I juggle! I try, every couple of hours, to get up and do a little three-ball juggling for about 10 minutes.

It’s amazing how many problems I’ve solved immediately after sitting down from a juggle session.

Juggling is highly technical for the brain and gets both hemispheres firing on all cylinders.

There was even a study a while back that concluded that juggling can cause the brain to grow! Something that was always thought impossible … can anyone source that for me? I read it before I found del.ico.us :-)

Hello,

To the point :)

However, I think that it is much more easy to say than to do; unfortunately. The problem in my case, tell me if I am the only one in this situation, is that you know that your time is precious and need to be productive. You also know that changing your environment would help you but you also know that it take times to change your environment, and you think that you do not have that time. So, this is hard to tell you: “He! you need to spend 30 ou 45 minutes of your previous time to go to that cofee shop, you will be much more productive this way!”. No… it is not easy ;)

Salutations,

Fred

I don’t know about that guy, he reminds me of General Zod. General Zod always stands when he works.

I’ve been doing this for years!

Tony Robbins talks about changing your state by changing your 1) Physiology (breathing patterns, how you are using your body, nutrition, etc), 2) Focus (what you are paying attention to, what this means to you, what questions you are asking yourself) 3) and Language Patterns (what you are saying to yourself and how)

Here are some things I do: + put on dance music and jump up and down + go for a walk + sit up “in a peak state” + pick one task and play as if it is an olympic event to get it done as fast as possible! etc

but if you work in a cube, how do you get away with juggling? i can’t juggle sitting down and if i stand up everyone will think i’ve lost it for sure…

I wrote about another way of tricking your brain when you get into paralysis mode recently. The article is here: http://www.peterflaschner.com/?id=154

As it happens, I’m writing this in a coffee shop on my laptop; sometimes I need background noise to focus. Odd.

If anybody makes any comments about your juggling, just offer to teach them!

But with a little practice you should be able to get the sitting juggle working if you don’t want to make waves. I bet the learning stage is even more effective a mind clearer than when you’ve got your cascade locked in so tight you don’t have to think about it.

If you’re not dropping you’re not learning.

Not that I’m often doing anything of import, but I find getting up and stretching to be pretty helpful when I start to slack off. (I don’t mean any sort of “fancy” or proper stretching — just moving often does the trick. Try touching your toes.)

Hilarious.

I just posted a stick-it note to my screen that says “Do you really need to be staring at the computer right now?”

I find that I get sucked into the computer, and it can take an act of will to pull me out. Of course, I need to look at it work, but when I decide to surf to take a break, then it’s all-computer-all-the-time, and my brain and my eyes both start getting dulled. The trap is that it’s hard to recognize this, and even if you do you (I) end up saying “I’ll just make this one last tweak to Quicksilver/DevonThink/my blog” or “I’ll just read this one more article on the NYT or Wired,” and in the end you don’t get the refreshment for your brain provided by stepping away from the computer and looking at things that don’t glow.

So, a stick-it note on the monitor to remind me to ask the most important question: “Do I really need to be looking at this screen right now”?

(I was going to email Merlin with this hack when I saw this post)

stretching works for me