Scientists just discovered diving headfirst into your workday will make you significantly more productive

"Most of my co-workers liked to ease into their workday. They stopped and chatted on their way to their office. Once there, they put down their stuff, turned around, and headed to the break room for coffee. When they finally drifted back, they checked a few news sites (why do that at home when you could do it at work?), glanced at their email-in athletic terms, they warmed up for 20 or 30 minutes."

"I don't work that way, at least not effectively. My elapsed time from bed to desk is usually about 10 minutes: make the bed, brush my teeth, grab a protein bar and a glass of water, sit down, start working. That's not because I'm Mr. Productivity. That's because whenever I do dawdle, whenever I do let myself settle into work, I rarely manage to work very hard the rest of the day."

"Turns out there's a little science to back up how I approach the morning. According to a study just published in The Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies (h/t to Arnold Schwarzenegger's newsletter), warming up with heavier rather than lighter weights improves overall weight training workout performance. Participants who warmed up by doing five reps at 80 percent of their 10-rep max were able to lift more weight, and perform more reps during their workouts, than people who warmed up doing 15 reps at 40 percent of their 10-rep max."

"For example, say you can just barely squeeze out 10 reps of 150 pounds doing bench presses. Warmup up with five 120-pound reps will result in "significantly greater total training volume" than warming up with 15 60-pound reps. Sounds counterintuitive? After all, the goal of a warmup is to get your blood flowing, get your heart pumping a little faster, to limber and loosen your muscles. A warmup is supposed to be easy, so it doesn't negatively impact the real work to come."

Many coworkers ease into their day with chats, coffee, news, email, and extended warmups. The narrator moves from bed to desk in about ten minutes to start working immediately, because dawdling reduces later productivity. A study in The Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies compared warmup intensities and found heavier warmups improved workout performance. Participants who did five reps at 80% of their 10-rep max lifted more weight and completed more reps than those who did 15 reps at 40% of their 10-rep max. A heavier, low-rep warmup increased total training volume despite common expectations that warmups should be easy.

Read at Fast Company