Pick Some Low-Hanging Happiness Fruit

T​his video is part of a series from my Science of Finding Flow course. Want to up your game at home and at work? Take the whole course for free.

More low-hanging fruit: Watching amusing videos online. According to a study from the University of New South Wales, a little light humor might just be the ticket to boosting your productivity when your concentration starts to lag at work. (Just don’t get too carried away on Instagram Reels, there’s a fine line here.)

Study participants were asked to complete two tedious tasks. The participants that watched a short but amusing video clip between boring assignments were able to concentrate twice as long on the second assignment than participants that watched neutral or positive (but not funny) video clips.

Similarly, looking at pictures of cute baby animals can boost your cognitive performance and, get this, fine-motor skills. Most relevant to our purposes here, in one study, participants who looked at pictures of cute baby animals (but not adult animals) “performed tasks requiring focused attention more carefully.”

This post is from “The Science of Finding Flow,” an online course I created as a companion to my book The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less. Want to go on to the next class or start the course from the beginning? It’s free! Just go to The Science of Finding Flow course page. Enjoy!