If you’ve ever sat at your office feeling too tired to get anything done, this article is for you.

When you’re working on creative tasks, people often lack the energy they need to be effective more than the time.  We all have those times when we’re feeling lackluster and those times where we’re ready to kick butt; I know I can be ten times more productive when I’m hyped than when I feel a little drowsy.  If you have the flexibility of choosing when you want to work, you should think about taking advantage of these energy cycles.

For example, I’m not a morning person.  I’m usually most energetic in the mid-afternoon.  I generally try to set up my day to take advantage of this.  In the morning, I’ll take care of easier tasks like writing emails or running errands.  Then when I’m at my most productive, in the mid-afternoon, I’ll set aside a block of time to work on problems that take more concentration.  This is a lot easier if you’ve been able to organize things so that you can choose when you want to work.

Planning your work around your energy is one thing, but there are also things you you can do to increase your energy levels.  Many people rely on caffeine to wake them up.  I find this helps me in doing repetitive tasks, but it makes it harder for me to think creatively.  Doing some exercise is a great way to get the blood flowing through the body and brain.  Eating a light, nutritious lunch is also great.  See what works for you by experimenting.

Last time, we talked about how you need to relax to solve difficult problems.  This is part 2 of 2, discussing how can improve your memory and skill by being sure to get a good night’s sleep.

Sleep isn’t just resting, your brain is working on processing your experiences so that when you wake up, you’ll remember things better, pick up new skills faster, and maybe even acquire some new insights.  This is all backed up by studies showing how people performing a variety of tasks (ranging across memory, coordination, and math) do better if they’re allowed to sleep between practise sessions, instead of just relaxing while awake.  Read more.

In fact, you get this benefits not just from nighttime sleep, but also from daytime naps.  Since there’s a natural tendency to be tired in the mid-afternoon, this is a great time to take a nap, also known as a siesta in places where this is the norm.

If working smarter and increased productivity aren’t enough to convince you to get a good night’s sleep and encourage napping at your workplace, keep in mind that well-rested people have better moods, making it easier to work productively with others.

A high-stress, deadline-driven culture in your organization might pump out more mundane work for little while.  But a proper appreciation for rest and relaxation can help you work smarter, developing more game-changing insights and skills.  And it’ll make your organization a much better place to work, helping you to attract and keep great people to work with.

Have you ever been told that you work too hard?  If you have, here’s one more reason to ensure that you lead a balanced life:  working too hard can be bad for your business.

We all know the feeling of insight.  You’re stumped on some problem, then in some idle moment when you least expect it, a-ha!, inspiration strikes and you suddenly have a solution.  I’ve solved some of my toughest problems in the shower, or taking a walk.  Archimedes famously cried out “Eureka!” when having an insight while getting into the bathtub.  The Nobel-prize winning physicist Richard Feynman’s favourite spot to relax and seek scientific inspiration was the local strip club.

We’re often taught to focus to solve a problem, but if you get stuck on something, unfocusing and letting your mind wander is the best way to allow inspiration to strike.  A Zen expert trained to focus his mind was having great difficulty solving problems designed by scientists to require insight.  Then, just before giving up, he tried directing his mind to relax, and he surprised everyone by suddenly solving the puzzles faster than anyone else had.

What’s happening up in the brain is that when you’re relaxed, your unconscious brain is still hard at work making all sorts of random connections and associations.  When it comes across something that it recognizes as an insight, it reports back to your conscious brain, and you think, a-ha!

The overworked and overstressed lifestyle typical of small businesses can make it harder to have real insights.  Leading a lifestyle balanced with work and relaxation will allow you to get the day-to-day tasks done, without handicapping your ability to generate ideas that can take your business to the next level.

You can hear Jonah Lehrer talk more about this here.  Next time, we’ll continue this by discussing another way a balanced lifestyle can improve your memory and make you smarter.

Business owners need to make a lot of decisions on a daily basis.  They range from small ones such as whether to do a questionable refund or not, to big ones such as how much money should they allocate for marketing.  For small business owners, it might be difficult to make the right call when these decisions are tightly tied to their own personal finances.  This is especially bad when the owners are faced with influential emotions like greed, stress, and pressure.

The easy way out is to maximize short-term profit in those situations.  Questionable refunds?  Just keep their money.  Marketing budget?  As little as we can afford.  Hiring for talent?  Just tell the current staff to do more.

When these situations are laid out on paper, most people are able to make a good decision that balances both the short-term gain and the long-term benefits.  The tricky thing is to make a good call under stressful circumstances.

Here are a few tricks that might help you in those situations:

1)  Stay calm. Try to detach yourself from any negative emotions so that you can make a more rational decision.

2)  Get away for a while. Remove yourself from the environment, even for just 5 minutes.  This can help clear your head.

3)  Remind yourself of what’s important. Your beliefs in the fundamentals such as integrity, customer satisfaction, etc. can help you get over greed and pressure.

4)  Set a policy. Make one good, level-headed decision so that you don’t need to think about it every time.

Do you have any stories to share where you had to make a tough business decision under pressure?  How did you handle it?

What’s the best way to encourage people taking a mock test to do their best?  Should you pay them:
a)  2.5 cents per correct answer.
b)  Nothing.

2.5 cents is a lousy amount of money, but it’s better than nothing, right?  Wrong.  This was tested out in Israel, and it turns out that people do 10% better when doing it for free than when offered the small cash reward.

What’s going on here?  Test-takers in the two scenarios above had the following mindsets:
a)  What’s in it for me?  2.5 cents isn’t worth the trouble.
b)  I’ll help out.  If I do my best they can figure out if the questions are too easy or not.

It would seem reasonable that these mindsets could combine into something like “I’ll help out and earn a few bucks at the same time”.  But actually, it’s pretty much one or the other.  Scientists have even tracked the two mindsets down to different parts of the brain, and generally, only one is active at a time.

So when you need help with something, you should either pay enough to answer “what’s in it for me“, or ask for a favour instead (and return it later).  If you offer too little money, you just draw attention to the fact that it’s not enough.  Pay enough or don’t pay at all.