5 ways to improve your mental stamina and be more productive

2023 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-07-28 10:38

These strategies will help you concentrate longer during strenuous intellectual work.

Mental endurance is the ability to concentrate on complex mental tasks for a long time. It is necessary for productive learning of new skills, long-term intellectual work or scientific activity.

Low endurance leads to the fact that a person is constantly distracted and procrastinated, postponing things for later, or even giving up when faced with an obstacle on the way to the goal. To work effectively, mental stamina must be increased. Here are five ways to do it.

1. Set yourself up for work ahead of time

It happens that the upcoming mental activity scares us. When you don't want to study questions for a difficult exam, write a scientific work, solve a complicated work question, and so on. Over time, stress builds up from the need to get down to business sooner or later. When we finally start working, the tension is released - and we panic.

This outcome can be avoided. Imagine in advance how you will sit down and do your assigned tasks. Make a rough plan of action.

It may be stressful for you - this is normal. If you experience tension during the "rehearsals", then during the activity itself you will be much calmer. And more productive - because you will not be constrained by fear.

2. Rest instead of distractions

When we are faced with a problem during mental work, we often want to distract ourselves, check social networks, watch TV - in general, procrastinate. This is how our nervous system works: it treats every obstacle as a threat and immediately triggers the flight instinct.

But procrastination doesn't solve the problem. This is a waste of time and only adds to the stress. Therefore, in such cases, it is better to just relax instead of burying your face in your phone.

Sit down and mentally disconnect from the problem. Do nothing for a few minutes. When you feel that you are ready, get down to business again - you will have new strength and, most likely, a solution to the problem will also come.

3. Rejoice at the problems solved

Our motivation is driven by cycles of action and reward. When we make an effort and get something nice, the desire to do something grows. But the opposite is also true: if we do not receive rewards, then the motivation disappears.

This also applies to mental activity. Many people feel panic when faced with an obstacle while working. And after overcoming it - fatigue. This is very demotivating - you have to fight yourself in order not to quit.

To prevent problems from killing motivation, you need to choose the right tasks and focus less on success. Try to structure your work so that there are always surmountable obstacles in front of you, for example, similar to those that you faced earlier.

And don't think about how many tasks still have to be done before the job is completed. Concentrate on what you are doing at the moment. This will help you feel joy and pride in the fact that you are doing everything.

4. Do much of the work first

The classic scheme of working on a project, which everyone followed at least once: at first, act relaxed and procrastinate, because there is a lot of time, and towards the end, rush and panic to finish everything, sacrificing sleep and free time.

Many people do this, although this method is very harmful to the emotional and physical state of a person. It is much more logical to act the other way around: to do most of the work at the beginning, so that at the end, when there is less strength, there are not so many tasks.

5. Reduce time spent on work

It would seem that in a whole working day you can do more than in a few hours. But in reality, for many people this is not the case - all because of procrastination. Constant distraction interferes with productivity and contributes to stress. After all, minutes and hours go by, but there is no progress.

And this problem cannot be solved by increasing the time allotted for work. This will only lead to more procrastination. You need to do the opposite: limit yourself to a few hours and try to be as efficient as possible during this time.

This option is much better than working all day with varying degrees of success. If procrastination still breaks through, reduce the time. Do not be afraid not to be in time: if you do not manage to complete everything in 4-5 hours of focused work, then, most likely, you will not succeed in a day.