Productivity
Head For The Hills
I find some irony in the fact that many of these people can yet get out of bed at the crack of dawn, jump in their car on a freezing cold morning and drive down to the flat to use a machine inside a building and stare at a screen for 30 minutes whilst ‘paying their dues’ to their body! And some of these may or may not get upset if their carpark right outside the door is taken for the day! Continue reading
The Art Of Sleeping Well
It’s a strange phenomenon that exists around the very act that is supposed to revitalise us, when simply going to sleep is not enough to cure tiredness – and may in fact leave us feeling worse.
Climbing into bed at 11pm and rolling out at 6am is rarely successful in achieving the optimum balance of sleep quantity and quality. Continue reading
The Neuroscience Of Hobbies And Productivity
On the back of this, I decided to look into the neuroscience of hobbies. They seem like a good idea, but are logically unattainable within a busy schedule.
Depending upon your source, it was either Einstein, Franklin or Twain who said:
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Diabetes In A Can
Bright colours, crazy names, giant sized cans and marketing links to extreme activities create corporate appeal to these products. They have infiltrated service stations, supermarkets, clubs, bars and offices, with the promise of delivering a fast burst of extreme energy and outstanding performance.
Among the many ingredients found in energy drinks, there are two key elements that I want to focus on. Continue reading
Sick Building Syndrome
SBS arose out of the energy crisis in the early 70′s, whereby the cost of regulating outside air temperature via HVAC systems began to escalate, resulting in an increase to the degree by which buildings were sealed from the outside atmosphere.
By 1984, the World Health Organisation reported 30% of buildings worldwide were linked to symptoms of SBS. Continue reading
Motivational Harness #4 – You Don’t Have To Stink!
At a recent iNform Corporate function, I had the privilege of presenting to the cream of Adelaide’s small and medium-sized business directors, and here’s what I noticed:
They all dressed REALLY nicely!
I know…insightful!
The reason I noted this, above anything else is, I was there to talk about the benefits of exercising before AND during work to enhance productivity. I was duly informed this is not practical for well-dressed, nice smelling people who wished to remain that way through the course of their workday.
So I want to throw a spin on the perception that meaningful exercise must ALWAYS make you stinky!
Motivational Harness #3 – Flow From Within
In my recent football article, here’s what I eluded to:
Is your workday structured around your physiology, or is your physiology dictated to by your workday?
On a very complex level, asleep or awake, our bodies operate in cycles. It is physiologically impossible to be firing on all cylinders for the entire day, and so the busy structure of our external world can deplete our reserve of internal endurance.
You can’t force productivity.
However you can nurture it. The coming installments will tactically address the requirements of your physiology to create an internal environment that thrives in external conditions.
It was recently presented to me that the greatest barrier to productive workdays were M&M’s! It took me a while to work out that this wasn’t a reference to tasty little treats, but rather the concept of Management and Meetings.
I once worked under a manager who, I’m sure, had a KPI to interrupt work as often as he could! He would constantly pop by for a chat, to see what I was up to, and to add new tasks to my hectic schedule. He called meetings for everything, and scheduled these – without fail – in the most inconvenient times for me. Continue reading
Motivational Harness #2 – Internal World Vs. External World
Each waking day there is a b
I’m going to indulge my AFL bias, and suggest that if our work day were a football game, the match report might go something like this:
Heading into opposition territory, bottom placed Internal Physiology were always going to have a tough day up against ladder leader External Conditions. With the roof closed on External Environment Arena, the home side took early ascendancy with Caffeine and Email goaling in the opening minutes. Ringing Mobile was busy around the packs and provided further scoreboard pressure while Caffeine asserted dominance up forward slamming through a second goal before quarter time. Continue reading
Motivational Harness #1 – Finding The Elusive Character
I used to enjoy cooking.
Before I became a parent, the journey of cooking a meal included any or all of the following:
- a nice beverage
- experimentation with flavours
- frolicking in the herb garden
- good company
- my choice of music
After I became a parent, the process of making a meal now includes:
- a selection of steamed vegetables
- some form of boiled or grilled meat
- a tired, hungry little person who communicates her lack of appreciation for my cooking by decorating the walls and floors with it
- Justine Clarke’s album ‘I Like To Sing’, generally for the fifth time on any given day
The end goal is the same – to ensure that everyone is fed – but the path to getting there is very different! Suffice to say that my levels of ‘motivation’ for the latter are somewhat lower than they were for the former.
How does this relate to exercise?
TV Can Kill You, Hey?
I heard a recent statistic that watching two hours of television per day increased risk of death before the age of 65 by 13%, with associated risks of heart disease and diabetes going up by 15% and 20% respectively. Given the average Australian watches the box for around four hours per day, this should be an alarming stat to some of us!
Obviously we’re all smart enough to know there’s more to it than this otherwise, I’d anticipate, we would have seen a massive government legislation against the idiot box!
Surely it’s more about the behaviour that TV watching represents, and the impact that this has on our bodies when carried out over extended periods of time. Continue reading
