Maximizing Productivity, Physical & Mental Health with Daily Tools

I'll start with things that really worked for me last year: I began every day with a short daily walk in the morning. 15 minutes. It's a fairly easy goal so it's possible to stick to it, and it made a surprising difference in my mood. Got this one from this episode of the Huberman podcast [1]. Then I changed from doing hot yoga/HIIT three times a week to doing it daily at 6:30am, which requires going to bed at 10pm. This was harder to get in to, but I suffered for a couple weeks and it's now a habit. This year, I'm continuing with the above but adding cold showers. Note that these are all physical rather than mental improvements, but their impact on my mental health has been huge. [1] [this video]

The most recent episode[1] of the Huberman Lab Podcast[0] talked about this briefly, in the context of alertness and focus: ...I haven't figured out yet how to develop a workstation where the computer is above me. I think the only way to really do that is actually to tilt one's body back, but actually that's not a good idea either. They have done studies recording from areas of the brain associated with alertness. Areas like locus coeruleus in the so-called reticular activating system. What they found is that depending on how reclined you are or upright you are, you will decrease with reclining and increase with sitting forward your levels of alertness. So body posture and whether or not your upright or reclining will impact your levels of alertness in the predictable ways. And where you position your eyes, whet her or not your eyes are upright, so to speak, looking up or directly forward or looking down, will dic tate whether or not you are feeling more alert or more sleepy, respectively. So try and arrange a work station or a position of your body in your chair or your standing desk, whatever it is, that allows you to work with a heightened state of alertness. (text pulled from Youtube captions) [0] [link] [1] [this video]