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Josh Davis is the author of Two Awesome Hours.

Productivity

Two Awesome Hours Book Summary - Two Awesome Hours Book explained in key points

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Two Awesome Hours summary

Name: Two Awesome Hours
Rating: 4.2 (147 reviews)
Author: Josh Davis

Josh Davis

Science-Based Strategies to Harness Your Best Time and Get Your Most Important Work Done

4.2 (147 ratings)

11 mins

Brief summary

"Two Awesome Hours" by Josh Davis is a productivity guide that helps us to make the most out of our time and avoid distractions. The book provides science-backed tips and practical strategies for improving focus and increasing efficiency.

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Focus

Table of Contents

Two Awesome Hours
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Key idea 1 of 5

What’s in it for me? Set the framework for a daily dose of peak performance.

Sometimes you have days when it feels like you have been super busy but haven’t accomplished anything significant. On these days, it’s as if all of your time is spent checking emails, attending meetings, responding to questions from colleagues, and other seemingly trivial tasks that don’t really lead to progress. So what can you do to prevent these tasks from sucking the time and energy out of your days?

These blinks present five strategies that will help you make sure that you don’t waste all of your time and mental energy on boring routines and futile decision making. They establish some simple conditions for your day, and will teach you how to be awesomely effective with your work. This way, you’ll ensure you have at least two hours of peak productivity every day.

From these blinks you’ll learn

how to make the best out of a sudden interruption;
why letting your mind wander can be good for your work; and
that eating fat can make you work better.

In order to become awesomely effective you have to consciously recognize your decision points.

Over the course of each day, you engage in all manner of habitual tasks. Think about how many times in your life you’ve hopped out of bed, gotten dressed, scanned your emails and attended weekly meetings without a second thought.

In these cases, we often switch off and go into automatic to get through our daily routines. Rarely do we stop to consider whether our routines make sense. It may be that your daily tasks are causing you to waste a great deal of time and energy without even realizing.

Take Doug. As a consultant, he was required to write a monthly analysis report. But instead of completing this rather important task, Doug ended up tending his inbox instead, responding to a dozen emails in a trance-like state. Because sorting through his emails is part of his daily routine, Doug gave it preference over what should have been his real priority.

Like Doug, many of us let routines get in the way of real productivity. So how can we change? By recognizing our decision points.

Decision points are those moments in times when a given task is completed or interrupted. At a decisions point, you have the opportunity to consciously choose what you do next.

Let’s look at an example. Say a colleague comes to your desk and asks you to go to lunch with him. As a result, you’re interrupted in the middle of drafting a report. You then recognize that you’ve got a decisions point on your hands. You could either decline his offer and continue your work, or take a break and get a bite to eat.

By consciously considering your options here, you’ll be better able to make a decision that benefits you and your productivity the most. As you become more aware of these points in time between tasks and make fewer impulsive decisions, you’ll be able to become more effective with your time.

Managing your mental energy will bring you one step closer to being awesomely effective.

It’s rare to have just one task to do at a time. In order to keep all of our responsibilities fulfilled, we’re forced to juggle them. Should you sort through your emails? Or should you prepare for today’s meeting? It’s important to choose wisely, as you only have so much mental energy to use.

Unfortunately, the juggling act itself can reduce the amount of mental energy available to us by causing mental fatigue. This happens when we overwork our executive functions, which are the parts of our brain that help us manage, regulate and control.

If you want to be awesomely effective, you have to stop fighting distractions.

We’ve all experienced the frustration of wanting to get work done, but finding ourselves constantly distracted by incoming emails, calls and notifications. It’s not easy to maintain focus, but there’s a good reason for that.

Did you know that our brains are designed to get distracted? Consider our prehistoric ancestors: Do you think they would have been able to survive had they failed to shift focus from the berries they were picking to the saber-tooth that was creeping up behind them?

A healthy body is a productive body!

We all know that exercise is vital for good physical health. But if that’s not enough to motivate you, you might be interested in the positive effects it has on your mental performance, too.

These effects were revealed in a study where participants were presented with color words written in a different shade of ink (for instance, “yellow” written in green). The participants then had to say either the color of the word (green) or what the written word was (yellow), before or after doing physical exercise. The participants who solved this task after the physical exercise gave correct answers faster, showing that physical exercise enhances the brain’s ability to make decisions and solve problems.

Fine-tune the noise, light and objects around you to create a powerfully productive workspace.

Are you one of those people who needs complete silence while working? Do you worry that music and background noise will sabotage your concentration? In fact, noise such as intermittent speech and music inhibits your ability to perform your best at work.

Intermittent speech refers to words or sentences with pauses in between – basically, office chatter. Several studies have shown that intermittent speech negatively affects your ability to stay focused, read and process text.

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What is Two Awesome Hours about?

Between open-plan offices, telecommuting jobs and freelancing in coffee shops, the modern workplace is a minefield of distractions. Time to reclaim your brain with a little lifehacking strategy! Two Awesome Hours (2015) reveals unexpected and insightful steps to a more productive you, from managing your mental energy to letting your mind wander. 120 minutes is all you need to make a difference.

Two Awesome Hours Review

Two Awesome Hours (2015) by Josh Davis is a book that offers practical strategies for achieving peak productivity and focus in a world filled with distractions. Here's why this book is worth reading:

Insightful research and expert advice provide readers with effective techniques to maximize their productivity and accomplish more in less time.
The book explores the psychological and neurological factors that impact our ability to concentrate, giving readers a deeper understanding of how to optimize their performance.
Through real-life examples and relatable anecdotes, the author keeps readers engaged, making the topic of productivity both enjoyable and relatable.

Who should read Two Awesome Hours?

Anyone feeling stressed about their workload
Anyone interested in finding out the best psychological and biological conditions for effectiveness
Freelancers looking to use their time more productively

About the Author

Josh Davis is the lead professor and director of research at the NeuroLeadership Institute. He received his doctorate of psychology from Columbia University, and engages with research areas such as embodied cognition and the regulation of emotions.

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