Being productive is a skill that requires a lot of experimenting and practicing. It is about demolishing your bad habits that make you waste a lot of time and energy, as well as fine tuning the ones that make you prone to be more efficient with less time and energy.
Over the years I have always tried to experiment habits that would help me to be more productive, as most of the times I was finding myself with an endless list of things to do, but at the end of the day very few of them were completed.
These are my top 7 proven tips that I have tested over the years in order to be more productive.
Be Productive, Not Busy.
The number one point I want to get across is a reformulation of your vocabulary. I fall into this trap very often and it took me a while to actually realize that most of the times I was busy but not productive at all. This is because I used to be very disorganized, jumping from one task to the other without completing it, not concentrating on the major tasks I had to complete first.
Being productive means to be smartly busy, this leads to more fulfilment and having more tasks done.
Making a list is crucial when it comes to be more productive. Try to generate a list of clear and specific tasks to get them done.
One of the fundamental skills of productivity is time-management. This means that every task needs to have a specific time-to-complete attribute, as we will discuss later on in this article. So, be as specific as you can, otherwise it is difficult to tell if you have actually completed the task and it will also be challenging to allocate a specific time to it.
For example, if I were to write down “Work on new project”, you can tell that it is highly generic and vague, making it extremely difficult to allocate a time-to-complete attribute to it. This will mess up all the other tasks and the prioritization process too. Instead, try to reformulate it to a much simpler sub-task, like “Write down proposal” or “Set objectives of the project”. Likewise, the generic task of “Sort Out Life Admin” can be reformulated as “organize receipts for tax return” or similar related tasks.
Keep your list nice and short, it should not have more than two major tasks and no more than 5 total tasks in it. If you finish your list before you can always add tasks in there, but the more there are the more overwhelming it gets.
Parkinson’s law states that a given task takes the time that you allocate to it. I am not going into great details on how it works and how to use it in this article. If you are interested to read more about it, you can find the detailed article here.
Long story short, assign the time that you think it will take you in order to complete that task. Try to challenge this time, make it shorter. You will be amazed on what your brain can achieve under strict deadlines.
Prioritize
Now that you have generated a list and you know approximately how much time you need for each task, it is now time to prioritize the tasks listed in it. My personal trick is to set a quick and easy task at the very top. Usually it is a task that doesn’t usually take more than 5-8 minutes to complete and it can be something like “Reply to Dr X about patient Y” or “Update calendar with confirmed meetings”. This will give me the chance to quickly tick something off my list and it will fuel my brain with motivation for having already completed a task. Also, it will give you the chance to switch to “work mode”.
After your “warm-up” task, place one of the major tasks after that. Ideally try to cram the major tasks before your lunch break placing the ones that require more time to complete on the top of the list and the ones that require less time to complete at the bottom.
It is a very common misconception that productive people do not rest and that they work with no break all they long. It is actually counterproductive and shifts the equation from productive to just busy.
Take short, regular coffee/walk breaks in between tasks, this will help to reset the brain and get ready for the next task.
2 Minutes Rule
Some tasks take more time than others, and you might be tempted to write them all down, regardless of how much time they will take. As I have said above, you ideally want to aim for a short and concise list without flooding it with non-related, easy tasks that take up too much space.
Try to allocate a slot of 20 minutes for all the tasks that take 2 minutes or less in order to complete them, like washing your cup of coffee, or brushing your teeth, or tidy up your desk.
In other scenarios and if you are not working with a list, try to complete there and then those small tasks that take 2 minutes or less, instead of procrastinating.
Productivity is all about working smart and optimization, and this also mean foreseeing and avoiding repetitive, and time consuming activities.
The first example that comes into my mind is when writing/replying to emails. Email conversation can be quite time-consuming, especially when your first email is not self-explanatory and does not have an algorithm with a clear plan of action. Let’s consider these scenarios when writing an email for a business meeting.
Scenario 1
Me: Dear X, can we please have a catch-up meeting? When would that best suits you? Kind Regards, A.
X: Dear A, thank you for your email. Sounds good, should we do this week? Kind Regards, X.
Me: Dear X, thank you for you reply. Sure. I am free Wednesday afternoon? Would that suits you? Kind Regards. A
X: Dear A, Wednesday afternoon I am free from 5-7. Kind Regards X.
Me: Dear X, I have another personal meeting around that time, could we do earlier? Kind Regards, A.
X: Hey A, how about 13:00? Kind Regards, A.
Me: Could we make 14:00 just to be sure I can make it on time? KR A.
X: In that case it is better if we move it to Thursday, would 14:00 be OK? X.
Me: On Thursday I can only do 10 am. Would that work. A.
X: 10 am it is. Should I prepare any particular document? X.
Me: If you could present spreadsheet Z would be great, as we need to discuss XYZ. A
X: All set. Will see you there. A.
This conversation would actually take at least 20 to 30 minutes, which is way too time consuming and there is a better way to to that. See Scenario 2.
Scenario 2
Me: Dear X, hope this email finds you well. I was wondering if we could have a 20 minutes catch-up meeting to discuss XYZ. To do that I need you to have spreadsheet Z ready.
If you want to have the meeting this week I am available at the following times: Wednesday at 14:00, Thursday at 7:30 or 10:00. If those times are not suitable for you next week I am available on Monday at 13:00 and Friday at 20:00. If those times are still not good for you, please get in touch with co-worker P (CCed in this email) and arrange a meeting with him, he will then write and forward to me a summary of the meeting with the outcomes.
Let me know if any of those times are good, if not get in touch directly with co-worker P.
Kind Regards
A
As you can see this is clear, concise, self-explanatory, with a clear algorithm of steps to follow and it only takes 2 minutes to write. This principle can be applied to pretty much every aspects of your life, and it is a huge time saver.
Being positive is not about sugar coating the sour events that happen in our lives, being overly optimistic and thinking to achieve the unreachable, giving a pretty pathetic version of ourselves. Instead, it is about believing in yourself and in your skills, it is about accepting failures and do better next time, it is about being resilient and overcome difficulties with a calm and proactive state of mind.
I think that positive thinking goes hand in hand with the attraction law. The attraction law states you will likely attract to you whatever you will put your energy and time on.
Essentially what happens to you is the result of what you actively think about during the day. If you think positively, than you will attract positive things in your life; if you practice negative thinking, then you’ll get crap.
There are many philosophical and psychological theories that widely accept the power of positive thinking and how this influence the law of attraction.
Paulo Coelho in his book “The Alchemist” describes the positive thinking and the law of attraction as a “mysterious force”:
“It’s a force that appears to be negative, but actually shows you how to realize your destiny. It prepares your spirit and your will, because there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth. […] The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s happiness. And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only real obligation. All things are one. And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it” – Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Hence, if we focus on positive thoughts and emotions, we will likely attract people and things that make us happy. Likewise, if we think negatively and put ourselves down we will attract negativity and misery in our life, setting us apart from what we truly want.
This is also highlighted in the buddhism, which states that every thing is subject to change, and that we are part of an eternal flow of energy, and as such we can decide at what frequency we can vibrate so that we can attract to us things that vibrate with our same frequency.
When we have a positive attitude we start to focus on what really matters in order to make our goal happen. At this point our brain acts as a filter, ignoring all the superfluous and unnecessary thoughts that would held us back from our goals. When we think positively we are able to pick up opportunities that present to us in very subtle ways, sometimes under the form of a person you know, under the form of a person you don’t know, an event, a meeting, an advertisement online, or a dream.
On the other hand, when we have negative thoughts we are soaked in a sense of self pity and we tend to concentrate on all the negative emotions that will only set us apart from our goal. Also, it doesn’t let us have an open mind to pick us favorable opportunities that may present to us in less obvious ways as described above.
Get Your Sh*t Together And Make It Happen
I can think of a plethora of examples in my life where positivity led to joy and happiness, and negativity led to misery and disappointment.
Of course thinking positive helps you to achieve your goals, but it is not the only factor. You also need to work for it! It is pretty useless to have positive thoughts but sitting on the sofa sipping your coffee and watching Netflix waiting for something amazing to happen in your life. You have to work for it! A positive mindset helps you to make the whole journey much easier, helping you to have your eyes fixed on your goal.
When I was younger I used to be religious, shifting from catholic to evangelist, but always believing in God and thinking that I was part of a plan and a bigger picture. I am not going into the nitty gritty about how I have realized that I was atheist the whole time, I will probably leave this story for another article. I used to work hard, and I was also pretty successful too. It was like I could achieve anything I wanted because I was asking for help in my prayers: admission to the music conservatoire? Bang, Pass!; finding seasonal jobs that could fund my summer trips abroad to learn English? Yes, here you have it!, my admission to medical school in Italy? Poof, admitted! Mind you, I wasn’t just praying and expecting Jesus to knock at my door giving me what I have asked him for, instead I worked my a*s off too: practicing endless hours playing piano, helping my brother out in the construction industry for paid, seasonal work, practicing admission tests over and over again. OK, that was easy as it was something partially within my control. However, believing in something really helped me in things that were out of my control: cancer diagnosis, deaths, and earthquakes that knocked our roof down. Even though in those circumstances I had all the reasons to be down, negative, sad and angry, these emotions lasted a very briefly because I knew that someone else (God) was already taking care of these things, and that something good was about to happen.
Today I don’t believe in God anymore, and looking back I am nothing but thankful to have believed in it because it has been a good way to get in the habit of being positive: believe that it will happen and work hard for it. It is extremely comforting to think that things will eventually work out the way you want because you believe that they will.
The Problem Is The Solution
In Italy we say
“Not all bad things come to hurt you“.
Negative things can and will happen, and this is not because you haven’t believed in yourself hard enough. Sometimes the problem is the solution! Can you think of any example when things didn’t work out the way you wanted and eventually (months or years later) realized that it was actually a good thing for you? Or when they didn’t happen when you were hoping for, and started to meet new people or developed new skills and more resilience that made it happen? I can think of at least a dozen of examples.
Sometimes life turns its back on you because this is its own way to help you.
Why is it difficult to think positive?
We as human beings have a predisposition towards negative thoughts. By default we are programmed to see the glass half-empty and this is something that we have been carrying ever since we were apes and it was once related to our survival instinct: running away from a branch on the ground that looked like a snake, and the avoidance of dark environment to avoid predators we could not see clearly – just to mention a few. Although many centuries have gone by and our ape brain has developed (hopefully) this predisposition towards negative thinking stayed with us, so we are more prone to give more attention to dark emotions like anger, sadness, disappointment, and jealousy than to bright emotions like happiness, joy, and thankfulness.
Dark emotions and negative thoughts stay with us far longer than positive thoughts or events. Just to put thing into perspective, consider the following examples:
Your boss just gave you a promotion, you start to feel happy, kind, proud – time to celebrate! But chances are that tomorrow you will feel as though nothing ever happened; Now consider the opposite, your boss made you redundant, you start to feel sad, angry, disappointed, been let down, do you think that tomorrow you will feel as though nothing ever happened? I don’t think so! It’s highly likely that you will feel the same dark emotions even though you are starting a new job and you will look at the company that made you redundant with a sour taste in your mouth, overriding the memory of joy and happiness you had when you received the promotion.
The negatives stay with us far longer than the positives do. More amazingly, it seems like we can easily switch from good to bad, but we can hardly switch from bad to good. There is an interesting research done in social psychology that took two groups of participants who were talked through a surgical procedure they had to do. Group 1 was told that the surgery had a 70% success rate, and Group 2 was told that the same procedure had 30% of failure. At this point Group 1 was happy to go for the procedure, and Group 2 declined.
But here’s the twist: participants in Group 1 were told that the procedure had a 30% chance of failure, and Group 2 were told that it would have a 70% rate of success. Whilst participants in Group 2 sticked with their original opinion (declining the operation), Group 1 changed their idea and decided to opt out.
Another theory of why we are more prone to think negatively is because there is always a sense of self pity associated with it. We like others to feel sorry for us and we also like to feel sorry for ourselves. We like to be heard, understood, and acknowledged that we are going through a (sometimes self-induced) tough time.
How to start thinking positively
Thinking positively is a habit, and as such it needs practice… a lot of practice since we have to overcome out primitive negative instinct. If you naturally have a negative attitude, don’t expect to become a positive and resilient person out of the blue. It needs patience, practice and… positivity.
Study show that simply writing a list of things that you are grateful for everyday drags you out of the negativity.
Try to train your mind to see the glass half full, and extrapolate the positives out of a negative outcome (there are always some positives!).
Also, surround yourself with positive people that can inspire and encourage you to be the best version of yourself. Negative people are well known to suck the energy out of you, and those are the ones that have a problem to every solution. Politely trace a line between you and them and learn to be immune to their negative aura and their stubbornness of not wanting to change.
Be kind! Remember, you harvest what you sow. If you practice hate, and jealousy it will hit you back in life in one way or the other. If you learn to be kind, gentle, and helpful then your hart will be filled with positive emotions and you will receive nothing else but good outcomes.
C8H10N4O2 , or also known as caffeine, is a bitter, white crystalline purine, a methylxanthine alkaloid, and is chemically related to the adenine and guanine bases of our double-stranded genetic material deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and single-stranded genetic material ribonucleic acid (RNA).
OK, enough with the biochemical mouthfuls needed for proper introduction. Now let’s talk about some interesting staff.
Caffeine is psychoactive drug that stimulates the Central Nervous System (CNS). In fact, it is the most common psychoactive drug consumed in the world as it is legal and unregulated, unlike other psychoactive substances. It is found in the seeds, leaves, or nuts of a number of plants native to Africa, South America and East Asia, but the well known source of caffeine is in the coffee bean, seed of Coffea plant.
It has a number of uses in the medical world to help treat and prevent a number of medical conditions, but we all know it for its energy boost that it gives us when we drink beverages containing it.
Fun Legend
Legend has it that, in the 19th century, a goat herder called Kaldi found out that his goats were hyperactive and behaving weirdly after eating some berries from a tree. Kaldi was eager to find out what was making his goats so energetic, and he decided to eat some of those berries. His heart started to beat faster, he felt more energized and he could not sleep at night. He then decided to tell the abbot of the local monastery about this, and the abbot came up with an idea: drying and boiling the berries to make a beverage. He soon found out that drinking that beverage kept him and his monks awake, and this was particularly useful when they had to pray at night. Those berries are what today we know as coffee beans.
How Does it Work
The longer we are awake the more a substance called “Adenosine” accumulates in our brain. Adenosine is the waste product of the breakdown of the energy molecules called ATP (Adenosine-Tri-Phosphate).
Adenosine then binds to the adenosine receptors and slows down our brain activity. This will make us feel more tired as we go through the day as more adenosine will accumulate the longer we stay awake.
Caffeine shares a similar molecular structure with adenosine, and this will help caffeine fit perfectly in the adenosine receptor, hence preventing the adenosine to slow down brain activity. It also prevents the reabsorption of a neurotransmitter called dopamine, and this makes you feel happy. This is probably why coffee can be so addictive, just like cocaine (but to a lesser degree).
Caffeine stimulates the production of adrenaline, which plays an important role in the fight or flight response. This will result in an increased heart rate, boost in energy, as well as opening up your airways, dilating your blood vessels, increasing your blood pressure.
The more you are exposed to caffeine the more adenosine receptors your body will create over time, meaning that you will need more caffeine to have the same results. Likewise, if you would abstain from caffeine for a few weeks, the adenosine receptors in excess will disappear.
The Timeline
Once ingested, 99% of the caffeine will be absorbed in your small intestine within 45 minutes entering your blood stream. Peak plasma concentration is reached within 1-2 hours.
In medicine we use the term “half-life” to indicate the time that the body takes to reduce by half the amount of an ingested drug. In case of caffeine, its half-life is approximately 5 hours – so, if you were to ingest 150mg of caffeine, it would take 5 hours for your body to eliminate 75mg of caffeine, and after 5 hours it will eliminate 50% of 75mg, which is 37.5mg, and so on and so forth.
Know the difference
For those of you looking to cut down or cut off their caffeine intake, it is very convenient to go for decaffeinated drinks thinking that they contain no caffeine at all, right? Wrong. Decaffeination process removes around 97% of the caffeine leaving that 3% the chance to still take an effect on your body. This is not really convenient if, like me, you like an after-dinner coffee, and you go for the decaf thinking that it has no caffeine to keep you awake. So, we blame our partner snoring like a tractor if we can’t fall asleep. Whenever you see on the label “decaf“, remember that it still contains caffeine and it carries its potential to knock out the adenosine molecules in your brain If you want to be certain that it does not contain caffeine, then you have to look for “caffeine-free” on the label of the beverage.
Can a caffeine overdose kill you?
Theoretically, the lethal dose of caffeine is 150mg/kg, which means that for an individual weighing 80kg it would take 12000mg of caffeine to kill him/her. A cup of coffee contains approximately 150mg of caffeine, which means that someone would have to drink at least 80 cups of coffee all at once for it to be lethal. It is impossible, because the stomach does not have the capacity to contain 80 cups of coffee, and you would experience delirium and hallucination way before it can kill you. So, the short answer to this question is: No!
Side-Effects of Caffeine
Consuming caffeine within moderate and recommended ranges is good for your productivity and general health. However, as per any other drug, excessive consumption can lead to some side effects:
Insomnia: One of the main reasons of taking caffeine is because it helps us to stay awake and alert when we need to be productive and focused. But too much caffeine can lead to insomnia, which is difficulty in getting enough restorative sleep. This can result in an increased time to fall asleep, disturbed sleep, and either waking up early angry and sleepy, or waking up late angry and sleepy.
Anxiety: The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) includes caffeine-induced anxiety as one of the four caffeine-induced syndromes. In fact, continuous and elevated doses of caffeine can make you feel nervous or jittery and it can well lead to anxiety.
Digestive problems: Some people find their morning coffee a blessing because of its indirect effect to promote bowel movement. This laxative effect might be due to the release of the hormone “gastrin”, which is secreted by the stomach to speed up activity in the colon. High doses of caffeine though can lead to an excessive peristalsis (the bowel motion that permits the ingested food to move along the digestive tract), that could result in loose stools or diarrhea. Also, it can worsen a condition called gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD). It is also important to know that drinking caffeine on a empty stomach is a bad idea as it stimulates the acid productions (which are usually used to digest food) which are too aggressive for the gastric mucosa (internal lining of the stomach).
Addiction: As stated before, caffeine prevents the reabsorption of dopamine, which makes you feel happy – this also happens with cocaine and amphetamines too. This is why caffeine can cause a degree of psychological and physical addiction, but not like the other recreational drugs do.
Hypertension: Albeit temporary, caffeine does have an effect on blood pressure due to its effects on the nervous system. This results in a temporary rise of the blood pressure, which is not really ideal in people who suffer from high blood pressure, and are at risk of cardiovascular diseases.
Tachycardia: One of the many effects of caffeine is to make your heart beat faster. Again, in high doses this can lead to a condition called tachycardia and, as a study shows, it is linked to atrial fibrillation in young individual consuming energy drinks with high doses of caffeine. This effect does not occur in everyone, some people can be exposed to high doses of caffeine with no effect on the heart.
Fatigue: This is quite a paradox since we use caffeine to beat fatigue and boost our energy. However, excessive doses of caffeine can create a rebound fatigue effect that can make you feel more tired than usual the following day.
How to use caffeine to boost productivity
Caffeine can be a great friend when you need a boost of energy to be productive during the day. However, if you don’t know what you are doing and plan your caffeine consumption wrongly, it can be your worst enemy at night, preventing your sleep and affecting your productivity the following day.
So, my advice is: be strategic and do your math.
Try to delay your first caffeinated drink first thing in the morning. High cortisol levels and a good night sleep should make caffein obsolete as soon as you wake up, even though you feel like no one should dare to talk to you before you have finished your coffee. Instead, start your day with a full glass of water to re-hydrate yourself, as well as eating a well-balanced breakfast to start activating your metabolism, this already will give you enough energy to cope with people.
Try not to have high doses of caffeine past 3pm. Remember, your body will get rid of half of the amount ingested in 5 hours, and the last thing you want to happen is caffeine to interfere with the quality of your sleep. You can always choose decaffeinated or small doses of caffeine to maintain the levels of alertness, in this case green tea is a great option. Three cups of green tea replaces one cup of coffee in terms of quantity of caffeine.
You also need to identify when you need to be productive the most. I know that after lunch my energy levels drop drastically and I crave for a nap, but at the same time lunch time is a peak-time for my full-time job and I need all my energies and focus to in order to function. For this reason I try to have a cup of coffee between 11:00am and 1:00pm to keep my energy levels and productivity up for the rest of the afternoon.
How much caffeine is considered “moderate”?
If you made it to this point you have come across some statements like “moderate consumption of caffeine is good for you”, or “moderate consumption of caffeine is not associated with side effects”, and you might righteously starts to wonder “what the heck is moderate?”, “how much is it?”.
Well, the Food and Drug Administrator (FDA), the European Food Safety Authority, and Health Canada reached the unanimous consensus that 400mg/day of caffeine is considered as a moderate consumption, which is not associated with side effects in healthy adults. You can get this amount of caffeine with 4 cups of coffee.
Caffeine containing drinks
Here is a list of some drinks and their caffeine value. The first value in round brackets indicates the serving size, the second value in square brackets indicates the amount of caffeine expressed in mg.
For example: Caffeinated products (ml) [mg]
Starbucks Coffee, Blonde Roast – Grande (470) [360]
Americano – Grande (470) [225]
Mocha – Grande (470) [175]
Espresso (25) [75]
Chai Latte – Grande (470) [95]
Green Tea (236) [35]
Herbal Tea (236) [0]
Pepsi Zero Sugar (590) [115]
Diet Coke (590) [76]
Red Bull (236) [80]
Conclusion
As for everything in life, moderation is the key, and caffeine consumption is not an exception to it. Know how to use it and it can be your greatest friend to help you out, abuse it and it will be your greatest enemy.
Let’s admit it, procrastination is a real thing and it is something that everyone will fall into at some point in their lives.
I love writing these articles, and it is such a great and satisfying moment when I get to hit the “Publish” button or when I receive DMs from people appreciating my work. But sometimes I also really struggle to break through my procrastinating state, sit down and start to write.
I also love taking care of my skin, but getting up from the sofa at bed time thinking that I need to go through my multi-steps skincare routine is very daunting, especially when the only thing you want to do is to get in your bed and sleep.
It is totally normal and natural, we are not machines. Our motivation and drive to do stuff is the bio-product of different concentrations of hormones like Dopamine and Serotonine.
Before I jump into the steps that you need to take to break through procrastination and getting things done, we should understand how a mind of a procrastinator works. There is an awesome TED talk by Tim Urban that actually explains extremely well. It is called “Inside the mind of a master procrastinator“, I will link the video down below. In a nutshell, he explains how in our brain there is this instant-gratification monkey that will distract us from getting stuff done and it glues us in the procrastination limbo. The only thing that this monkey is scared of is the Panic Monster, which usually kicks in the day before a deadline, and it makes the instant-gratification monkey run away, leaving the critical-thinking part of us taking control and getting things done.
So here are my top tips to JUST START:
Stand up, let’s do it
As simple as it sounds, just standing up and saying “OK, let’s do it” will break that procrastination cycle you are chained to. It will ignite the intention of actually doing something productive and will switch your brain to work mode.
5 minutes rule
There are times when it is extremely hard to find the motivation to get things done. And it is totally OK to be in those moments. In those moments there is one technique that really works for me: I tell myself that I am going to do this task for only 5 minutes and sometimes I even set the alarm clock. I also tell my self that at the end of these 5 minutes I can also go back to my procrastination mode, but I never do. The reality is that, once I start, I actually end up liking what I am doing and these 5 minutes become 20 minutes, 1 hour or more. I actually end up wishing I had more time for it and that I started earlier instead of procrastinating. If you don’t feel like continuing after these 5 minutes it is totally OK, at least you had 5 minutes worth of work done.
This technique was created in the 1980s by the Italian entrepreneur Francesco Cirillo. This is a time-management principle that tries to break down your work day in a 25 minutes slot referred to as pomodoro – from the Italian “tomato” – which refers to nothing else but a tomato shaped kitchen timer that Francesco Cirillo used to keep track of these 25 minutes.
The algorithm of this principle goes as it follows:
Decide on the task to be done
Set the pomodoro timer (traditionally to 25 minutes).
Work on the task.
End work when the timer rings and put a checkmark on a piece of paper.
If you have fewer than four checkmarks, take a short break (3–5 minutes) and then return to step 2 otherwise continue to step 6.
After four pomodoros, take a longer break (15–30 minutes), reset your checkmark count to zero, then go to step 1.
I can’t stress enough how important and beneficial this practice is. If you have been reading my previous articles about productivity and time management you will actually notice that this is a recurrent topic and a technique that I actually like to use for many different reasons. Breaking big tasks into small tasks will trick our monkey brain to see it as something that won’t take too much time. Also, it makes your tasks more measurable so that you can keep track of your progress.
When I first started to write this blog I was afraid that I couldn’t keep up with that, not wanting to have the commitment to write one article every single week. But, once I started to publish the articles and having positive feedbacks for this blog, I feel like there are people that every Monday they will refresh my blog page expecting a new article to read. Also, during the week I do have people asking me what my next article will be about and I roughly tell them a general topic even though I have no idea what I am going to write about. This creates a sense of accountability that motivates me to sit down and write these articles.
Thomas Edison used to announce to the press about his projects he was working on, when in reality he didn’t even started. This used to motivate him to go home and work hard to meet the expectations that he created himself.
This sounds a bit like a self-inflicted commitment and punishment, but when I really want to do something and I know that I am going to procrastinate once I am at home, I try to talk to as many people as I can to build this accountability. I also often set some deadlines asking people to watch out for that day to see my final project I am building this momentum on. This sets up some external expectationsadding that extra healthy pressure that will motivate you do get things done. This also creates a reputation that you will need to live up to.
Rewarding yourself for your work is important and it doesn’t have to be anything special. For me is to call my family whilst having a nice cup of coffee when I deep clean the house every Sunday, or having a nice ice-cream for working 3 hours straight on a coding project, or a glass of wine after seeing 30 patients in one day.
Now stop reading and move your a*s
Now that I have given you all the tools, tips and tricks to get started, pick one or more of the above, get you a*s off the sofa and start!
In light of the recent events happening in the United States, as well as the worldwide political situation (i.e. Italy and the brain-washer Salvini fighting against African immigrants), no movie has been more contemporary to watch nowadays than the empowering “Hidden Figures” (2016), the incredible untold story of the mathematician Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), the programmer Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and the engineer Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), an African-American trio that crossed all gender and race lines, whose intelligence and stubbornness turned out to be essential for one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of the astronaut John Glenn into the orbit.
This movie is based on the non-fiction homonymous book written by Margot Lee Shetterly, set in the America of the early ’60s, this movie shows how these three sharp-minded women are subject to racial and gender discrimination by a racist and sexist system that humiliates them and denies them to thrive.
Apart from being an extremely well-done movie (with great actors, costumes, topics and color grade), it also inspires and empowers you in so many ways, giving you invaluable take-home points applicable in pretty much every aspect of your life, helping you to be a better human being, a better employer, a better employee, a better partner, and a better parent.
Here are 12 ****life lessons that I have learned from this movie.
Don’t let others decide who you should be
“You are married and have two children, you should only be a housewife, so don’t you dare applying for that job or that university degree”, “You are gay! You shouldn’t be working here”, “You really think you are going to be a doctor if your A levels suck?”, “Sluts behave the way you do”, “You are too old for this”, “You are black, I will arrest you on suspicion grounds”.
Discrimination comes in all forms: gender, race, politics, religion, sexual orientation, marital status, and many others.
This is due to the society we live in that likes to put labels on you, throw you in a box and define who you are and what you do: only a housewife, only an employee, only a black person. It expects you to behave and live according to the prejudicious label assigned to you.
So the best thing you can do is to prove them wrong. You are more than a label, first and foremost you are a person, you are you! It is up to you to decide who you want to be, living your life playing with your own rules.
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right hook
Apart from being a marketing strategy, the homonymous book by Gary Veynerchuck gives a good insight on how to gain trust with your clients in the noisy and overcrowded environment of social media, but the same concept has been applied by the main character in this movie: gaining trust and respect in a racist and sexist system with a jab, jab, jab, right hook technique.
A jab is a quick, sharp poke, which is usually harmless, but in this book it has a metaphorical meaning: small doses of free content that create engagement, triggering an emotional response; a right hook is technically the proper punch that knocks someone out, in this book it is seen as the content that aims to sell and self-promote.
In other words, if you were to create a Youtube channel with lots of free valuable content for your audience, you will create a community that likes you and trusts you (these are the “jabs”), and if you were to release a course/product asking those people to pay for it, the chances are that they will pay for it (this is the “right hook”). This is because you have gained their trust with the previous small free doses before asking them to pay for something.
Although this concept is not really apparent in “Hidden Figures” I think it is well applicable to it. Katherine Johnson was simply hired to triple check some (flawed) calculations, and by taking advantage of some subtle opportunities to show what she was capable of she gained the trust and the respect of her peers, debunking the ideology of white males supremacy and giving the right hook proving that she could send a living human being in the orbit.
Let your work speak for yourself
In other words, be humble! There is nothing worse and more annoying to brag and “over-sell” yourself. It might put your listener in an uncomfortable position as it might make them feel inferior as well as giving the impression of being annoyingly egocentric. Instead, let your actions speak for your ideals, and let your work speak for your skills, they are a better business card than your words.
Show your teeth
There is no doubt that kindness is always the best approach for a happy life and to maintain good social relationships. However, sometimes people can take advantage of your kindness and manipulate you for their own purposes.
So be assertive, let other people know where they stand with you. And if they still don’t get your point, don’t be afraid to show your teeth. This will make them understand that you know your rights and your worth and you are not afraid to fight for them.
If Nothing Changes Nothing Changes
This is my probably one of my favourite sentences, and it is linked to Newton’s first law:
“Unless acted on by an outside force, an object at rest, stays at rest; and unless acted on by an outside force, an object moving with uniform velocity continues to move at that velocity.” – Isaac Newton
So, in other words, things will stay the way they are unless an outside force tampers their actual state.
If things are not going as planned, or if you think they would be better off if done differently then try to change them, even if that means going against what the society thinks is right and should remain unchanged, and this also means that sometimes it OK to break the rules.
Think about how women worked their way up fighting for their right to vote, to study and to work; the LGBT community gaining their right to love, marry and create a family of their own, the BAME group to be accepted in a western world, the factories producing waste materials causing cancer being closed, the awareness of climate change and all the things that could be done and avoided to stop it. These are some of the achievements that we made because someone dared to speak up, break the rules created by a cancerous society, go against the system, and fight for what they believed in.
Focus on what you can control
“I changed what I could, and what I couldn’t, I endured.” – Dorothy Vaughan
There may be more things out of your control that get in the way of your goals, and this might result in an overwhelming sensation that defeats your motivation to go on and fight for your ideals. The best thing you can do is to focus on the things that you can change and control in order to indirectly influence the things you cannot control: like focusing more on your professionalism, your work and your attitude.
This can be appreciated in Hidden Figures too. These very bright, talented women cannot change the color of their skin, neither the fact that they were born with a uterus, and for these reasons they were subject to discrimination and humiliation: black women employees had a separate building, they had to stand in a separate line when greeting the astronauts, Katherine had to walk more than half a mile to go to the bathroom as there were no “colored bathroom” in the building she was working in and she had to drink from a different coffee pot. Instead they focused on they things they could control and worked so much so that their work could not pass unnoticed anymore.
“Sometimes, she knew, the most important battles for dignity, pride, and progress were fought with the simplest of actions.”
Don’t be scared to be the first
One of the best scenes in the movie is when the engineer Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) needed the judge approval to attend certain classes which were not accessible to her for her skin color and her gender. She convinced the judge with the following speech:
“I plan on being an engineer at NASA, but I can’t do that without taking them classes at that all-white high school, and I can’t change the color of my skin. So I have no choice, but to be the first.” – Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae)
Here’s the scene:
METTI YOUTUBE
So, the take-home message here is: dare to be the first, no matter how hard your challenge is.
Never take “No” for an answer
Failure is inevitable, and you can read the article I wrote on it here, and there is always a way to obtain a “yes”. Never stop believing in what you can achieve, don’t doubt about your skill and your worth, you might have hundreds of now, and you might even question whether it is worth still continuing pursuing your dreams; keep improving, keep modifying your strategy and you will get where you want to be. In this way you will train your mind to be goal oriented, constantly thinking of a solution and not being daunted by obstacles that might get in your way. You need those “No’s” to grow and to develop “immunity” to discouragement whenever doors are shut at you., so you can rise up stronger and more determined as before.
Flying Geese
Geese are role models when it comes to leadership and team support, and we can’t but learn from them.
Geese help each others in many ways, but the two main ones I am impressed about and are applicable in this movie are the followings: when they fly they honk to encourage and motivates the ones in front of them to keep up; The flapping wings of the goose in front creates an uplift for the one that follows, helping them reach greater distance with little efforts. These lessons show us the importance of staying together, the importance of the group and the importance to motivate and encourage your peers.
Small actions create a strong sense of belonging
There is nothing worse than finding yourself in a place where you don’t feel part of it, especially if you are new in that environment. I have been in that place, multiple times: new house, new neighborhood, new school, new classes, new employer, and especially in a work-related environment I found that my productivity was cut off by 80% and I really struggled to show my real worth and value.
In those cases very small gestures of my colleagues unlocked me from my mental prison immediately. And those gestures were just as simple as asking “Do you want a coffee?” or “I am going for lunch in the bar next door, wanna join?”.
So, it’s not a pay rise or being in the profession you love that makes the sense of belonging (although they help), but it is the community around your workplace (or whatever environment you want this concept to applicable to) that create the sense of belonging that can put our mind at ease and boost your productivity and happiness, and this comes from very small actions.
Always be updated
If you want to thrive in something you can’t afford to stay behind. Things change quickly and you must be constantly updated in what you do. This is the only way to be indispensable for others and not risking to be replaced by either someone else with better, updated skills or a machine (as it can be seen in the movie).
Coffee is always behind great minds
Quite self-explanatory, and people who know me do realize how much I am addicted to coffee as it is my personal secret to be more productive. So yes, coffee is always behind great minds and great projects.
Being outside in the sun makes us happy, it gives us vitamin D and it makes us look nice by giving us a nice tan. It also gives us freckles, moles, dark spots, burns, accelerates skin aging, creates wrinkles, disrupts collagen, and it is a well known risk factor for skin cancer.
As any other thing in life moderation is the key, and sun exposure is no exception. There are only two ways to avoid the damaging effects of the sun: you can either avoid it, or be exposed to it sensibly by protecting yourself with a sunscreen. Actually the truth is way more bitter than this: no single method of sun defense can protect you perfectly.
This is the perfect time of the year to talk about sunscreen, even though you should apply it whenever your skin is exposed to the sun, regardless of the time of the year.
But there is a problem, if you go to the pharmacy, supermarket, or even worse online, you will be inundated by the plethora of sunscreens you can choose from, coming in different bottles, different brands, different colors, different ingredients, different types, different prices and different SPFs.
Don’t worry! Antonello comes to rescue you, helping you to have a little bit more of understanding about the different ultraviolet rays, what to look out for when choosing a sunscreen, what to avoid, how to use it, and as usual, my favorite myth debunking.
Before I move on I need to highlight a very important concept: There is no gold standard rule to safely stay in the sun. Applying sunscreen is one of the many things you should be doing, but this is NOT the only thing you should be doing to protect yourself from the sun.
You are probably applying it in the wrong way anyway, so continue reading!
But first…. disclaimer time!
All medical-related content and media on the Antonello Vona Website is created and published online for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health or personal advice.
Always seek the guidance of your doctor or other qualified health professional with any questions you may have regarding your health or a medical condition. Never disregard the advice of a medical professional, or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website.
If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor, go to the nearest hospital emergency department, or call the emergency services immediately. If you choose to rely on any information provided by Antonello Vona, you do so solely at your own risk.
External (outbound) links to other websites or educational material (e.g. pdf’s, websites…) that are not explicitly created by Antonello Vona are followed at your own risk. Under no circumstances is Antonello Vona responsible for the claims of third party websites or educational providers.
Ultraviolet Rays (UVR)
Before we jump into the core section of this article, it is important to shed some light on ultraviolet light as this is the agent we are protecting from when applying the sunscreen. Ultraviolet (UV) rays are electromagnetic radiation that come from the sun or man-made devices like sun-beds.
There are three types of UV rays:
UVA – Are the weakest form of UV rays. They penetrate into the deeper layer of the skin and are responsible for accelerated skin cell aging and indirect damage to cells’ DNA. They are responsible for long-term skin damage (like wrinkles), but they may play a role too in skin cancer.
UVB – They have a bit more of energy compared to the UVB. They are responsible for sunburns as they affect the outer layer of the skin (epidermis), as well as directly damaging cells’ DNA. They are thought to cause most types of skin cancers.
UVC – These types of UV rays are the strongest of the three, and because of their high energy they react with the ozone in the atmosphere and do not reach the ground. That’s why you probably never heard about them or read them on a sunscreen bottle because they do not cause skin cancer. However, these rays are often created by man-made tools like UV sanitizing bulbs to kills micro-organisms (in water, air, food, etc…).
UVA and UVB causes irreversible, cumulative damage to the skin cells. This means that if I go out in the sun today without a protection the UV rays will irreversibly damage my skin, and if I were to go on holiday in 5 years to the Maldives (I wish) and be out in the sun again with no protection, my skin will be irreversibly damaged and this will add up to the damage created by today’s unprotected sun exposure.
Are tanning sunbeds safe?
The short answer to this question is a big and loud: NO!
It is a very common misconception to think that tanning sunbeds are a valid alternative to the natural sun because it is safe(r) and that it can “prepare” the skin to the actual sun when you go in hot countries. The reality is that tanning sunbeds are more harmful than the sun itself, because 1 hour tanning session will expose you to 50% more UV rays than the midday sun. According to the BBC, it is estimated that 20 minutes on a sunbed is equivalent to four hours in the sun.
SPF
You have probably come across these three letters very often, especially when buying a sunscreen. Probably this is the only factor you take into account when choosing one, and probably you are also thinking “the higher the better”.
But what is it? SPF stands for Sun Protection Factor and it is a relative measure of how long the sun screen you are applying will protect you from UVB. That’s right! SPF does not apply to UVA, but it only applies to UVB, hence protecting your skin from sunburns and cancer.
Let’s say you are applying a sunscreen of SPF 30, it means that the sunscreen will protect you from 30 times more the time it would usually take you to burn. If you would usually burn after 20 minutes in the sun and apply a sunscreen of SPF 30 it will protect you for 10 hours. But again, this only applies to UVB.
At this point you might think “Oh my God, this is great! I am going to buy the one with the highest SPF number that I can find so that I am more protected”. Well… No. I am afraid to tell you that this is not the case, and it is very complicated to explain why, but I will try to keep it nice and short.
A product with an SPF of 30 allows only the 3% of UVB to hit the skin, whereas a product with an SPF of 50 allows the 2% to hit the skin. It is only 1% difference.
However, there might be a false sense of security when choosing a product with a very high SPF. People tend to stay in the sun for much longer and forget about reapplying sunscreen often because they think they are more protected.
There is no sunscreen with astronomically high SPF that offer 100% protection!
UVA star system
So, we know what to look out for in terms of SPF and protection against the UVB. But how can we see whether a product protects us against UVA and how do we choose the best one?
If the UVB uses an SPF index, UVA uses a star system. You will notice that there is a star rating on the packaging that ranges from 0 to 5 indicating the amount of UVA radiation absorbed by the sunscreen in comparison to UVB. It essentially indicates a ratio between the protection afforded by the UVA protection and the UVB protection. If you see a product with low SPF and high UVA stars, it doesn’t mean that that particular product offers higher protection against UVA, but because the UVA/UVB ratio is about the same.
Sunscreens offering protection for both UVA and UVB are sometimes called “broad spectrum”.
According to the EU Recommendation, the marketed UVA protection should be at least a third of the labelled SPF. When this condition is satisfied you will see the UVA logo printed, which is “UVA” in a circle.
Types of Sunscreens
There are mainly two types of sunscreens: chemical and physical sunscreens. The former acts as an organic filter absorbing UV radiations creating a chemical reaction that expels them out from the skin under the form of infrared energy.
The latter contain minerals that literally reflect UV rays making them bounce back from the skin.
An easier way to understand these two different types is to think of chemical sunscreens as sponges, and physical sunscreens as mirrors.
You can also have a combination sunscreen, containing both chemical filters and physical blockers.
Physical/Mineral Sunscreen
Physical sunscreen contain zinc dioxide or titanium dioxide. They are highly effective against both UVA and UVB, and they work instantly as soon as they are applied on the skin. Additionally, these ingredients have been recently proven to be effective in blocking the visible light. Visible light is responsible for skin discoloration like melasma, dark spots, and post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation – just to mention a few. So applying physical sunscreen can protect the skin against the visible light which is responsible for altered pigmentation in our skin.
Chemical/Organic Sunscreen
They contain a variety of “filters” that absorb the ultraviolet rays.
Unlike physical sunscreens, chemical sunscreens are not effective immediately after their application, but you would need to wait 20 minutes before getting exposed to the sun, and this is because they need tis amount of time to create a layer on your skin to protect you from the UV rays.
They work by absorbing ultraviolet rays and converting them into infrared energy expelled from the skin. They offer good protection against the UVB, but unfortunately they do not offer a great deal of protection against UVA. They are also not really reliable as they do degrade with time ad they also does not offer protection against visible light. So, if you are going for the chemical sunscreen, make sure it does cover you for UVA too.
Moreover, they can cause irritation to the skin, and this is not particularly indicated if you have skin conditions like acne, rosacea, seborrheic dermatitis, and eczema.
The good thing about chemical sunscreens is that they are cheaper when compared to the the physical ones.
How do I know if my sunscreen is chemical or physical?
Whilst there are a lot of ingredients that act as organic/chemical sunscreen, you can only find two ingredients that offer physical protection: Titanium Dioxide and Zinc Dioxide.
So, have a look at the ingredients list at the back and if you see either Titanium Dioxide or Zinc Dioxide then it is a physical or mineral sunscreen, if it doesn’t than it is a chemical sunscreen.
People only look at the big, fat number on the bottle to determine whether a sunscreen is good or not. By now you should know that sunscreen quality goes well beyond a high SPF number.
“Dr David Lim, dermatologist and researcher, reports that “a sunscreen with an SPF of 30 is good enough, anything above is either marketing or crap”, he then continues “what really matters is the amount applied and frequency, things that people often forget about.” The recommended amount is 5 grams – which equals to one teaspoon. “
Stick with an SPF between 30 and 50. Anything above might be misleading and overpromising.
Where should I apply my sunscreen?
Sunscreen should be applied in every exposed area of your body.
There are often missed areas I want you to be aware of, these include ears, behind the ears, around the eyes, nose, all around the neck, and upper chest. The ears are a very common site for sun-related skin cancers to grow, especially squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and basal cell carcinoma (BCC), so make sure to cover them too. For what concerns the neck, you will thank yourself in 30 years time for applying sunscreen today, as it will avoid looking like a turkey.
At this point it is superfluous to say that, if you are in shorts, sunscreen has to be applied on your legs and feet as well and, if you are topless, it should be applied all over the top half of your body.
If you are on a nudist beach, well… you should marinate your font and bac
How often should I apply my sunscreen?
Let’s start by saying that sunscreen should be an integral part of your daily skincare routine (you don’t need to apply in your night skincare routine), regardless of whether you are planning to spend time outdoor in the sun.
Sunscreen should be reapplied every two hours if you are out in the sun, or sooner if you are doing activities that make you sweat. Also, it should be reapplied after swimming, and showering – You might say ” Dude, mine is water resistant”. Well, no doubt about that. But let me tell you, it does wash off. They can claim it to be water resistant as a cream, as it stays on you after you shower or swim, but is not thick enough to guarantee nor widespread enough to guarantee a solid protection.
Should I still wear sunscreen even though my make-up has it already?
Yes! This is because it is unlikely that you are going to be covering your entire face, ears, neck and upper chest with make-up, and these are critical areas that are often missed when applying sunscreen. You can apply your make as a follow up layer, but not as a stand-alone method for protecting yourself.
Sunscreen and environment
I have recently engaged in a very interesting conversation where I was told that sunscreen are toxic for the coral reef and the ocean in general.
As I was aware that certain skincare products (not only sunscreen) contain an ingredient called polyethylene, which is a derivate of plastic, and this cause harm to the marine life, since most of the times they are found in the form of micro-beads (like in the case of physical scrubs), that will eventually end up in the ocean and intoxicate the marine ecosystem.
However, upon further research, I cam across some claims that the ingredient Oxybenzone (found in chemical sunscreens) is responsible to bleach and damage the DNA of the coral reef. I must say though that I could not find and quality research paper that could back-up this claim.
But I came across this paper, where it talks about the measurements of this ingredient in the waters of Hawaii, but this was inconclusive and states:
“Overall, the impacts of oxybenzone and octinoxate to intact corals occur at much higher concentrations than this study found in seawater near coral reefs. Currently, there are only five studies that have looked at the toxicity of oxybenzone and/or octinoxate to corals, so much more research on the toxicity to corals is needed,” said Mitchelmore.
By the end of this article I don’t expect you to know every single ingredient that is good and bad for you in a skincare product, it would just be impossible and even expert dermatologists don’t know all of them as there are hundreds of thousands out there. Instead, this article has more the purpose to educate you in how to get oriented in all those weird names, recognize if a product is as good as it says to be, what are the ingredients you should look out for and which ones to avoid, and most importantly to help you to be more of a mindful buyer.
Before I proceed I have to do the disclaimer thingy guys to protect my cheap as* for getting sued just in case you might read this article, which has a pure informative and educative purpose, as a medical advice – so:
Disclaimer:
All medical-related content and media on the Antonello Vona Website is created and published online for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health or personal advice.
Always seek the guidance of your doctor or other qualified health professional with any questions you may have regarding your health or a medical condition. Never disregard the advice of a medical professional, or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website.
If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor, go to the nearest hospital emergency department, or call the emergency services immediately. If you choose to rely on any information provided by Antonello Vona, you do so solely at your own risk.
External (outbound) links to other websites or educational material (e.g. pdf’s, websites…) that are not explicitly created by Antonello Vona are followed at your own risk. Under no circumstances is Antonello Vona responsible for the claims of third party websites or educational providers.
OK, we can move on now.
As producers and pharmaceutical companies are not really legally required to list the concentration of each ingredient (at least for the non-medicated products) to protect their recipe, it might be a little bit difficult to determine at which concentration is a given ingredient. However, there are a few tricks that can help you to figure out if an ingredient is at a higher or stronger concentration than another ingredient.
Generally speaking, the ingredients in a skincare product are listed according to their concentration: the ones that appear at the very top of the list have a higher concentration and the more you progress through the list their concentration decreases – in fact, most commonly you will find Aqua (water) at the top of the list as it is the basic, and most abundant ingredient in all products.
Try to look at the first 7 ingredients, these will give you already some valuable information about the product: if there are ingredients at a higher concentration that you want to avoid, what active ingredients are there, or if there is an ingredient you know you are sensitive or allergic to.
Most products have an ingredient called Phenoxyethanol – this is used as a stabilizer and preservative that limits bacterial growth used in cosmetics (i.e. creams, soaps, and perfumes). The European Economic Community (EEC) Cosmetics Derivative and the Cosmetics Regulation of the European Union approved phenoxyethanol in concentrations up to 1%. This is a very important piece of information because we know that this ingredient can only be used up to 1%, and we also know that ingredients are listed according to their concentration gradient. So, anything above phenoxyethanol is likely to be more than 1% and all the ingredients below phenoxyethanol are more likely to be below 1%.
So, for example, let’s suppose you want to buy a skincare product with a good exfoliative active ingredient (i.e. Salcylic Acid or Glycolic Acid), you go to the supermarket or drugstore and find these two product that have these ingredients, let’s say you are looking for a product with Salicylic Acid:
Let’s say that both products launch the same message through their names “Salicylic Acid for good exfoliation and anti-blemishes”.
But when you turn the bottles over, and you read the ingredient list you see this:
Both Product 1 and Product 2 are very well known brands, and both have the same “Salicylic Acid” in the name of the product, and someone might even want to choose one product over the other for the loyalty they have towards a certain brand, but which one do you think it is more effective and less irritating to your skin?
Let’s take a closer look at both of them.
In Product 1, Salicylic acid is the 4th ingredient listed and it appears way before Phenoxyethabol, which means that its concentration is above 1%; in Product 2 it is the 11th of the list and it is listed after the phenoxyethanol, which tells us that it has a concentration of less than 1%.
Also, as you can see from the extensiveness of the ingredient list of both products, Product 2 has way more ingredients than Product 1, and those ingredients in excess (as you will learn later on in this article) can be extremely irritating to your skin as it has a bunch of stuff I usually run away from every time I see them listed (certain oil, fragrances, perfumes etc…).
If you haven’t figured that out yourself already, SPOILER ALERT! Product 1 is the one you might want to go for in this case.
So, which one do you think will be cheaper?
I love this example because it not only shows you how two different brands can claim to do the same thing, having the exact same ingredient, but one is way more superior than the other one once you look at the ingredient list, and it also debunks the myth that quality stuff are way more expensive than crap products. In this case Product 1 is a lot cheaper than Product 2.
I guess that by now I got your curiosity and you want to know what Product 1 is. Well, it is Paula’s Choice. Metti Link
Ingredients you might want to avoid
Some ingredients in skincare products can be really aggressive and irritating for your skin; some of them are really obvious, some others are less obvious. Since the purpose of this article is how to read a skincare product ingredient list and not “what to avoid in skincare products”, I will just concentrate on a few ingredients like fragrances and oils for now. So, here’s some ingredients you might want to be aware of and run away from should you see them on the top of the ingredient list:
Fragrances/perfume
We often associate the quality of a product by its smell, just like we do with food. I mean, if something smells so good that should be good for your skin to, right?
Wrong!
Unfortunately, most of the times what is good for the nose is not good for the skin and as pleasant as it can be to smell, fragrances and perfumes can be very bad for your skin, especially if your skin is very sensitive and delicate.
Pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies are not legally obliged to list every single scented ingredient they use to make their product appealing by making it smell nice, all they need to do is to put “Fragrance/Perfume” in the ingredient list. No matter if that contains 1 or 100 scented crap to make it smell nice.
So, should you see it within the first ingredients, put that down! Its concentration is way too high to be applied on your face or sensitive skin.
This doesn’t mean that if I find an fragrance in a skincare product I really like (because it has a lot of good ingredients) I won’t buy it , as far as it is not listed within the first few ingredients, its concentration is not crazy high, and it does not contain other irritating ingredients, I will buy it. But whenever I have the choice to avoid them, I will.
Essential Oils
Unfortunately, most of the times what is good for the nose is not good for the skin. The nice smell is often given by essential oils, which are volatile essences extracted from pretty much everything that has a smell (i.e. flowers, fruit, and seeds) and these can contain many substances – the majority of which are damaging for the skin.
Some essential oils are good for the skin, as they contain antioxidant (like caffeic acid and rosemarinic acid) and they can also help to fight the topical troublemakers of the skin, acting as antibacterial (fighting bacteria) or antimycotic (fighting fungi/yeast).
You can arguably say that there are some research out there showing that certain amounts (such as 0.1%) of these oils are non-irritating, but these studies don’t really take into account that skincare products contain more than one essential oil, probably at greater concentrations than 0.1%, and these will add up to a higher risk of irritation.
Skin is very good at hiding when it’s being irritated. So, even if you don’t see a reaction, the damage is still occurring beneath skin’s surface, cumulatively leading to problems you will see later on. Irritation is pro-aging, the opposite of what most adults want from skincare.
So the essential oils you might want to avoid and well-known to be aggressive and trouble-makers for the skin are all the citrus oils, like lemon, mandarine, tangerine, grapefruit, etc.; mint oils such as balm mint, peppermint etc.; and camphor oil. Other oils you want to avoid are: oregano oil, ylang ylang oil, sage oil, jasmine oil, ginger oil, eucalyptus oil, lemongrass oil, rosemary oil, neroli oil, and could go on and on for ages. So, my best piece of advice is to avoid all skincare products containing fragrant plant oils and extracts.
How do you do it? Simple! Try to let your nose to the shopping first (the product should’t have any nice smell), and check the ingredients to spot any fragrances/perfume/scented oils in it.
Resources
I know this might sound very overwhelming, and it is. There are thousands of ingredients you have to be aware of, good ingredients and bad ingredients that be have as such at different concentrations. This is why I think it is fair to share with you some resource to go and reference to whenever you feel stuck.
My number one suggestion is Paula’s choice dictionary. This is a very useful and powerful resource that will help you out to determine if an ingredient is bad or good.
Another great resource you can use in INCIdecoder. This will let you put in the brand of the product you want to check, and it will spit out the ingredient list, color coding them, and telling you if they are known to be allergens/irritants or if they are good ingredients for you.
Ok let’s face it, failing is unpleasant! It makes us feel as we will never reach our goal, it will convince us that we are not good enough, or not as good as you believed, or not as good as other people believe.
We weigh failure in different ways and this depends upon many factors – the fear of disappointing ourselves, the fear of wasting the time, the fear to disappoint the ones we love, lowering the high expectations that our friends and family have from us, and fear of being criticized by others – just to mention a few.
Society has always made us believe that failing is bad, and that you will be defined by your failures when in reality it is part of the learning process and that’s what makes us climb faster on the learning curve. In a few words, failure helps us to thrive.
The only thing that there is between your failure and your goal is how you process and use failure at your advantage.
So when we fail we have two options: we can either be passive, starting to blame everyone, convincing ourselves that we are not good at it, and fueling the negative mindset that will lead you to fail in the future maybe with a different goal; or we can be proactive, process the failure in a healthy way, and be paradoxically positive about it because you have some material to work on and improve, realizing you are one step closer to success. So, here’s a list of what you can do do overcome failure and to make the best out of it.
Start with this very simple life lesson: failure does not exist.
The literal meaning of failure is “lack of success”. It’s not just a part of the learning process, but it is THE MOST IMPORTANT part of the learning process. How did we actually learn to walk? by smashing our ass out countless times on the ground until we finally did it. Same thing when learning to cycle, or skate, or learning our mother-tongue, or learning a different language. The common denominator of our successes is the continuous failure from which we have learned.
Think of Thomas Edison – the guy thanks to whom we have light in hour houses – he was working on some models of light bulbs and he had to go through 10000 versions that failed before inventing the right one. During a press conference a journalist asked Edison “how did you feel about failing for 10000 times”, and he replied “I didn’t fail at all, I have only discovered 9999 ways of how not to build a light bulb”.
This mindset helps you to consider the lack of success as invaluable hints and opportunity to get better, and not as failures.
Identify why do you feel bad about failing.
Feeling bad when we fail is normal, but this should be due to the fact that we are not quite there with the results we were hoping for, and this phase is usually followed by an analytical phase where we try to understand what we have learned from it, and what could we have done better.
But if there is something else that makes you feel bad when you fail that goes beyond what we have discussed above, try to pin point what it is. Ask yourself what you feel the way you feel, write it down if necessary.
Do you feel bad because you have let yourself down? because you think that all your effort came down to nothing? because you think you have disappointed people who believe in you? because you think that you have lowered the other people’s expectations?
Whatever your question is there is only one answer: you are not a machine and failing is normal.
Whatever it is try to get at the root of it, and address it first. Try to scrape-off from yourself the fear of being criticized and do what you do for yourself and for no-one else. Failing is normal, embrace it before it destroys you.
Fail Fast
The philosophy of “fail fast” is very well known, especially in the start up context. If “failing” is a synonym of “learning” (as it should be), the phrase “fail fast” can be translated into “learn fast”. The more you develop your tolerance for failure, the faster you can get over the initial emotional part, the faster you can learn, and the faster you can succeed.
Change
Whatever your strategy, method, or plan was, it led you to fail… it sounds harsh, but that’s what it is. There is no point in repeating what you did because you already know where it will lead you, so change your plan. Try to objectively analyze what you did and spot some flaws. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedbacks to whoever you think can help you, step out of your comfort zone and try new strategies.
Don’t compare yourself to anyone else
Everybody is different and everybody has their own strategies and their own methods. What works for them won’t necessarily work for you. Take a moment to think about it, how does comparing your weakness with someone else’s strengths going to help you? Do you really think they will size up? Comparing yourself to others takes up energy that you could use to actually improve yourself.
The only person you should try to be better than is who you were yesterday.
Although when we think of successful people we start to think at fame, wealth, and high social status, in its most simplistic form, success is the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. This is something that we have to keep in mind when we talk about success because we tend to wrongly label successful people by the numbers of figures in their bank account or Instagram followers. And yes, all the big names out there (Tesla, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc…) have both money and followers, the underlying common denominators that took them where they are are passion, hard work, sacrifice, time and patience.
We all see successful people as beautiful, tasty cakes, a product of a recipe that shaped them as such, and we want to follow the same recipe that made them successful. That’s why we get hooked up when we see “The 5 habits of Successful People”, because we hope that by literally and religiously following those steps we will become as successful in life as they are.
But the reality is, we can be successful in our own ways, without the freezing cold showers first thing in the morning, or waking up at 4:50am everyday, as we read and watch everywhere on the web.
Don’t Wake Up at stupid o’clock in the morning.
Why? Because if you are 28 years old and you have been having the same routine for the last 10 years waking up at 8:30 in the morning, it is highly unlikely that you will find the motivation to implement this in your routine for years on end. It might last from less than a week to 10 days and than it will start to fade off.
We have all read articles and watched inspiring Youtube videos where the first thing they mention is to wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning (or similar times) in order to be a successful person in life.
I have tried several times over the years to implement this habit inside my routine, and I have systematically failed every single time because I am not a 5:00 am kind of person. If anything it led me to believe that I wasn’t made to be successful because of my failure to wake up at 5:00 am.
If you are a morning person and you naturally wake up early, well… good for you. If you are more of a late-morning person than guess what… it is totally fine and you won’t be less successful than the early bird.
There is an amazing book, which I highly recommend you to read/listen, called “Why We Sleep” by Dr Matthew Walker, a scientist and professor of neuroscience and psychology. In his book, he states that there are two kinds of people: the early birds, people who naturally wake up early in the morning, and the night owls, people who go to bed late at night and wake up later in the morning. This reveals that our sleep schedule is not just a personal preference but there is an innate, biological predisposition that also has a genetic component. Early riser find their productivity peak in the morning whereas night owls find their productivity peak in the early afternoon and evenings. It is hard to be a night owl in a society that wants you to be an early riser, because they have to fight against their innate sleep timing in order to fit in, and this can heavily affect how you sleep, how you eat, your mood and health.
In summary, it is not waking up stupidly early that will make you successful, but what you will do from the time you open up your eyes and get out of bed.
Start with the end
Whatever is the project you are working on, try to start with the end. Having in mind what you want your final product to be like gives you the possibility to be a lot more efficient when you actually work to make it. This is because having your eyes fixed on your final product will help you to determine what tools and techniques you will need in order to achieve it. It also gives you the right positive mindset to start and work on it, because in that case we become goal oriented, and it will make less frustrating working on the tedious staff that we need to work on in order to achieve our goal.
Look forward to fail
To me this sentence is equal to “to look forward to learn”. Failing is unpleasant, and no one wants to. It gives a feeling of not being able to achieve something, and that we worked hard for nothing. The truth is that failing is a crucial part of the learning process, we get better and better each time we fail. The most vicious loop you can fall into is failing and do the same things that brought you to fail all over again. We have to be mindful every time we fail, process and acknowledge the failure and retrospectively look at our work spotting potential flaws and reflecting what we could have done better or differently. So, in essence, you either succeed or learn, you never truly fail.
Plan your day the night before
Planning your day the night before is an effective time-management skill that allows you to be more organized during the day.
Having a list of things to do gives us the opportunity to waste less time in actually thinking what we need to do during the day. There is the temptation to be carried away by the enthusiasm of being productive the day after, and this takes us to write down way too many tasks on our list, probably even big tasks that require a lot of time and energy in order to give us the satisfaction to cross them out. So, there my be the risk that you will be left with way too many unchecked things in your list at the end of the day, and this can give you a feeling of “I haven’t done enough”. So here’s my suggestion, write down only a few tasks that you think are realistically achievable and estimate the right time you think you will need in order to complete them, and most importantly prioritize them. Leave the most challenging ones to the time of the day where you think you have your productivity peak, but off course this will then greatly depend on your work and life schedule.
Make your bed
Although I might sound like your mom now, this is a take-home message I have actually taken from the homonymous book “Make your bed” by William H. McRaven. It might sound like a simple task, and it certainly is, but making your bed as soon as you wake up will actually let you start the day with your first accomplishment, your brain will start to release endorphins because if there is one thing the brain loves is to have that feeling of accomplishment after completing a task this will accoany all the way through the night time when you go back to nicely done bed.
Prefer quality over quantity
This is quite self-explanatory, but preferring quality over quantity is better in the long term. Although preferring quantity can somehow gives a sense of satisfaction as we have a feeling that we achieved more (with little effort) and we have been very productive. But if you think at the meaning of the word productivity: “the effectiveness of productive effort”, you will soon realize that it is better to focus on three tasks and do them well, as opposed to doing ten tasks superficially and with the mindset of “I just want to get rid of this task so I can cross it out from my list”, with the risk of actually having to make them again in the future.
COVID-19. A virus, an epidemic, a pandemic, the beginning of an unprecedented period characterized by uncertainty, sadness, distancing, bereavement, job loss and negative economic impact.
If you are reading this, sit down, grab a cup of coffee and buckle up because I am taking you to an eye-opening journey that will cover everything you need to know about COVID-19
Today is Saturday the 13th of June 2020. Well, random sentence that might seem unrelated to this topic. But when we talk about these kind of stuff it is important to know when these information and statistics are given to you. All the information provided in this article are valid and up-to-date at the moment of writing this article. And that’s the beauty of science, what it might be true today it might not be true tomorrow, because the more time goes by the more we learn about this virus that could either agree or disagree to what we knew yesterday.
Coronavirus is a family of respiratory viruses responsible for some conditions in humans that can space from the common cold that you and I get every year to other respiratory syndromes. It is also very common in some animal species like bats. Its name comes from the characteristic crown-like spikes that it has on its surface.
Although the name of this pandemic has changed over the course of these months, the World Health Organization (WHO) has baptized this condition with the name of COVID-19: Co (Corona), Vi (Virus), D (disease), 19 (year 2019) because in December 2019 China identified a new strain of coronavirus which was never identified before in humans, and which was causing unusual types of pneumonias. It all seemed to start in Wuhan, in the province of Hubei.
Coronavirus, COVID-19, SARS-CoV2 – which one to use?
It all sounds pretty confusing and sometimes these words are (wrongly) used interchangeably to indicate the virus or the pandemic. So let’s get familiar with the terminology here: Coronavirus refers to the family of viruses (see above); SARS-CoV2 refers to the specific strain of the virus which is causing this pandemic, it is called SARS because it is genetically linked to the strain of virus that caused SARS in 2002; COVID-19 refers to the condition caused by the virus SARS-CoV2.
Where does it come from?
Despite all the conspiracy theories out there, to date the most accredited theory is that SARS-CoV2 started with the transmission from a bat to a pangolin (see picture below) and then passed on to humans. This happened in Wuhan, and more specifically in a ‘wet market’. Very rarely the strains of coronavirus affecting animals are directly transmissible to humans. But in certain cases the virus can mutate so much so to be transmissible to humans using other animals as vectors.
It is not a laboratory invention, it is what happens when you disturb nature and offer yourself as an alternative host for the virus that lives on wildlife animals.
This is not a new thing at all. In case you didn’t know many viruses that we know today come from animals and scenarios like the one we are living today happened over and over again in the past.
HIV – 1920
HIV crossed from chimps to humans in the 1920s in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. This was probably as a result of chimps carrying the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV), a virus closely related to HIV, being hunted and eaten by local people. The virus was transmitted either by eating their meat, or with their blood getting into cuts and wounds on people in their course of hunting.
Ebola – 1976
Ebola virus was discovered near the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Similarly to HIV, the most trusted theory is that the virus was passed on from bats to non-human primates and than passed to humans via direct contacts of blood or other bodily tissues.
SARS – 2002
For example, in 2002/2003 something very similar happened when a strain of coronavirus was passed on from bats to civets (animal found in tropical Asia and Africa) and then to humans. This gave rise to an epidemic called SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and it stared in China, specifically in the wet market of Foshan (southern China).
MERS – 2012
In this case a strain of coronavirus was passed on from bats to camels and than to humans. This gave rise to the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome also knows as MERS. The outbreak happened in the the Saudi Arabia peninsula.
Why China?
But why COVID-19 originated in a market? And why in China? And why SARS started in China in 2002? And how could a bat infect a civet cat in the case of the SARS? and how could a bat infect a pangolin in the case of the COVID-19? And why are there tropical animals in China?
Let’s start by clarifying what wet markets are. Wet markets are types of market where live animals are butchered and sold. These animals include chicken, bats, goats, crocodiles, civet cats, pangolins, dogs, cats, koalas, snakes and rats (just to mention a few). These markets are scattered world-wide mainly in Africa, Saudi Arabia, South-East Asia and a few areas of Latin America. But the most well-known and powerful markets are in China, like the ones where SARS and COVID-19 originated from, Foshan and Wuhan wet markets respectively. These markets are well known for the variety of wildlife that they have, animals from all over the world with each one with its own potential to carry its virus to the market.
Animals are stack in little cages one on top of the other, making it possible for cross-contamination to happen with fecal material, blood and pus to drip on other species.
This condition creates the perfect “soup” for viruses and bacteria to thrive and to be transmitted to different animals and then to humans.
Nature didn’t really predict that a bat would be over a pangolin, or over a dog, or over a camel in an environment very close to humans.
The reason why all these animals are in the same market at the same time is because of a decision made by the Chinese government a few years ago.
In 1970 China was going through a very rough period, the communist regime had the control over the food production, and it was struggling to feed its 900 million people, 36 million of which died because of very little food resources. In 1978 the Chinese regime allowed private farming and many farmers did very well with swine and poultry meat, but small farmers could not still sustain themselves, and they started to hunt and sell wild animals.
China saw a very lucrative business with the trade of wildlife, and in 1988 the government approved the “wildlife protection law”, which stated that wildlife belonged to the government and it also encouraged the domestication and breeding of wildlife. These animals were than introduced to the wet market to make profit out of them.
Parallel to this activity, an illegal commerce was also developing, with the importation of endangered species like tigers, rhinos and pangolins to China and sold in the wet markets. These animals were used not only as food, but also as aphrodisiac ingredients mainly bought by rich people.
In 2000, the markets were full of a wide variety of wildlife and this brought to the SARS outbreak in 2002, originating from Foshan. Scientists found out that the virus shared the genetic material of civet cats, and the Chinese government was forced to shut the wet market banning the breeding of wildlife.
However, a few months after, China not only reopened the wet markets, but it legalized the breeding of 54 species of wildlife, including civet cats.
We all know the very similar story that led us to this situation today.
How does the virus attack the body
The virus spreads via respiratory droplets either directly (for example a person talking/sneezing very close to us) or indirectly (for example touching contaminated surfaces).
Once the virus enters into your body from either your eyes, nose or mouth it starts by attacking your upper respiratory system from your nasal mucosa to your throat, hence the temporary loss of smell, taste, as well as flu-like symptoms. According to the CDC, symptoms might appear 5-14 days after the exposure to the virus. When the virus reaches the lungs it deposits in the air sacs called alveoli, which are extremely important structures in your lungs where oxygen can get distributed into the body via your circulatory system. The immune system tries to fight off the virus, and this generates local inflammation. Depending on the severity of the infection, fluid and pus builds up in the air sacs and this generates bronchitis and pneumonia. At this point oxygen cannot reach the blood vessels and Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) might happen. It may be required to place the patient on a ventilator to help supply the oxygen.
In critical cases, the combination of lack of oxygen to the rest of the body and this persistent infection can lead to organ failure that can potentially be fatal.
The mortality rate varies depending on the age group of the affected patients as well as the presence of underlying medical conditions (i.e., hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular conditions, chronic respiratory illnesses, cancer, immunosuppressed patients, etc).
Symptoms
COVID-19 presents with the following symptoms
Coughing
Throat-ache
Fever
Muscular and joint pain
General feeling of being unwell
Shortness of breath
Congested or runny nose
Anosmia (loss of smell sensation);
Ageusia (loss of taste sensation);
Some people can be asymptomatic, which means that they present no symptoms at all and still be positive.
Testing
As a general rule, if you have been in contact with anyone with COVID-19 or have the symptoms discussed above, you have COVID-19 unless proved otherwise by reliable testing.
To date, two types of tests are available for COVID-19: viral tests, which tells you if you have a current infection; and antibody tests, which tells you if you have been previously exposed to the virus.
Treatment
To date, the only treatment available at the moment is supportive care (pain killers, fluids, ventilator etc…) but there is not a gold standard cure as such. However, there are several clinical trials out there that are tying to come up with a cure for it.
As of today, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved the emergency use authorisation for three drugs: hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine (anti-malaria drugs), remdesivir (anti-viral medication), and a drug used to sedate people on a ventilator.
A very promising and safe treatment seems to be the hyper-immune plasma transfusion. According to preliminary studies, transfusion of plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19 appears to be safe for severely ill patients and may speed up recovery. Again, the level of evidence for this treatment method is very premature at the moment.
Vaccine
As of today, there is no vaccine against SARS-COV2. There are about 100 active projects worldwide that are working restlessly to develop an effective and safe vaccine. Some researchers are positive to deliver the vaccines within next year.
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