Feeling stuck? Try Productivity Snacking | psychology

YWe could call them the kindest of midlife crises, but when I turned 40 last year, I decided to devote myself to a long-neglected ambition – learning the guitar. I wholeheartedly set myself the task of practicing 30 minutes a day, with the goal of playing Bob Dylan’s songbook by my 41st birthday.

What stood in the way, of course, was life. With work and family commitments, I was lucky to find a free half hour more than once or twice a week. Each day that passed without practice made me feel more frustrated, and soon the guitar began to collect dust next to my piano.

Then I came up with the idea for productivity snacks: breaking down goals into small chunks that we place among our other responsibilities. Looking at the research, I’ve found that we can achieve much more even in small bouts of activity than we might imagine. Most importantly, those small victories can do wonders to motivate us, making us more likely to achieve our goals than if we had set more stringent goals.

My first inspiration came from the world of fitness. The World Health Organization recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise, or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise, per week. However, many people struggle to reach this threshold. Some research even suggests that even having such an ambitious goal is extremely demotivating. Simply put, they feel that if they can’t reach the recommended dose, they might not care at all.

As a result, sports scientists have begun to look at ways to make fitness regimes more manageable by breaking them up into very short bouts of physical activity, each lasting just a few minutes – a practice sometimes known as “exercise snacking.” If you work from home, you might do some push-ups after an hour of sitting at your desk, for example; In the evening, you can go jogging right away during the commercial break while watching TV.

The results can be impressive. A recent review of the literature concluded that these very short bouts of exercise can improve a range of health outcomes, including maximum oxygen uptake, resting blood pressure, and insulin levels. There’s even new evidence that snacking while exercising can boost cognitive function and mental health. Importantly, dropout rates from these interventions are very low, at just 12% – with the vast majority of people in each study continuing to the end. This is impressive compared to other fitness programs, which typically see more than a third of participants fall off the wagon.

There are many reasons why breaking things this way works. In terms of practicality, it is easier to incorporate short exercises into “in-between times” of the day rather than allocating a full hour. But there are also motivational benefits. A large body of research has shown that simply breaking things down into smaller parts can help make an activity less difficult, so we’re less likely to procrastinate. If you’re not already physically fit, the idea of ​​a 30-minute jog or an hour-long aerobics class seems exhausting, while a few minutes of skydiving seems more manageable – making us more likely to try it.

Finally, there is the “principle of progress.” Every small win strengthens our self-efficacy – our belief in our ability to create personal change. By giving ourselves more easily achievable goals, we experience a confidence boost more often — a nice buzz that means we’re more likely to repeat the behavior.

This principle can be extended to many other areas of life, including creativity and learning. This may be surprising, given the known benefits of deep focus and the obvious dangers of multitasking, but the minimalist approach can come with its own cognitive advantages. When generating ideas, for example, the brain may benefit from returning to a problem over and over again, because this allows the issue to incubate between brainstorming sessions. If you’re a writer suffering from a creative slump, it can be helpful to return to a draft in short bursts rather than staying in a prolonged state of frustration.

Meanwhile, in education, short, sweet study sessions can help avoid “overlearning.” This is a risk if you are lucky enough to make significant progress in one session – after that, the benefits may peak, and further training does little to reinforce the material for the future. This is why psychologists tend to encourage “spaced practice,” which consists of shorter lessons separated by an appropriate interval. The extra effort put into remembering what you learned in the last session helps your brain consolidate knowledge.

As I discovered, this approach was surprisingly easy to apply to guitar. Throughout the workday, there were plenty of opportunities to pick up my instrument for a few minutes: between interviews, as a quick break in the morning or afternoon, or as a little reward for finishing an article. It is not a substitute for extended sessions; Sometimes, I really need to immerse myself in a piece. But I find that I can make better use of that time if I keep my skills fresh with small bursts of activity.

Perhaps most importantly, I’ve found that small doses of my musical goals are a joy in themselves. Learning an unfamiliar chord or tapping my fingers to a new melody keeps me more active than browsing social media, which would otherwise take away those awkward moments. Whatever other frustrations I encounter, I can look forward to the feeling of accomplishment that comes from picking up my guitar and making a little progress. Productivity snacks are a pleasure in themselves.

David Robson is the author of Canongate. To support The Guardian, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery fees may apply.

Further reading

Hyperefficiency: Optimize Your Brain and Transform the Way You Work by Mithu Storoni (The Yellow Kite, £16.99)

Leadership: The surprising truth about what motivates us By Daniel Pink (Canongate, £10.99)

Guitar Zero: The Science of Learning to Play by Gary Marcus (Oneworld, £16.99)