Dr. Julie Gurner emphasizes leveraging neuroscience to enhance productivity through understanding circadian rhythms, focusing on positive expectations over fantasies, and avoiding multitasking. She highlights the importance of sleep for cognitive performance and discusses the implications of stress on productivity. The document outlines principles for effective project management and combating procrastination.

1. Dr. Julie Gurner (@drgurner)
DrGurner.com
Advisor, SquareOneMail.com
Get it Done: Leverage
Neuroscience to do more, faster.

2. First Principle: Heed
Circadian Rhythm

3. The Hypothalamus.
What’s Your Pattern?

4. Working 9-5? Well...
- Is this your optimum?
- Are you compensating?

5. Second Principle: Don’t Be a
Dreamer.

6. The Real Deal...
“Positive expectations (judging a desired future as
likely) predicted high effort and successful
performance, but the reverse was true for positive
fantasies (experiencing one's thoughts and mental
images about a desired future positively).”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 83(5), Nov 2002, 1198-1212.
Positive Expectation vs. Positive Fantasies.

7. Third Principle: Focus, Don’t
Flounder
1. Hard Truth: You think you can multitask - You can’t.
The average person will reduce efficiency by as much as 40%
when having to re-orient from a task.
2. Exciting Truth: If you are working 24/7, you are working
wrong.
Separate the notion that working ALL the time = being
productive.

8. Make Stress Work For You.
- Chronic Stress vs. Acute Stress in the Brain
Your Hippocampus.

9. Stress & Strategy.
What does this say about Project Management &
Procrastination?

10. Fourth Principle: Tune Up.
A major factor that determines our ability to
sustain attention and maintain peak cognitive
performance has to do with the total amount of
sleep you manage to get over several days.
- Harvard Business Review

11. Prefrontal Cortex.
Sleep deprivation depletes the glucose level in
your pre-frontal cortex...
Christopher Barnes et al. Lack of Sleep and Unethical Conduct. Organizational Behavior and
Human Decision Making Processes (115) 2011 169-180

12. Thank You.
Feel Free to Contact Me:
Dr. Julie Gurner
[drgurner.com]
Twitter: @drgurner
Email: Julie@drgurner.com