10 things I learned about productivity while living in a hermitage for 10 days

Earlier we introduced you to the translations of Chris Bailey articles , which he wrote as his project a Year of Productivity developed - they are available in our blog in the “personal productivity” section . Today we would like to introduce you to the conclusions of Chris, which he made while living a reclusive for 10 days. We want to remind you that the common goal of all articles is to share the author’s experience of how to become more successful and effective everywhere: in your personal life, relationships with friends, yourself, and of course at work (whatever you do)!

So we give the word to Chris!
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I almost quit this experiment on the fifth day.

I hated this experiment. Hated-hated-hated-hated-hated this experiment. Every morning I woke up without energy, without motivation, and with the feeling that I was completely sucked out of life. I did not have public support on which I could rely; I felt completely isolated almost all the time; I woke up sick almost every morning, because it was damn cold in the basement; and experienced deep emotional recessions that made me tired, exhausted and depressed.

At the same time, I liked this experiment. I enjoyed living on the island, in a paradise cocoon, where no one could contact me and get to me. I felt that the burden of obligations that were connected to people had subsided. All my time belonged only to me — I wasn’t pulled in a million different directions, I could move freely, be productive, or do whatever I wanted.

We can say that this experiment had its ups and downs.

The goal of being alone was to understand at a deep level how social interaction affects productivity, and I definitely succeeded. At 5 am today I leave my cocoon back to the real world, but first I will write what I have come to. Here are 10 key points I learned while living as a reclusive for 10 days.

10. Wait a bit before sending important emails / messages.

Probably everyone has tweets, emails, text messages, photos, which they regret and which they would like to call back, but they can not. On my desktop, I have a huge text file with a bunch of emails, tweets and blog comments that I couldn’t send during my experiment. But the most interesting thing is that 10 days have passed, and during this time I managed to significantly change and correct many messages, and completely changed some of them. I made most corrections within 24 hours after writing the original post.

When you give your mind time to gather your thoughts and formulate them, what you say will be more complete, more valuable and generally better. Before clicking “Send” under your next important email, try waiting a few hours or even a day if you can. The world will definitely not collapse during this time, and you will be able to convey your point of view much better.

9. Do not eat tangerines if you are going to live 10 days in the same small room.

The room where I lived for 10 days is very small, and the tangerines caused my gas formation. Needless to say that this lesson you should take into account, if you ever spend time in solitude.

8. It is easy to “launch” yourself when there are no people around.

By the end of the experiment, especially when I started writing more and making less videos about the experiment, my appearance began to worry me much less. I began to dress casually, eat worse, and did not think about how to impress people.

I admit, one of the reasons why I want to be fit, be more focused, clever, and so on is vanity. This is not the only reason, but one of them. I want people to look at me and think: “damn it, is this man really free!”. When there were no people around who could be impressed, I found myself launching myself.

I'm not sure that this lesson can be summarized somehow, but I will do it. When you are surrounded by more people, especially if you are motivated by confirming your success, you will try harder to become better.

7. Meditation is the key to staying sane.

Over the past 10 days, I have meditated an average of 47 minutes a day, and it definitely helped me stay in my mind. At the beginning of the experiment, my mind was restless, but after each meditation, it noticeably calmed down. Meditation can be the key to keep your mind in peace and control ( I wrote an article on this topic ).

As the old Buddhist saying goes, “you should meditate for 20 minutes every day, unless you are too busy, in which case you need to do this for an hour.”

6. Digital communication brings much less return than live communication.

Over the past 10 days, I have cut myself off from all my real connections and contacts from the Internet (people I have not seen live). I realized that my real connections are very different from virtual ones. Real connections are deeper, more valuable and bring more returns when you invest more time and energy in them.

The problem is (and maybe you are like me in this) that I spend more time on my virtual connections than on real ones. This does not mean that every twitter account is not worth a real person, but real relationships will bring you much greater returns. In this regard, you need to be able to properly distribute their time.

5. The most boring, patterned things - this is what really works.

I think the truth behind every cliché is so strong that people feel compelled to repeat one phrase over and over again. Practice. Sleep enough. Eat well. Take vitamins every day. Drink plenty of water. The problem is that these truths were repeated so often that they almost lost their meaning.

On the third day I was broken, I had a stuffy nose, I could hardly breathe and generally felt terrible. But then I began to drink a lot of water, take vitamins, eat flawlessly and try to get enough sleep every night, instead of trying to get up at 5.30 every morning ( as for another experiment ). As I began to do these boring, formulaic things, my health, mood, motivation, and energy levels improved dramatically.

4. Without people around you, you feel a greater upturn, but recessions are becoming more noticeable.

While I was in solitude, two new articles were published about my project, and to be honest, I was happy about this here alone as much as I would have been surrounded by friends.

As for the difficulties of this experiment, it took me three hours to fall asleep, I had to struggle with a cold, I felt tired due to lack of sleep, and I became sadder than ever in the last few months. Nor did I have the support of society that would make me feel safe.

In my opinion, many people feel that they do not need anyone when they are at the top, but when they inevitably descend from heaven to earth, they discover that they are alone.

In general, I believe that people usually tend to embellish reality, distort the real situation, in everything.

3. Sunlight elevates mood, normalizes sleep, gives energy and motivation.

When you spend little time in the sun, the quality of your sleep suffers (because sunlight regulates sleep and wakefulness), you cope worse with stress and you control less attention, and you have noticeably less energy.

2. It is useful to look from the outside at what you are doing.

We spend most of the time being heavily landed, immersed in what we are doing. But until we internally move away from this, we will not be able to see a broader perspective. Living in solitude, I mainly focused on work and found it quite difficult to look at my activities from the outside. At the same time, I was able to look from a different angle on how my relationships, finances and health fit in with who I am, mainly because I was able to move away from these elements of my life. When you temporarily move away from the components of your life, it gives them more meaning, gives you goals and lets you see how what you are doing adds up to a big picture of who you are.

1. People matter (and more than you think)

Having summed up in 10 days, I realized that I was less productive in solitude than usual. Everyone has his own definition of productivity, but most of the criteria by which I evaluate my productivity are related to people , including how much I make others happy. If you remove people from this balance, you either a) cannot do much or b) what you are doing will not make much sense.

For me, people are my tapestry; they are so interwoven with who I am and what I do, that I take them for granted. But during the last 10 days I missed all the people in my life when they weren't around.

Throughout the experiment I was less motivated, energetic, inspired and happy than usual. Of course, to some extent this was due to the lack of sunlight, but it still seems to me that the lack of communication played a major role.

People matter, perhaps much more than you think. This is not an experiment that I will ever repeat, but I definitely got a lot of lessons from him.

PS Some time ago we published one of the most interesting articles from Chris Bailey - Experiment: 10 things I learned by drinking only water for a month

Translated by Vyacheslav Davidenko, founder of MBA Consult