You’ve heard the saying, “the early bird get’s the worm”. Well a new study by Philippe Peigneux, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium, compared the performance of subjects who woke up around noon with subjects that routinely work up at 5-6am.
According to the article “Want to Get Ahead? Sleep In” at Globe and Mail.
After 10 hours of being awake, the early birds showed reduced activity in brain areas linked to attention span, compared with the night owls. The early risers also felt sleepier …

There is a good case for the argument that the improvements in technology, especially information technology, has made our lives more difficult. We are now constantly connected to others via our mobile devices, and constant streams of information from the internet can be overwhelming. One of the consequences of the abundance of easily accessible information is the potential to distract us from focusing on high priority tasks. The previous post about the myth of multitasking discusses the inefficiency of switching between tasks.
Find a Zen-like place to work
Sometimes I struggle to …

There is a common belief that you can do multiple things at once and be more productive. The problem is that your brain can not focus on more than one thing at once, unless they are tasks that require very little thinking. For instance you can chew gum while you work, however your brain can not simultaneously focus on multiple complex tasks at the same time. Instead your brain must switch its attention from one thing to another, and every time you do this your brain undergoes a process …

Cogi is an interesting productivity tool that records your phone conversations and can transcribe your calls into text. Cogi calls your cell or landline, you answer it, then Cogi connects you to a third party. The call gets recorded in a MP3 format so you can listen to the call later, or share it with coworkers. Instead of having to take notes during the call, you just highlight parts of the conversation you would like to have transcribed.
This is a paid service and costs $29.95 a month, which gives you …

I love audiobooks. They have saved me from being bored to tears during many commutes in congested rush hour traffic. If you commute to work 5 times a week, you could be spending as much time in your car as a college student spends in class. You can utilize that time to learn a lot by listening to relevant or interesting audiobooks. If you fly a lot, having several audiobooks in your pocket on your iPod, can make your trip more pleasant.
You can also take advantage of audiobooks to “read” …