⚒️ Toolbox #1: Tiny Habits, Communal Genius, Eliminate Distractions

🛠️ Welcome to the Toolbox by BrainTools. Level up each week with our best resources & brain-tools to implement as soon as you’ve finished reading.

1. BrainTools Episode # 15: 6 Tools to Get Back Your Focus

A throwback to one of our first BrainTools Podcast episodes, with easy-to-use tools to increase your focus, remove distractions and get more done in less time.

2. Tiny Habits & Big Rewards with BJ Fogg and Guy Raz

BJ Fogg is a veteran of Habit Research, and founded the Behaviour Design Lab at Stanford University, adopting an interdisciplinary approach of social psychology, neuroscience and behavioural economics to explain why we do what we do. Expect to learn in this podcast about habit loops, how to form them and the ultimate habit formula to stack the tiny wins, that lead to big outcomes.

3. Strategies for becoming less distracted and improving focus with Nir Eyal

Nir Eyal is a best selling author of behavioural science for the workplace. In this episode expect to learn behavioural science based strategies for improving your focus at work. Key BrainTools include: Calendarising tasks > to-do lists, do-not disturb signs for your desk.

📆 Novelty-calendar

How do you make life seem longer and fuller? Dense, rich memories. These dilate our experience of time. And the best way to create these is with novelty. Each month calendarise something new you’ve never done before. Seek novelty and lay down dense memories to create the perception of time expansion.

Implementation

1. For the next 12 months, plan 1 new experience each month.

2. Invite friends and others to share the experience to enrich it.

3. Review your novelty calendar at the end of each year.

Research & Reading

• _{Novelty seeking and memory encoding:Exploring the neural correlates of richer recollections (Anderson, N. C., Risbrough, L. K., & DeLong, C. A. (2016). )}

• _{Time perception and experience: Is it all in your head? Droit-Volet, S., & Wearden, J. T. (2006).}

📝 Generate Small Wins

Sometimes you can feel that failure is inevitable. That what you’re trying to do is far too big, intimidating and difficult to achieve. So where do you even begin?

By starting small. Break down your goal into tiny steps, so you can generate small wins. These small wins will compound (trust us), and the positive reinforcement creates momentum. And of course, dopamine hits!

Implementation

1. Define what you want to achieve e.g. write a book.

2. Break it into an actionable, specific and tiny habits e.g. write 50 words per day.

3. Track your progress visibly e.g. create a daily habit tracker in notion, sheets or excel.

4. Add layers of social accountability and support e.g. invite 2-3 people you trust to the habit tracker.

Research & Reading

• ^{Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems by Karl E. Weick, Cornell University (1984)}

• ^{The Power of Small Wins by Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer, Harvard Business Review (2011)}