Derailment

Introspect to find the things that ruin your productivity and avoid them.

Through introspection you can discover the behaviours that derail your productivity. Borretti’s personal derailment triggers:

Lifting in the morning derails the rest of the day. Cardio is fine, but weight lifting in the morning means running on -40 IQ points for the rest of the day. The most cognitively demanding thing possible after is washing the dishes. Solution: do cognitively-demanding things in the morning, lift in the evening.

Motion/pacing. The H in ADHD. Headphones on, pacing back and forth daydreaming for hours. To think, you have to be in motion — but sometimes you’ve thought enough and it’s time to do.

Music is almost like reverse methylphenidate: makes him restless, mentally hyperactive, and inattentive. Listening to music leads to pacing the room and then it’s over.

The takeaway: to be productive he has to not move too much, be in silence, and not have fried his brain with exercise. Your derailment triggers will be different — the point is to identify them through journaling and self-observation.