The Key To Productivity
Be the best version of you – even when you’re in the office – with these handy productivity hacks…
A productive day is never a bad day. The feeling of leaving the office knowing that you’ve got the most out of your working day is pretty special, and in many cases, pretty rare. It would seem that the UK’s adults have a productivity lapse; situational and environmental factors can mean that just a portion of the never-ending to-do list gets done effectively.
In 2013, the average adult spent close to 1700 hours at work. Now, as not one of us is identical to another, we all have our moments in the productive sun at different times. Perhaps you’re churning out your best work straight after your morning coffee, or maybe it takes you until the afternoon to feel fully awake and ready for the day?
So, how can you make sure you’re making the most of your working week
01. Move your butt…
If you, like me, spend your annual 1700 hours in an office, chances are you’ll be spending a lot of time parked up on your desk chair. Some of us are luckier than others, and our offices come packed out with those fun swivel chairs straight out of the school PC suite (although if anything the ability to swivel all the way round on your chair can be detrimental to productivity). Regardless of the furniture, spending such a huge portion of your time in inactivity reduces blood flow to the brain which can make you sluggish and tired.
Making time for exercise, be it in a morning, lunchtime or evening, will reduce those feelings of fatigue which can really be a plague on your productivity.
The office environment can be notoriously depressing. The harshly lit, whitewashed and cubicled office cliché we have grown to know and love/loathe could be knocking your efficiency. Making your space your own is important (and I mean beyond the smiling photos of your kids, dog or significant other). Making sure you feel comfortable and as at home as humanly possible in the workplace could go a long way towards improving your productivity; a happy worker produces happy work (and by happy work I mean good work).
Innocent Smoothies’ Fruit Towers office is a fine example of a space optimised for productivity, putting the comforts and familiarity of their staff to the top of their priorities. Check it out to the right.
03. Prioritise
Managing your time at work can really feel like a balancing act. It’s easy to compartmentalise the stuff that we feel is unimportant, right up until the point where it does become really urgent and you feel like you’re almost drowning under the workload (I personally can certainly be guilty of this one).
First off, put your personal needs first. Treat your working week like a climb up Maslow’s pyramid; your physiological needs come first (hence the important exercise). Try to organise your time so that you work on tasks by order of priority, getting all those nagging worries ticked off before the close of Monday morning. You could even try the “no emails before ten” rule that we looked into a while back – it could work for you!
04. Give yourself a break!
The fabled ‘workaholic’ is very much alive and well today. We all know a few people who seem to cram 30 hours’ work into a nine-hour day, and although they might be the envy of the less productive among us, it’s not all good news for those who work their lives away (does anyone remember what ‘all work and no play’ did to Jack?).
Whilst this paragraph will be jam-packed full of clichés, it’s also one of the most important. Taking time out to focus on yourself is an important part of being the best you that you can be. Maximise your breaks, fuelling up on nutritious food that will treat both your brain and your body like the productive machine that they are.
Reducing your stress levels could boost your productivity – check out how technology could help you along the way on our blog post.