Focusing and achieving productivity throughout the day can be quite challenging if you don’t rest well, and it is true that rest is something that cannot be improved much except on weekends. However, by making small changes in your habits you could end up performing far better. Miquel Nadal, a psychologist expert in productivity, has revealed the three definitive keys to improve concentration. And yes, the first one relates to something as simple as the cup of coffee you have in the morning.
Watch the hours you drink coffee
Coffee is the perfect ally to fight that pesky fatigue, but according to Nadal the timing is crucial if you truly want results from it. The expert asserts that the ideal consumption should be, “at most, two shots of ristretto and ideally not after 11 a.m.” This is mainly because drinking coffee after around 11 or 12 noon “is already affecting the quality of sleep.” Even if you think you fall asleep easily, Nadal warns that this leads to a shallow sleep, which can cause you to wake up more often during the night and, therefore, rest worse.
He also discusses the opposite case, noting that drinking coffee on an empty stomach is not ideal either. “Caffeine is still a kind of explosion for the body when you wake up,” he explains. The best is not to take it before 8:00 and to have had something for breakfast, because if you drink it on an empty stomach the effect you obtain may be exactly the opposite of what you want: “What it will do is that it will tire us much more.”
But the expert does not talk only about coffee; he also takes into account other habits that he recommends reviewing:
1. Sugar
Nadal does not merely mention keeping caffeine in check; he argues that controlling sugar is another key factor to stay focused throughout the day. “When you consume glucose of all kinds or sugar all day long, that will cause productivity to drop by many degrees,” he states. To avoid those energy crashes, the rule is clear: you must limit sugar, taking it “the minimum, minimum, minimum if you want to maintain focus.”
2. Be mindful of what you do in the first hours of the day
The second major tip from Nadal goes against what 90% of workers do when they switch on the computer: check email or join a video call. To be productive, the expert says you should strictly control what you do at the start of the day. Therefore, the psychologist recommends “avoid as much as possible” messaging and meetings early on. “I know it’s hard, because it’s the first thing we always do, but the idea is to postpone it a little longer,” he advises, so you can make the most of those hours of energy for other tasks.
3. Focus your time in your own way
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James Whitaker
I’m James Whitaker, a UK-based journalist focused on emerging trends and everyday stories gaining attention across the country. I cover the topics people start talking about before they fully break into the mainstream. My work aims to stay clear, factual, and closely connected to how news is actually consumed today.