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

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.

In a not-so-surprising twist,it turns out that your gut feel was right...you never did get more done on any day but Tuesday!

A survey earlier this year revealed that indeed, Tuesday is indeed efficiency's best friend.

TGI ... TUESDAY?

Second Day of the Week Remains Most Productive, Survey Shows

MENLO PARK, CA -- Why tackle today what can be put off until Tuesday? In a new survey, 57 percent of executives said Tuesday is the most productive day of the week for employees. Monday was the second most popular answer, although it appears to be losing favor: Only 12 percent of respondents ranked Monday as most productive, compared to 26 percent in a 2002 survey.

The national poll included responses from 150 senior executives -- including those from human resources, finance and marketing departments -- with the nation’s 1,000 largest companies. It was conducted by an independent research firm and developed by Accountemps, the world’s first and largest specialized staffing service for temporary accounting, finance and bookkeeping professionals.

Executives were asked, “In your opinion, on which day of the week are employees generally most productive?” Their responses:

Monday
12%

Tuesday
57%

Wednesday
11%

Thursday
11%

Friday
3%

Don't know
6%

100%

The results mirror previous surveys conducted in 2002, 1998 and 1987.

“In addition to serving as a ‘catch-up’ day after the weekend, Monday is when many regularly scheduled meetings occur, which can decrease the time available to complete tasks,” said Max Messmer, chairman of Accountemps and author of Managing Your Career For Dummies^® (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.). “Many view Tuesday as an opportunity to focus their efforts and establish momentum for the rest of the week.”

Accountemps offers the following advice for maintaining a high level of productivity throughout the entire week:

• Make a plan. Spend 10 to 15 minutes at the beginning of each day mapping out your desired accomplishments. Prioritize the tasks that are most important to the business.
• Sharpen your focus. People are more productive when working for an extended period in the same mental mode, as opposed to changing gears frequently. Try to cluster tasks that require similar effort or resources in the same time frame.
• Limit distractions. It can be tempting to review e-mail each time a message arrives. However, unless your job requires an immediate response, it’s often best to check your inbox periodically throughout the day.
• Don’t delay. Even peak performers occasionally put off working on unpleasant or overwhelming assignments. One effective way to overcome procrastination is to break a project into smaller, more manageable tasks.
• Recharge. Taking short breaks throughout the day can help you replenish your energy and fight fatigue.

Accountemps has more than 360 offices throughout North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, and offers online job search services at www.accountemps.com.

I got a few comments following the last post in which I shared with you the study that revealed that A LOT of workers are chronically sleep deprived...

So I thought I'd just share with you just a few pointers to get you on the right track if you are suffering from lack of sleep. Please share your comments at the end of this post

According to Harvard Health Publications's Press release, Repaying Sleep debt, more than 60% of us don't regularly sleep the brain's required seven to nine hours of sleep per night.

This is quite a significant number of sleep-deprived people! But don't fear, there's hope. They also say that you CAN ward off the negative effect of sleep loss because you CAN repay even a chronic, longstanding sleep debt.

So how do we counter the effects of chronic sleep loss?

Harvard Women’s Health Watch suggests:

If you’ve missed 10 hours of sleep over one week, make up for it over the weekend and the following week. If you’ve missed sleep for decades, it could take a few weeks to repay the debt. Plan a vacation with a light schedule, and sleep every night until you wake naturally. Once you’ve determined how much sleep you need, factor it into your daily schedule.

BrainBasedBusiness further discussed this in an article last year, showing that this really has been/is an ongoing problem.

Dr. Mercola says in a short article about lengthening workweeks robbing people of their precious sleep:

While sleepy workers know they're not performing well, work is what's keeping them up at night. Workdays are getting longer and time spent working from home averages close to four-and-a-half hours each week.The average waking time is 5:35 AM, and the average bedtime is 10:53 PM.

The good news? It's not all bad news. You can do something about it.

I've also compiled a few tips for you, to get you started on helping yourself sleep better, ASAP:

8 tips to better sleep

• Don't nap too long during the day so you can sleep better at night
• Exercise regularly, earlier in the day, not before you sleep
• Finish eating at least two to three hours before you sleep
• Avoid alcohol, caffeine and nicotine before you sleep
• Maintain a regular sleep/wake schedule, including during weekends
• Make your sleep environment cool, peaceful and comfortable
• Use relaxation techniques if they help you sleep
• Start a relaxing bedtime before-you-sleep routine

However, the battle is only just beginning, because:

Bodies don't 'spring ahead'

By Kim Painter, USA TODAY

A bold prediction: A week from today you will be feeling sleepy, very sleepy.

You will have trouble getting out of bed. If you are a teenager, you will have even more trouble than usual. If you are an early-morning commuter, you may struggle to keep your eyes open as you drive along darkened streets.

What will trigger this mass bout of drowsy driving, this predictably mopey Monday? It will be the first weekday of daylight saving time — that once-a-year "spring ahead" that robs us of one hour of sleep (which is returned when clocks "fall back" in November).

It's just one hour, but experts in chronobiology — the study of our internal body clocks — say it takes most people several days to adjust. (The fall change also is disruptive, but less so.) One recent study from German researchers, published in the journal Current Biology, found that some habitual night owls have trouble getting enough sleep for weeks after the spring shift — which, in effect, demands that we all go to bed and get up an hour earlier.

At best, "we'll have a lot of groggy people on the highways the first couple of days," says Michael Smolensky...

..........(click here to continue reading this article)

You can also take a look at:

• Dr. Mercola's 33 Secrets to a Good Night's Sleep.
• 25 Tips For a Better Pre Sleep Ritual on Sleepybed.com.
• On Better Sleep by the Better Sleep Council.
• 10 tips for better sleep on MayoClinic.com.
• Tips for a Good Night's Sleep:Getting the Sleep you Need on Helpguide.org.

How well do YOU sleep?

"Nearly three in 10 workers have become very sleepy, or even fallen asleep, at work in the past month, according to a first-ever study on sleep and the workplace"

Stephanie Armour, USA Today

Sleep apnea is a common disorder: as common as adult diabetes according to the American Sleep Association. They also report that

Risk factors include being male, overweight, and over the age of forty, but sleep apnea can strike anyone at any age, even children.

and that:

Untreated, sleep apnea can cause high blood pressure and other cardiovascular disease, memory problems, weight gain, impotency, and headaches. Moreover, untreated sleep apnea may be responsible for job impairment and motor vehicle crashes.

It can result in excessive snoring with lapses in breathing, and extreme tiredness that may even lead to falling asleep while driving. However, many people snore but do not have sleep apnea. (read more about sleep apnea here and here).

Fortunately, there is treatment available for anyone who suffers from sleep apnea.

Lack of sleep catches up with today's workforce

By Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY

U.S. workers are silently suffering from a dramatic lack of sleep, costing companies billions of dollars in lost productivity, says a study out Monday.

Nearly three in 10 workers have become very sleepy, or even fallen asleep, at work in the past month, according to a first-ever study on sleep and the workplace by the non-profit National Sleep Foundation. The late-2007 survey was based on a random sample of 1,000 workers.

"It's a very expensive issue for employers, and it can be fatal, too," says Nilesh Dave, medical director of the Sleep and Breathing Disorders Center at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "The 24/7 global economy means work is now around the clock."

About 70 million Americans have a problem sleeping, according to the NSF.

Some employers, such as Union Pacific (UNP) railroad, are so concerned that they're now allowing workers to nap on the job. Employees also say it's a significant issue, causing them to drive drowsy or even fall asleep at their desks.

Ursula Forhan, 53, of Chicago, used to fall asleep at her desk. She was treated for sleep apnea and says she has no problems today.

"I would take a nap on the floor of my office, and my boss was so tolerant he would step over me," says Forhan, a paralegal in Chicago. She used to drive for work and had to roll down the windows to stay awake.

Among the survey's findings:

•Dangers on the road. Thirty-six percent of respondents say they have nodded off or fallen asleep while driving, including 26% who say they drive drowsy during the workday.

•Work performance. Twelve percent of respondents have arrived late to work in the past month because of sleepiness. Other problems cited: impatience with others, difficulty concentrating on job tasks and lower productivity.

•Work hours. Employees with more than one job report the highest rate of dissatisfaction with sleep: 43% say they get a good night's sleep only a few nights per month or less. Part-time workers report the highest rate of sleep satisfaction.

Several factors are driving the trend toward sleepier employees. Employees are putting in longer hours, in part due to increased pressure from employers to ramp up productivity. The study found that one-fourth of respondents have a workday that lasts between eight and nine hours, and another fourth say they work up to 10 hours a day.

Technology, which is supposed to enhance productivity, has also required employees to be available. "You're not disconnecting except when you hit the pillow," says Mark Rosekind, a consultant who worked on the survey.

(read this article here)

Related posts:

How to Wake Up and Have an Awesome Night’s Sleep

Napping: How To Do It… and Feel Good About It

30 Ways To Destroy A Hangover - The Ultimate Guide

How to Maintain and Increase Brain Activity Over the Long Haul

Discovering Peace … through White Noise?

Follow These 3 Tips to Get More Done

... without killing yourself.

Do you ever feel like the more you have to do, the less you actually get done? Sometimes it's hard for me to really decide if this is true in reality, but even the feeling of it can cause me mental anguish.

Because I've been extremely busy the past few weeks (hence the fewer blog entries), I decided to study myself on my most productive days. What do I do during those days that finish with me feeling really proud versus those days that feel like a waste?

I did a some self-study and talked with a few colleagues, and here's what I came up with for fighting laziness.

1. Put your tasks into "blocks."

I like to put related tasks together so they are easier to accomplish. For instance, I group all the phone calls of the day for midmorning when most people (on the other end) are available. I make all the calls, mark down my results, and then group any unfinished calls for the next day. It is important to mentally "end" the task, so it doesn't occupy your mind later on. I'm in the habit now, so I don't think about the calls for the rest of the day.

2. Take frequent, planned breaks.

This doesn't mean take a break every 15 minutes, but set a timer or promise yourself "after I get this done" that you will get up to stretch or walk around. The mental break and short (albeit minor) exercise will keep your blood flowing and help your posture.

3. Set limits to your work-day.

This might seem counterintuitive, but when you start wearing out your brain power, your work output takes a nose-dive. So, plan long term and don't burn yourself out by staying for "just one more task" at the office every day. Set your days goals, and once they're done, take some "me" time. Be happy! You made good use of the day (hopefully you set big yet realistic goals)!

These 3 tips will help you accomplish more tasks in LESS TIME, but they aren't the end-all for productivity. It's a long road, but by building 1 small habit at a time, you'll soon feel a world of difference.

Four Tips to Keep Your Brain Active and Alert.

Use this list to keep your brain healthy and energized during those marathon work periods.

If you are like most people on this planet, I’d bet you sometimes find yourself feeling like no matter what you do, you can’t get ahead in your work. And when deadlines, overbearing bosses, or family obligations loom over your head, sometimes you are forced to work for extremely long, unhealthy periods of time. However, it is fairly well known that long periods of work and sleep deprivation can alter your mental awareness. Here’s a list of things to do to keep your mind energized and your brain activity high.

1. Meditate – Meditating regularly will recharge your brain and help you refocus your thoughts. It also has great health benefits. When you work without a break for extremely long periods of time, you will begin to find yourself “unable to think about this or that.” If you find yourself thinking this statement, it is a big clue that you need a break. Meditation can help you re-energize your brain.

2. Exercise – The health of your body and mind are interconnected. The status of one will definitely affect the other, so be sure to make exercise a habit and enjoyable. You’ll find that as your physical health increases, so does your mental health. Here’s what a NY Times had this to say about it:

One form of training, however, has been shown to maintain and improve brain health — physical exercise. In humans, exercise improves what scientists call “executive function,” the set of abilities that allows you to select behavior that’s appropriate to the situation, inhibit inappropriate behavior and focus on the job at hand in spite of distractions. Executive function includes basic functions like processing speed, response speed and working memory, the type used to remember a house number while walking from the car to a party.

3. Get Started – Think about it. How many times does the anticipation of your workload actually prevent you from getting started? Your brain experiences a flurry of activity as you prepare for the tasks ahead, and this sometimes causes you to forget to start! Having a plan is important, but don’t get lost in planning. Or sulking because of upcoming work. Just do it. Here’s a few specific tips for overcoming procrastination.

4. Get A Few Hobbies – Hobbies bring joy to your life and keep your brain active. Why find more than 1 hobby? If your brain focuses on performing only a few different activities, it’ll never develop the wide processing power required for true cognitive development. Having a venue for creativity is just pleasant in general, too. That same NY Times article offered this:

That is, practice can certainly make people better at sudoku puzzles or help them remember lists more accurately. The improvement can even last for years. Similarly, people tend to retain skills and knowledge they learned thoroughly when they were younger. Unless the activities span a broad spectrum of abilities, though, there seems to be no benefit to general mental fitness.

Summary

Start with these 4 tips and you’ll be well on your way to a healthier, more active brain that is more capable of lasting through those long work sessions. If you would like even more tips, here are some more ideas for increasing brain activity.

Learn how to develop psychic abilities with the Silva Method.

The Top Productivity Blogs Collected by Social Rankings!

An incredible new website, Productivity Zen, identifies the top 15 productivity stories and blogs of the day by monitoring the buzz of the productivity blog community.

The developers of the site use a software called SocialRank to monitor each of the best productivity sites and determine the day's hottest articles and bloggers in the field.

According to the SocialRank team:

This is done by analyzing how sites and users link, connect, and discuss each other's content. Add a touch of math and what we have is a powerful filter into the hottest stories of the day.

Now you can find better productivity stories, learn more, and get updated... much faster and easier than before.

So far great sites like Zen Habits, Life Optimizer, Matt Idea, and Lifehack have been showing up on the top rankings for the site. But also some new faces that I urge all your productivity junkies to go check out!

It's so nice to be able to find stuff from within the longtail without having to deal with the complications of technorati and the sheer bias some some social networking sites.

Want to know more about these great sites? Visit the links below:

SocialRank
Productivity Zen

Proper organization of your browser windows can help you maximize your multi-tasking Goodness.

At any given time at work or during an intense session of tooling around the Internet, I have about 20 different web browser windows open (or in my case, tabs, slightly organized - as you'll soon see). I've got a couple email accounts, a few work-related resources I often refer to, a window or two of whatever I'm working on, and then stuff "I need to get to."

How does one organize all this?

To start off, I break stuff into categories. Each Window (instance of Firefox I can click on from my Windows Task Bar on the bottom of my screen) is a category, so I have:

1. One for personal stuff - email, RSS Reader, etc
2. From here I break each window into a "task" so it looks like this:

     A. Task One - let's say this one is for blogging. In that case, I usually have the blog page furthest to the left, then articles I'm reading for research line up to the right.

     B. Task Two - my other task might be preparing for an interview I've got coming up. Furthest to the left is the best bio I can find on my subject, then from there I'm adding tabs for specific projects the person is involved in. In a heavy interview you could even do one window for each topic on the person, if you're really looking to dig deep into their projects.

     C. Task Three - whatever. Dark is the day requiring three concurrent task windows.

I usually have 3 windows of Firefox, each with several tabs in it. Next logical question you are hopefully asking:

How do I organize the tabs?

Good Q!

The tabs furthest to the left are the most "permanent" tabs. So, in my personal tab, email is furthest to the left. Bloglines usually follows that, since I occasionally use pleasure reading to re-energize myself during the day. In my blogging tab, I have the blog home page furthest to the left. Then, I have my most important to least important reference resources, descending in importance to the right.

Further to the right a tab is = less important it is.

This tells me which articles/blogs I should be most astute at referencing in my own blog posts.

It also tells me which tabs I can, without too much worry, blindly and quickly close if I feel myself breaking down from having too many total Firefox tabs to choose from.

There, I just saved you 30 minutes of tab searching per 8 hour power session.

But, In a perfect world you of course check your email only 2-3 times a day, focus extremely intently on only your most important tasks during peak performance hours, and never, ever play Desktop Tower Defense until Play Time.

Productivity inspiration from the most unlikely of candidates.

 Yesterday I was on the hunt for some inspiration to do with goal setting and how not to get behind on your targets. I stumbled across an excellent post that outlines a great strategy to learn and grow.

Where does this inspiring insight come from?

None other than legendary comic JERRY SEINFELD.

I think it should be coined the 'Red X Goals Delivery System'

Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret

by Brad Isaac

Years ago when Seinfeld was a new television show, Jerry Seinfeld was still a touring comic. At the time, I was hanging around clubs doing open mic nights and trying to learn the ropes. One night I was in the club where Seinfeld was working, and before he went on stage, I saw my chance. I had to ask Seinfeld if he had any tips for a young comic. What he told me was something that would benefit me a lifetime…

He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. But his advice was better than that. He had a gem of a leverage technique he used on himself and you can use it to motivate yourself - even when you don’t feel like it.

He then revealed a unique calendar system he was using pressure himself to write.

Here’s how it worked.

He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.

He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

“Don’t break the chain.” He said again for emphasis.

Continue Reading . . .

More articles of Interest:

How to Wake Up and Have an Awesome Night’s Sleep

5 Battles To Overcome Procrastination

Hefty Overwhelming Ballsy Objectives ( HOBOs )

Increase your Brain Activity with 15 Ideas