How To Work With Your Body For Optimum Productivity | Ronan Oliveira

In our previous video, we talked about not having coffee after 2pm and if you want more details about that, the link is in the description, go check it out. But what if it's 3pm and you feel tired? Especially these days that we are working from home, it's very important to feel productive because a lot of people are experiencing burnout these days because their tasks are getting extended through the evening and people are not having more their me time, their family time. So when you're working, you want to optimize everything you can to feel that you get everything done, so then you have time for your family and for yourself at the end of the day. But when you are at home, you optimize your working space, you separate time, you light up a candle, do all your ritual. But my question to you is, are you using your body in the optimal way to work? And that's serious. There's a big, big secret that we found out in the past years of research that I want to tell you. The body and the mind are connected. So if you're using your brain to get work done, you can use your body in specific ways to improve this connection so then you can improve your productivity and have more time for yourself at the end of the day. And I want to give you five different techniques that I use and they have research to back it up that improves this connection. The first one is the position I no longer work while sitting. I stand the whole day and it was a habit that I built bit by bit. But I also no longer feel that sleepiness after lunch. And mood and energy is always very high. And sometimes people ask me what I put in my coffee. But there's a reason for this. When you stand first, the position of your head changes because when you are sitting in this slouched position, you are compressing more or less 30% of the capacities of your lungs. And with less air, there is less oxygen going to your brain and this decreases your cognitive capabilities. This can be so impactful that in one study, agents from a call center increase their productivity up to 46% after six months of taking some intervals of work while standing. So it takes some time to build up. The other benefit that you get from it comes from the position of your spinal cord. When you are sitting and also slouch in that position, you are restricting part of the spinal cord and is one of the most important parts of your body because it communicates from the brain to all the organs. So if there is a little bit of restriction in the spinal cord, that is A signal of threat. There is a little bit of a stress response, and this increases your heart rate. And part of your mind is looking for a threat because you should not be in that position. So if your spinal cord is unrestricted, that is the position that you are when you are standing. That signal of threat is no longer there and your heart rate slows down. You have all your cognitive, cognitive abilities to focus on something that you were doing. So you don't need to have the whole day working while standing. You can have a couple of intervals of 20 minutes or how much it feels comfortable to you and build it up as much as you want, and then you say, ah, but I don't have a standing desk. At home, I also don't. And at home I use a cardboard box on top of a table. And you can use books, you can use a backpack. Be creative to find ways to work while standing for a couple of intervals a day and give this first technique a try. The second technique comes from my times at university. I studied mechanical engineering. And that means that I spent a big amount of hours frustrated, trying to solve physics problems. And there was a professor once that told me a secret. He said, you know, when you feel stuck at a physics problem, go brush your teeth. And when you come back, you see that your mind is sharper and sounded like wizardry. But one day I tried because I was too frustrated. And I just stood up and went to the bathroom, and it was upstairs for me. And I brushed my teeth. And when I came back, my mind was a little fresher. I managed to find different ways of solving a problem that I ended up solving it. And I found that amazing. You know, every time I got stuck, I would brush my teeth, and I had the most beautiful teeth at the university campus. And what I found out later on is that it's not about brushing your teeth that makes the whole trick. It's that you are standing up and then you are moving to the bathroom. And in my case, I was even moving upstairs. And this elevates your heart rate a bit and increases blood flow to the brain and the oxygenation in the brain, which leads to more cognitive abilities. Our brain evolved to improve its cognitive abilities in between intervals of exercise. In a previous video, I talked about that technique that we call perseverance hunting. That comes from 200,000 years ago. Then that was the way that we found food. We hunted animals by killing them by exhaustion. And it worked with increasing our capabilities of guessing where the animal goes in between long bouts of exercise. If you want more Details about this phenomena. There is a link for that video up here. And now you can leverage on this natural ability of the brain of improving its abilities between bouts of exercise by increasing your heart rate every two hours. This is what I do to make sure that this becomes a practice on my phone. The first thing is that I set different alarm clocks for every two hours, starting at 11am and then one at 1pm, 3pm, so on and so forth, all the way to 9pm when the alarm goes off. What I do is that I do a little bit of exercise, nothing really intense, but that increases my heart rate a bit. So it can be going up and down a staircase. It can be a couple of push ups, it can be a couple of body squats, something that raises my heart rate just a little. And then I go back to work. And now I see that my mind is a little fresher. So try this out. Every two hours or three hours, increase your heart rate a bit more. The third technique is similar to this. It's just that it's lighter and more frequent. It's moving your body every 20 to 30 minutes, especially if you are working while sitting. If you are in that position, all your muscles are relaxed, which is not a bad thing. Our bodies are designed to perform better while there is some type of muscle activity. Because back in the day, 200,000 years ago, we would be standing or moving the entire time. So the brain adapted itself to work better in the situation. The heart and the lungs and everything else work better when there's some type of movement and when we are all relaxed for too long. What we see in a couple of studies is that we start to deactivate the expression of some genes that are connected to the regulation of inflammation inside the body. And this not only affects your energy at the moment, but also affects your longevity in the long term. So one study tried an experiment with workers in a government agency. And they said every 20 to 30 minutes, you know, a pomodoro type of interval, you focus on and task for 20 to 30 minutes. After that, you do a little stretch. You know, you stretch your legs, you stretch your back, or you just walk to get a glass of water or to go to the bathroom for a minute and 30, 40 seconds, really, really light. It's not something to make you sweat, it's not something to increase your heart rate. It's just moving your body a little bit. And they saw that people not only had better biomarkers in terms of, you know, triglycerides and inflammation after the practice of this study, but they also had lower levels of stress. And the tasks that they face during the day, they perceived as being easier than the people who are sitting and having their muscles relaxed and inactive throughout the whole day. And this is a very important thing because you want to feel good and feel more productive as you are working from home in these times of lockdown. So the task here is pretty simple. Every time you sit to work, what I like to do, I set my timer for 30 minutes. When the timer finishes, I stand up, go to the bathroom, get a glass of water, or stretch a bit. And every time I sit, I time 30 minutes. The fourth technique is to activate a little bit of your sympathetic system that is the part of a nervous system that makes you more alert. If you're feeling a bit out of focus, what you can do is that you tap on your breastbone, because just behind this area, there's the thymus gland that is connected with a lot of nerves that are connected to the sympathetic branch of your nervous system. So if you vibrate this, you activate that part of your nervous system that makes you a bit more alert. How you do this, very simple. You get one fist, and you close in front of your chest. And from here, you just tap firmly, but not strong. You're not punishing your body, just tapping firmly to vibrate your chest just twice or three times. One, two, two. And with this, you already see that you can feel a bit more of an awakened type of feeling. If you're feeling a bit out of focus, if you're feeling really tired, like a zombie, then the fifth technique is exactly for this type of moments. I do this when I wake up in the morning or before training, or in the afternoon if I'm feeling really tired. And it is a little qigong routine that takes three minutes that I learned with a Chinese Master back in 2014. It has three phases, and the first one, it looks really funny, but it's something that brings your energy up by shaking your body. So what you want to do is that you lift your heels, drop them, and from here, you use your knees to shake your body. Just shake all the shoulders, the knees, your belly, and all the parts of your body loose for more or less one minute. The second phase is that you open your stance for more or less shoulder width apart, and you twist your spine, keep your head looking forward, and tap the lower back by twisting your spine as much as you can for more than one minute. In the third minute, you drum on your body. So you start with your hands as a fist and gently drum your chest. Then go down to your belly. Drum on your shoulder, on your arm, up and down both arms and then on your legs. First on the outside of the legs and then on the inside of the legs. And then gently with your palms open on your face, on your head, at the back of the head. And finish with three taps on your face. After this, you are renewed with these five techniques. Now you have different ways of using your body to improve to up level your game. So now you can finish your things earlier, feel more productive and have more time to enjoy yourself and your family in the evening. If you have been finding challenging to set up your systems and be productive at home, my friend Jason Campbell from Mindvalley built a seven day program to improve your productivity at home. And it's brilliant and it's free and I'll leave you a link in the description so you can give it a try. If you try these techniques and you're feeling very tired still, that may be a bigger problem. You know, we need to take a look at and how to optimize your sleep. But there's a broad topic and I want to explore that in detail. So this is what I'm gonna bring you in the next video. I see you next.