I happened across a 2016 article by Brittney Morgan in which she wrote of six key items we typically forget to schedule into our busy workday. The six are all important for our wellbeing and therefore our productivity and work……but how many of them have you skipped already this week?
A Proper Lunch Break
Did you grab a sandwich and cup of tea while also working at your desk? Did you take phone calls or respond to the growing inbox of emails? Such activities are obviously not ideal. The best thing you can do is to get away from the desk. Go outside to eat lunch. Sit in a lunchroom and chat to others. Take a walk, even just for 10 minutes. If you must eat at the desk, let the phone go to voicemail and turn off your computer monitor. Use the time for some reading you’re interested in and enjoy.
Time to Answer Emails
Do you let your emails dictate your day? Are you constantly checking the inbox and responding to each one? The experts tell us we’re much, much more productive when we purposely schedule time each day to focus on the inbox. Borrow some of the ideas from Tim Ferriss in his ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’ on using the automated reply function to help you with this.
Thinking Time
There’s an old saying that ‘a soldier in the heat of battle doesn’t know which side is winning’. If your day is going from issue to issue and from crisis to crisis, how do you know if you’re making progress? When do you allow time to reflect and plan? We all need to set aside some time for thinking and reflection.
Small Breaks
Anyone who has come across the Pomodoro Method would already be well aware of the benefits in scheduling small breaks throughout your day. If you now only break for a visit to the bathroom or to grab a coffee, then your daily routine is all wrong.
Time to Unwind
I’ve seen the incredibly busy schedules that principals operate under. Rush, rush, rush all day….meeting to meeting….then typically off to an evening event. If you’re going from work to evening work-related functions, there will never be down-time to relax. If this is you, at least put a 30-minute buffer into your diary to engage in a non-work, downtime activity between one and the other.
Exercise
No-one needs to be told how important it is to schedule some exercise into your daily routine. Yet exercise tends to be shuffled down the list of priorities as other seemingly more important activities are given attention. A 15 minute lunch time walk; some stretching in the short breaks you place into your day; or a proper workout at the start or end of day; any such time can significantly benefit our health & wellbeing.
You can access Brittney’s article by clicking here. View our recent post ‘Set yourself up for success late on Friday afternoons‘.