Imagine you are going about your normal day-to-day activities and suddenly, you look at your cellphone and see that your battery is running out because you have used it throughout the day. Normally, you would want to recharge it so you can use it again later as needed. This is the same for our human brain. We use it everyday, including for work, until our battery runs out and needs to be recharged. You cannot run on 0% as productively as you could on 80% or more. Because of this, it is stressful to keep up with our workload as we’re not giving it our best. Here are 5 unique ways that you can place into practice to help you reduce stress to boost your productivity.
1. Mindfulness
One of the reasons our brains may feel overworked and stressed can be attributed to the many thoughts we got going on at once in our heads. We think about what recent mistakes we did, what work still needs to be done, and how it is never-ending. One way to combat this is through mindfulness. Mindfulness helps us to focus more on the present, in a non-judgemental way. Here’s one resource that can help you start practicing mindfulness: https://www.uclahealth.org/programs/marc.
2. Brain Dump
Another creative way to reduce stress at work can be a brain dump. I find this practice to be especially useful when I got quite a few ideas circling in my thoughts, especially for new projects. A brain dump can be done in a physical piece of paper, such as in a journal you may have for work or a notepad, or even digitally, on your work notes or a document file. You proceed to write down and dump these ideas so that they can exit your brain. This way you can better focus on what you’re working on at the moment and you don’t forget what you wanted to get back to once you have more time for it.
3. Single-Tasking
Many of us have heard of multi-tasking which occurs when we work on more than 1 task at the same time. We only have a certain amount of focus so by splitting it up amongst several tasks at once, you are not going to give your full attention to each of these tasks. Splitting your attention this way can cause stress because your brain has to change between multiple tasks at once. I introduce to you the opposite of this, single-tasking. Single-tasking works just as it sounds: you work on one task only. By doing this, you can avoid the strain of having to juggle multiple tasks at once. Plus, with a laser-focus attention on each task, you can optimize your productivity at work.
4. Do Not Disturb
You may be familiar with silenced notifications on your personal cellphone but how about on your work computer device? Well, if you haven’t already, you should look into implementing the use of ‘Do Not Disturb’ at work to reduce your stress. Often times, we are trying to focus on getting our work tasks done that notifications from new work emails or messages can throw us off track and we have to switch our brains to process and sometimes, answer these new messages. While I can’t recommend turning them off forever, I do recommend turning off these notifications once in a while, for short periods of time so you can give have a productive block of work time to give it your all on the task at hand.
5. Move & Hydrate
This last creative way to reduce stress combines two things that I am guilty of overlooking: movement and hydration. Physical movement helps us to physically move away from our work environment and to stretch after long hours at being at the computer sitting down. Drinking water can help us to replenish any lost water throughout our work today, to energize us, and to help us better concentrate. This combo can kill 2 birds with one stone.
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