fifth smaller than those who felt good about themselves.

These people also performed worse in memory and learning tests.

Retraining

Dr Lupien believes that if those with a negative mind set were taught to change the way they think they could reverse their mental decline.

He said: “This atrophy of the brain that we thought was irreversible is reversible - some data on animals and some data on humans shows that that if you enrich the environment if you change some factors this brain structure can come back to normal levels”

Researchers are studying which psychological treatments work best.

According to Dr Felicia Huppert of Cambridge University - the early signs are that fairly simple techniques can have an enormous impact:

“There are interventions which talk about focusing on positive things in everyday life and savouring good moments even at times when life is difficult little tiny things may give you pleasure so there are skills involved in how to derive pleasure from the ordinary things in life”.

‘Reversed’

According to Dr Lupien, the fear of memory loss may be a self fulfilling prophesy as anxiety leads to negative thinking which leads to mental impairment.

“If you always think it’s normal to lose something, then you will never work to increase it because doctors have always told you that. I’m saying that it is not normal.

“So this might impact positvely (sic) on the public by saying that its possible to impact on increasing your memory performance and by saying that it is normal to have a fulfilling life, we may be able to increase self esteem among the general public - and prevent a lot of these deficits related to age”.

(read the full article here)

Today’s thoughts on productivity are very well put together by Ego Development. Thanks for a helpful, detailed but very concise summary of what we can do to improve our productivity.

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”

~ Paul J. Meyer

Productivity is defined as the amount of work produced in a given period of time. Productivity relates to the person’s ability to produce the standard amount or number of products, services or outcomes as described in a work description.

10 Habits that Increase Your Personal Productivity

1. 1. Organize your Life and create a To-Do-List.

Work on your most important tasks first. There is no use spending hours on a trivial task when a much more important one can be done in a few minutes. Planning a schedule can be hard to do, but there are many ways to do this easily. Create a list of everything that needs to be done and change the order in terms of what what should be done first.

1. 2. Remove Distractions

Turn off the TV, take the phone off the hook, and close down your email. There is nothing worse for your productivity than continually stopping and start because of distractions. Complete your tasks, and then give yourself a bit of a break. Do not do both at once.

1. 3. Use positive affirmations

Positive affirmations are a tool for replacing negative self-talk with something more productive. It’s quite common for people to use negative affirmations without realising it, so why not give your performance a boost and replace these negative vibes. Your affirmations should be present tense, personal and as specific as possible. Read them every morning and night, and keep them on an index card so you can whip them out and read through them when you have a few moments spare.

1. 4. Take a nap

Getting 40 winks might seem like the last thing to do to increase your work rate, but studies have shown that taking a nap during the day can considerably improve concentration and performance.

Fifteen to twenty minutes is usually enough time to recharge your batteries, and coupled with a splash of cold water after waking up you’ll be ready and raring to go.

1. 5. Set daily goals

Each morning you wake up you should set a goal for that day. It can be big or small, but something that you can achieve by the time you go to sleep. If you’re really ambitious, you can also set several goals for one day.
Having something to focus on during your day will help you accomplish many tasks. Just like success, you have to have goals and a plan to get where you want to go.

1. 6. Get some exercise

You should aim to do at least thirty minutes of exercise, three times a week. Swimming, cycling and skipping are all good activities. If you’re jogging, try to job on softer ground to protect your joints from wear and tear that can be caused from running on a hard surface.

1. 7. Use software tools that will make your life easier.

Some of the programs simplify common computer chores, like launching programs and burning CDs. Others help you work smarter with files , finding the ones you want, renaming them en masse, and sending them where you want them to go. Still others help you automate your work with macros and boilerplate text. So invest a little effort — and maybe a little money - to make your life easier. Then you can take some time off and enjoy the hours you’ve saved.

1. 8. Work at a higher tempo

Working at higher tempo in order to get things done faster and more efficiently. Instead of slowly trudging through a task, aim to get it finished in half the time. This doesn’t mean you have to cut corners or produce something of a lower quality, but eliminate all of the small distractions such as staring out of the window or thinking about what’s for dinner.

1. 9. Wake up early.

I might get flamed for this hack by night owls, so let me qualify this tip by saying that if you stay up late at night and get a lot done, then do what works for you. Late night hours are really not much different from the early morning hours, as both times are much quieter with fewer distractions. However, as a former night owl, I recommend the morning hours simply because many times I would stay up well past midnight, but be very tired and not get anything done for the last 6-7 hours. Mornings are much more productive for me.

1. 10. Experiment with different productivity techniques

Don’t be afraid to experiment with different techniques. Use 30-day trials, either alone or with a friend. You could even write about the experience online if you feel it will help your progress. Remember: not every technique you try will work, but the more you try the more likely you’ll find something that makes a real difference. Be willing to step out of your comfort zone too, and grow into a better person.