A Body-Based Productivity Experiment—10 weeks of prioritizing my body over my mind.

I want to achieve lots of things by the end of this year.

Studying for my breath science certification. Organizing LinkedIn Lives (more info below) and in-person events in Lisbon around breathwork. Running corporate workshops (3 more coming up for L’Oreal!) Writing and creating videos. Working with people 1-1. Training for and completing my first marathon.

There’s a lot to do, and it all fills me with so much excitement and energy.

But I’ll also need to be intentional about how I manage my time, and more importantly, my energy. Whenever I have a lot to do, my tendency is to prioritize my mind (“must spend more hours staring at a screen!”) and deprioritize my body (“no time to walk!”)

I have 10 weeks to go until the marathon end of November, so I decided to use these weeks as a container for a “body-based productivity experiment.”

Body-based productivity is a concept I’ve been writing about quite a bit, and it comes down to the idea that our bodies are the foundation of productivity. Feeling motivated, being creative and thinking clearly doesn’t just come from the thinking mind. I believe we put way too much pressure on our minds and don’t pay enough attention to our bodies. And it’s all one thing anyway, so if the body isn’t taken care of, the mind can’t function as it should. And so, my experiment is about exploring the impact on my productivity if I take exceptional care of my body over the next 10 weeks, to the point that I prioritize the body over the mind whenever there’s a choice to make.

So, here’s what I’m doing / not doing over the next 10 weeks:

12.000 steps per day

For the past 80 days, my goal was to hit 9k steps per day. That was relatively easy to achieve with regular runs and 2-3 walks throughout the day. (Having a dog, not having a car and living on the 4th floor with no elevator all help!)

I’m now increasing my goal to 12k steps per day because that will force me to prioritize movement at every turn.

Like right now, it’s evening and I had a big pasta dinner. I need to finish and send out this newsletter. My mind just wants to plop down on the couch, but because of my 12k goal, I managed to get up and do it while walking.

Or when I’m travelling, instead of sitting down by the gate for 45 minutes listening to a podcast, I can do that while walking around. Or when I’m meant to meet with someone, instead of going for yet another coffee, I’ll propose to go for a walk instead.

These are all small things, but they add up. The body thrives on motion, and if the body thrives, so does the mind (even if the mind is telling you it prefers to sit down!)

This goal is also inspired by this study from Columbia University that found that the optimal amount of movement is 5 minutes of walking every 30 minutes. Yikes. I’ll be honest, I know I won’t do that. I can easily lose myself in work for at least 60-90 minutes. I don’t want to have to break that flow every 30 minutes. However, I also often sit down for 2-3 hours on end, ignoring my aching lower back, knowing full well I should move but not doing it. So this study is a bit of a wake-up call for sure. I won’t get up every 30 minutes, but I’ll move every hour. I’ll have to, if I want to hit 12k steps!

As I mentioned, I’m also doing a lot of studying for my breath science certification. My mind loves sitting down in a coffeeshop with an iced latte and and just consuming novel information. But this Huberman Lab episode on protocols for studying and learning made me realize that real, long-term learning—the kind that changes your brain—is about actively engaging with the material and testing yourself on what you’ve learned. So that means spending as much time away from the computer as on the computer, if not more. For the past two weeks, I’ve been going for a walk after every study bout, talking to myself out loud about what I’ve just learned (yes, I get weird looks!). It’s always a struggle to close the laptop and move, but every time I do it, I feel great, and I can tell I’m retaining much more of what I’ve learned. Having this 12k goal will encourage me to keep doing this, even when I don’t feel like it.

Big, big caveat here: I have no kids, I work online and am self-employed, so I have more time than the average person to walk and run and talk to myself in a park. So please don’t be annoyed at me for setting these kinds of goals and definitely don’t be annoyed at yourself if you don’t have the time to do the same!

Zero alcohol

This one is obvious.

Anything that requires consistency and discipline in my life, gets 100x harder after drinking alcohol. Even if it’s just one glass.

I wake up a little later, feel a bit more anxious, run a bit slower (or not at all), and can’t resist reaching for the Cheerios.

It’s a shame. A chilled glass of rose and feeling slightly tipsy, surrounded by friends, is honestly one of the best feelings in the world. My mind loves it. It’s trying to convince me that it’s lame to cut out alcohol. That it’s okay to let loose.

But I know there are big trade-offs. Alcohol is a depressant. It’s a toxin. And while everyone reacts differently (so no judgement here!), I feel an enormous difference in terms of mood and anxiety—not just the next morning, but the next few days. At this point in my life, studying and trying to build a business, that’s just not worth it. I want my brain to be as clear, creative and focused as it can possibly be.

Like John Mayer said in an interview about why he stopped drinking, I also want access to 100% of my potential.

Brain-boosting diet

The more I’m learning about my nervous system, the more I understand that what I put in my body has an impact on how my mind functions. What we eat, forms the building blocks for many of the neurochemicals in our brain.

For example, acetylcholine is an important neurochemical for focus, learning and memory. Foods rich in choline, a precursor to acetylcholine, can help boost its production in the brain. Foods like eggs, chicken, fish.

Same for serotonin, often called the “happy hormone”, which plays a crucial role in mood regulation and sleep. While serotonin itself isn't found in foods, consuming foods rich in its precursor, tryptophan, can help boost serotonin production. So foods like turkey, nuts and seeds, bananas and pineapples. I was never a pineapple fan but have started eating it for this reason (and now love it!)

So thinking about what we eat isn’t just about what we look like. It’s also about how our brain functions—how much energy we have, how clearly we can think, how motivated and positive we feel.

Of course, this also means I’m cutting out foods that put a strain on my brain and body. My “rules” are:

• No food delivery (like cheap sushi or pizza that makes me get up 5 times in the night to drink water because it’s so salty)

• No processed “fake” food (anything that was developed in a laboratory by a team of flavor chemists, is a no-go)

• No candy, no crisps - except for dark chocolate (that unfortunately includes my beloved Doritos Nacho Cheese and M&M’s.)

Other than that, anything goes. For my marathon training, I need to make sure I have a varied diet, with lots of carbs and fats. So I’m not thinking about calories or portion sizes. And I will allow myself a Snickers bar for my long training runs 😉

Drink 2L of water

So basic, I know! But I really struggle with this. If I don’t pay conscious attention, I barely make it to 1L per day. Suddenly it’s 2 pm in the afternoon, feeling foggy and irritated, and realize I’ve had 4 coffees and 1 glass of water.

And that’s silly because this is the absolute lowest hanging fruit. Our brain is composed of approximately 85% water. It needs water for the production of hormones and neurotransmitters, and maintaining the health and function of brain cells.

Research shows that dehydration as little as 2% can impair attention and concentration. Dehydration is also associated with increased confusion, tension, and irritability.

All of that can be helped with just… drinking more water. Easy peasy.

15 - 30 mins of slow breathing

Every morning, just 15 to 30 minutes of slowing down my breathing to 4-5 breaths per minute. There’s a whole range of benefits to breathing slowly:

• Increased parasympathetic activation, putting your brain and body in a state of calm and relaxation

• Increased gas exchange in your lungs, which improves oxygenation of all your cells and tissues (including the brain!)

• Improves heart rate variability, improving overall stress resilience and performance

On really busy days, when I’m travelling or we have friends staying with us, I can go for 15 minutes. On normal days, I’m aiming for 30 minutes.

I’ll go into more detail on slow breathing in my very fiiirstttttt LinkedIn Live! 🎉 Keep scrollin’…

What else I’m up to…