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.

Hit the ground running? I stay running. Hit the ground walking, though, and I rarely can do more than jog. (I know I should be better than that, but I’m not.)

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.

Nope. As you can guess by the results, the researchers determined there was no difference in overall fatigue. Harder warmups didn’t affect stamina; even though the heavy warmup group lifted more weight overall, they weren’t more exhausted at the end of their workouts.

In part, that’s because of the dose-response effect: heavier weights activate more muscle tissue and more rapidly increase body temperature, both of which lead to higher levels of strength and performance.

Plus, heavier warmups may change your perception, making the weight you use for working sets seem less heavy by comparison. If you warm up with 60 pounds, shifting to 150 pounds feels like a lot. If you warm up with 120 pounds, the difference doesn’t seem nearly so great.

That’s what happens to me. If I tackle easier tasks first, I tend to want to stick with easy tasks; shifting to something difficult seems daunting. But if I start my day by diving right in, that builds a sense of momentum that carries me through the rest of the day. Once I check off one hard thing, I’m eager to check off another. And another.

Starting my day with a productive bang creates natural momentum, and provides the boost of motivation and energy I need to move on to the next difficult task on my to-do list.

Granted, working is different than working out: muscle recruitment, body temperature, and post-activation performance enhancement don’t necessarily apply to the average person’s workday.

But the principle still broadly applies. Hit the ground running—especially if you tackle the most important task on your to-do list first—and whatever you do next won’t feel so difficult.

Both by comparison and because the sense of accomplishment will make you eager to tackle something else.

So you can earn that feeling again.

— By Jeff Haden

This article originally appeared on Fast Company‘s sister publication, Inc.

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