Being productive is not a given. You could spend an entire day at your day and still struggle to do something productive with your time. However, it doesn’t mean you are not giving it your best shot. Being productive and working are two different things. Productivity has a lot to do with how your brain functions. 

The good news: We can learn to hack it and boost our brains. According to experts, sleep is instrumental in keeping your brain focused and regulating your energy and emotion. For instance, lack of sleep means you are more likely to feel tired, struggle with loss of focus, and experience mood swings. Additionally, the size of your social group also affects how your brain behaves, especially the size of your frontal cortex. In short, our lifestyle choices affect our brains. 

But by training our brains, we can also improve our productivity levels. Dopamine is the reward system in the brain. It can keep you focused on long-term goals, even if there is no immediate reward. In other words, the right lifestyle can give your brain the energy and tools it needs to react. But without dopamine, you can’t use them. 

So, where do you learn to unlock the dopamine factory in your brain? 

By learning positive habits from a young age

It makes no doubt that teachers play a crucial role in making productivity rewarding for children. That’s precisely why professional education recruiter services have a huge responsibility in building the future productive generation. Indeed, children are the first to face challenges at the desk. Learning new skills and facts can take a lot of time and effort, during which children might feel like they are not progressing. Yet, having a teacher who can help children see the bigger picture can also introduce the idea of long-term rewards. When you think about it, skills such as learning to read or count could appear useless to children who have led a happy life without needing those until school. However, teachers are essential in showing that their efforts will pay off eventually, not by introducing a scoring system but by creating a sense of reward throughout the process. 

By accepting it’s ok to suck at new things

Being productive in the business life is not as much doing as it is about thinking, creating, trying, and experimenting. Productivity includes seizing new opportunities, facing obstacles, and learning to carry on even when you face difficulties. Productivity is not the art of doing the same thing over and over again. In the 21st century, productivity is about changing patterns, products, thought processes, and strategies. It’s about remaining relevant in an ever-evolving market. And to remain relevant, one has to learn new skills and develop new solutions. As you learn, you learn to fail too. Nobody succeeds at first all the time. Learning that it is ok to fail and that it is part of the journey is also a fundamental element of our inner reward system. Embracing and recognising obstacles doesn’t mean you give up on the reward. On the contrary, it will make the reward much sweeter once you can achieve it. 

Is reward the only way forward when it comes to productivity? The answer is no. Reward is one of the vital aspects of maintaining productivity. It goes without saying that mental and physical health are essential criteria for your productivity. Environmental factors, such as sound pollution or indoor air quality, can also influence your productivity levels.