Summary: Working at Your Best Are you a lark or an owl? Research has shown that no matter your birdlife tendencies our brains are most effective in the morning, no matter your birdlife tendencies. Making the most of this productive period means you can whizz through tasks that can feel heavy and a bit of a slog if you worked on them in the afternoon. Think of it a bit like the difference between swimming with and against the tide – swimming with the tide feels easy and natural swimming against it feels hard work and leaves you feeling tired. Taking a Break The culture of staying in the office later to show commitment can often lead to another “game” – who can take the least breaks. Breaks are often taken as a sign of weakness and anyone who takes them is slacking. When it comes to productivity the opposite is infact true. Taking a break boosts our productivity and changing our environment or situation often gives us the creative idea we were searching for, or the answer to a problem or issue we couldn’t figure out. Taking a break not only boosts productivity it also boost happiness and health – what’s not to like about that? Flow If you haven’t heard of flow it’s an enhanced state of productivity. It’s where time seems to disappear as you get so wrapped up in what you are doing. Tasks seem to whizz by more quickly and easily than you had anticipated. Achieving a state of “flow” is as much about creating the right conditions as anything else. It’s the complete opposite of multitasking. It involves focussing on one thing at a time and giving it your full attention. No emails popping up, no messages, no phone calls, and no interruptions – just 45 or 90 minutes of pure productive pleasure. Flow enables you to achieve more than you thought possible and it also makes you much happier. I should also mention that it’s highly addictive – this enhanced feeling of productivity is the reason I fight past my natural owl tendencies to get into my office first thing in the morning. Sleep Sleep is often something that just happens. We do it every day and then we do it again the next day. On my search for ways to improve productivity I wondered if there was a way I could improve the quality of my sleep. If I could improve the quality of my sleep perhaps I would need less of it so I hoped it would be a win win result. Bed was a place to relax with the laptop and get lots of work done. I loved being surrounded by papers and plodding through tasks and admin, researching and reading of course. Then I learned about the dangers of being exposed to the light of a computer before bedtime and it’s effect on slip. The laptop went, the television and then the smartphone. At an event I attended I heard a talk about the effects of wi-fi on sleep. That night I went home, switched off the router and slept through the night for the first time in ages. It’s something I have continued with ever since. Sleep is such a important part of what makes us productive and effective. A great resource to learn more about the benefits of sleep is the book Thrive by Arianna Huffington is a great book. Arianna collapsed at work through exhaustion and the book tells the story of her education about sleep and sleep quality.
