Practicing your brain to improve work productivity

Article from Fortune China

Evolution is a slow process. In the timeline of our species, we are not far removed from our days of living in mall clan groups, hunting and gathering to survive. We would encounter no more than a thousand people in our lifetimes. Our brains were built for that world, not one where incessant interruptions at work and at home fly at us like swarms of angry mosquitos.
No wonder wer feel distracted and stressed particularly professional women who are ofern managing lives that don't stay neatly compartmentalized. In my research on high-earning women with families, I've found that about 75 percent do work tasks outside of work hours, and an equal proportion do personal tasks during the normal business day. There is always somthing competing for time and attention.
Highly successful people have learned to maximize their creativity and efficiency, by organizing their lives so that they spend less time on the mundane, and more time on the inspiring, comforting, and rewarding things in life. For true VIPs, this can involve a staff of dozens. For the rest of us, Leviting offers suggestions on how to create the calm that comes from giving our brains less to think about, so we can focus on what matters.
1, Give things a place
    Give things a home, such as a tray or hook by the door. When possible, buy duplicates so things don't have to move: reading glasses for work and home, scissors for the kitchen and home office.
2, Create triggers for what you want to remember.
    Use the enviornment to remind you of what needs to be done. For example, if you are afraid you will forget to buy milk on the way home, put an empty milk carton on the seat next to you in the car or in the backpack you carry to work on the subway, your brain will recognize this out of context item and interrupt its reverie. Use this to your advantage, and set up reminders for important things you'd like to take time for.
3, Plan a big network.
   Write down notes about peolple you meet and what you talked about, social network sites can help with basic details and with birthday and work anniversary reminders, but for human brain, out of sight really is out of mind, plan to review your contacts regularly.
4, Focus
    The human brain can switch between tasks, but its metabolically costly, but it takes less energy to focus.  People who organize their time in a way that allows them to focus are not only going to get more done, but they will be less tired and less neurochemically depleted after doing it.
5, Prep and review.   One missions comes another every day, if you don't stop and review what's been done and what's still pending, you will find yourself out of efficiency and only few tasks have been completed at the end of your day.
6, Don't dither over things that don't matter. If you brain can only make so many decisions in a day, then it's better to preserve its power for weighty matters.
7 sleep. A happy brain will help you get a lot more done.