Is Cuteness The Secret Ingredient To Productivity?

It’s a beautiful Spring morning. As the sun’s warmth beams down around you, you’re reminded that you should be doing something very important.  Oh, that’s right. You have a HUGE deadline and you’d rather do just about anything else on the planet than slog through the next eight hours.

Trust me, I’ve been there.  I would have paid a King’s ransom to reduce the amount of time working on mind-numbing or draining projects.  Which Is why I was super excited to catch a promo on the Science Channel which proclaimed there was a way to get eight hours of work done in five hours.  I was intrigued, so I suffered through the commercials to learn this mystical secret.  The solution was something I would have never imagined.

According to The Power of Kawaii: Viewing Cute Images Promotes a Careful Behavior and Narrows Attentional Focus, people are 40% more productive after watching cute videos of kittens. Researchers concluded, “participants performed tasks requiring focused attention more carefully after viewing cute images.”How? It turns out positive emotions triggered by cuteness narrows our attentional focus.

So, the next time you need to boost your productivity go straight to YouTube and take in a few minutes of cuteness.