Everybody knows how important an active lifestyle is for the wellness, strength, and resilience of our bodies. What about the impact of exercise on our brains, though? Can physical movement enhance mental health and cognitive performance? What’s a good alternative if you don’t particularly like going to the gym? In this month’s installment of The Productivity Box, we’ll make the case for dancing.
Do you know that feeling when you can’t wait for the summer to come faster, as if it were your salvation from all the stress and grim feelings gathered over the year? If you are familiar with that feeling, you should use your summer vacation to improve your mental health.
As the winter snow melts away and the days get longer, many people feel like they’re waking up from hibernation. Now that the bees are humming and the flowers are blooming, it is time to look ahead to warmer, brighter times. Use this transition period to evaluate your current productivity levels and make changes to your workflow. Spring is a time for setting priorities and committing to growth throughout the year.
Since 2021 is reaching its glorious end in a couple of days, now it’s the perfect time for a wrap-up. Almost two years in, COVID-19 continues to affect how we work, live, and play. Lots of people around the globe are following strict social distancing rules or even are under lockdown, while many are still experiencing pandemic fatigue. As a society, we continue to challenge the modern workplace and come together to create healthier and safer social environments.
When those initial stay-at-home orders went into effect back in March 2020, the mass shift to remote work seemed to boost productivity. But as this pandemic keeps bugging us even a year later, that productivity surge is now on the decline. While some organizations have seen a 5 to 8 percent increase in productivity within these last 12 months, most have suffered a 3 to 6 percent decrease in 2020 overall, according to Harvard Business Review.
Whether you’re working from home or are back in an office, there’s a critical productivity element you may be overlooking: the lighting. In prior installments of this series, I talked about how exposure to lifestyle or environmental factors such as mental health resources, music, indoor plants, exercise, and natural caffeine can elevate your performance.
You’re sitting at your desk. The phone rings and breaks your concentration. When you pick it up, you notice it’s nearly lunchtime, and you’ve been working for a few hours, without distractions. While getting up from the chair, your legs feel completely numb. You take stock of the project on your screen and realize you’re almost done. At a quick glance, you also realize that it’s done well 😀 Congratulations, you’ve just experienced the flow state!
It’s time to get out of the productivity box once again in a search for surprising new elements that can make our days at work better. In the past months, we discovered how coffee influences work efficiency, exercised our way into the flow, and learned to break the mental health paradigm at the workplace. Now, let’s take a deep dive into what nature has to offer.
You’ve heard the phrase being in the flow. It’s commonly used when you work, exercise or even when reading a good book. It turns out, it’s not just a saying, but an actual state of being. And for those who want to better focus and succeed at work, the flow state is the ideal mindset.
Moving your body regularly helps you fight off chronic disease, while improving your overall mood and keeping your waistline small, but staying fit is about more than looking good. Plus, the promise of a better body is likely not enough of a motivator to get you to the gym anyway.
Research from the Health Enhancement Research Organization (HERO), however, may have discovered the motivation you need to start working out once and for all. According to HERO, employees who ate healthy meals and exercised on a regular basis had better job performance and lower absenteeism. In fact, employees who ate healthy all day long were 25 percent more likely to have higher job performance.
