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We live in a very fast-paced world. Personal Productivity stands as a cornerstone for success. The ability to navigate through tasks efficiently and accomplish goals has a profound impact on our overall satisfaction with life. However, an often overlooked catalyst for unlocking personal productivity lies in the realm of our health and well-being. In this blog post, I want to discuss the relationship between your health and personal productivity.
What is Personal Productivity:
So what is Personal Productivity? It is not just about being able to tick off all those items on your to-do list. it’s about managing your time, energy, and resources in the most effective way for you. Common challenges such as procrastination, lack of focus, and burnout can often hinder our productivity levels. Below, I will discuss areas of our health that we can focus on improving to counteract these common challenges.
Health & Productivity
Research has shown that there is a strong link between our health and personal productivity. The state of our physical health can directly influence our ability to perform at our best. Making sure you are putting habits in place that help you to improve your health will ultimately have a big impact on your personal productivity. So, let’s look at the areas of your health that you can focus on to really make an impact.
- Get enough sleep
- Exercise
- Stay Hydrated
- Adopt a Healthy Diet
Improve your Sleep
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Sleep is one of the most, if not the most important, elements of our health. If you are not getting enough sleep, you may encounter some of the below that will impact your Personal Productivity.
- Tiredness
- Brain Fog
- Lack of concentration
The recommended amount of sleep is roughly 8 hours, and this is something that you should aim for. So, what can you do to help you hit your sleep target?
Set a sleep schedule:
This might sound obvious, but having a set sleep schedule is a great way to hit your 8 hours. This effectively means that you set a bedtime and wake-up time and stick to that as consistently as possible; this means at weekends as well. You will find that your body will adapt to this schedule quite quickly, and it will often lead to you waking up naturally and more refreshed.
No Screens Time before bed:
I am not saying no screens at all in the evening, but no screens for at least 1hr before you go to bed. This will help your mind to wind down; doom-scrolling Instagram before you go to sleep can overstimulate you after you have been able to fall asleep.
Sleep Environment:
Setting up your bedroom to encourage sleep will help massively in helping you get to sleep and stay asleep. Make sure your room is not too hot. It is recommended that your bedroom temperature be around 18 degrees. Another tip is not to have electronic devices like TVs and tablets; your bedroom should be a place that is just for sleep.
Tech I use to monitor my Sleep:
Being a tech geek, I, of course, use some tech to track and monitor my sleep progress. There are two bits of tech that I use, one being my Apple Watch Ultra and two My Oura Ring. Both of these provide you with your sleep data, which will show you how long you have been in bed and how long you have been asleep. Both give you information on how long you have been in each sleep cycle, but the Oura Ring will give a sleep and readiness score.
Exercise:
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When you are feeling tired and not productive, you might think that exercise is not going to help, but it does. Increasing the amount of exercise that you are doing can actually give you more energy; you don’t need to be running every day, etc.; it’s about getting moving and getting active.
This could mean getting out for a daily brisk walk to get your heart rate going; you might also find this will clear your head and help refresh your brain, and you end up coming up with the answer to a problem you have been trying to solve.
It is also really important that you take breaks during the day to get away from your screens or whatever it is you are doing for long periods of time. We can’t focus for more than 90 minutes at a time, so having breaks away from your desk will help you be more productive throughout the day.
Tech I use to track my Exercise:
Smart Watches are great for tracking your activity and helping you achieve your fitness goals. My watch of choice is the Apple Watch Ultra. I use this to track my exercise on a daily basis (30 min). It also tracks my movement and how often I am standing. It is easy to see your progress with the activity rings on your watch, and it will prompt you to stand and get moving and be able to share with your friends for added motivation.
Stay Hydrated:
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This is one that I struggle with a lot. Your body needs to be hydrated in order to perform at its best throughout the day. Not being hydrated can affect your productivity as it can cause:
- Brain Fog
- Fatigue
- Lack of Concentration
- Reduced Motivation
It is recommended that to stay hydrated, you should drink between 1.5 and 2.5 litres of water per day. But what if you struggle to hit this target? What are some techniques that can help you?
Track It:
Tracking your water intake can help as it makes you more aware of how much or how little you drink throughout the day. There are a couple of different ways you can track it. You can download a habit tracker app on your phone (I use Habit); by using an app, you can also set reminders to prompt you to drink water. If you don’t want another app on your phone, you could use a good old pen and paper and jot down how much you drank that day.
Carry a Water Bottle:
Buy yourself a nice reusable bottle that you can carry around with you. not only will you also have water with you to drink when you are thirsty, but you are also saving the environment and your money by not buying single-use plastic bottled drinks.
Add some flavour:
If you are not keen on drinking plain old water, then you can always add some flavour to your water to help increase your intake. You can add fruit to your water, which is a great way to add flavour without adding any additional sugar. I myself am a bit naughty and use no added sugar juice to spice up my water. By adding flavour to my water, I find that I definitely drink more.
Adopt a Healthy Diet:
All of the above fall into adopting a healthy lifestyle, but there are some healthy habits that you can adopt that can also contribute to boosting your health and productivity. This could be adding some more healthy options into your diet and reducing the amount of processed foods you consume. Eating too much processed and sugar-filled foods can lead to you feeling fatigued and the dreaded afternoon slump. Try eating fruit or nuts as a snack rather than reaching for a doughnut or biscuit as an afternoon pick-me-up. These healthy options will help to keep your sugar levels consistent and avoid spikes which lead to slumps in energy.
Final Thoughts
Being healthy or aiming to boost your health feeds into so many things that are going to be beneficial, with personal productivity being just one of those areas. There is no need to go into this thinking that you need to tackle all of these areas at once; that can lead to overwhelm, so choose one that makes sense for you and give it a go. One small change could lead to a big change in your productivity levels.
