The third time I reached burnout in my career wasn’t due to working excessive hours or not being able to switch off in the evening. It was due to a lack of space in my workday. Work was crammed into every available minute, leaving no time to rest. The result was that, although I logged off every day at 5.00 pm, I burned out due to work exhaustion and stress.
Starting and growing a business can be exciting and rewarding. But it can also be challenging and stressful. I started my own business as a side hustle, so I have many hats to wear and not a lot of time to wear them. Every article I read and video I watched had a list of things I had to do to be successful, and I watched in horror as my to-do list grew longer by the day. This is difficult enough when working full-time, but it is practically impossible to do it along with working another job and raising a family. Working 70 hours or more a week wasn’t an option; I had made a decision long ago that burnout was too high a price to pay for success.
Flexible work practices are becoming more common, facilitated by advances in technology and accelerated by coronavirus pandemic. There are many benefits to flexible work, one of which is increased wellbeing. It allows people to better balance work with rest and personal interests, family, and other obligations. However, it can also lead to unplanned overtime, additional stress and burnout.
I started working with John* in early January to improve his time management. He felt “all over the place” in recent months and wanted to take back control of the workday. Like John, many people feel they are on a productivity rollercoaster. One minute we are progressing steadily towards our goals, and the next we are flipped into a loop-the-loop and sent to the bottom again.
Do you want to know the secret to improving your team’s productivity and helping them have a better workday? Cancel all 10.00 am meetings and think twice before you interrupt them. It may sound too good to be true, but these two small actions will result in significant change as they enable your team to do the one thing they really want – complete their work.
I conducted the first “A Better Workday” survey in 2020 to gain a deeper understanding of how we can improve the workday for our teams, and ourselves. Seventy people in different roles and global locations participated, and the results were fascinating in their simplicity.
People want to be able to get their work done and believe that being more considerate and helpful is the key to a better workday for everyone.
Do you know what time of the day is best for you to tackle the most important tasks? Is it the same for your team? Within the typical business hours of 9-5, the majority of survey respondents said they were most productive between 09.00 am and 12.00 noon, with 10.00 am being the most popular hour for getting things done.
Are you using Slack, or a similar tool, to keep in touch with teammates and other people you work with? These tools are implemented to improve communication and productivity in the workplace. So how come we often find ourselves spending more time slacking than working, and still can’t find what we are looking for? Rather than point the finger at the technology, we can look at our own behaviours and turn Slack from something that distracts us into a tool that supports our workday.
What would you do if you had a half-day off from work? A recent study of over 3 million people found that we are working, on average, 1 hour longer each day. The result is that many of us are spending 5 hours, or over half a work-day, every week working when we didn’t plan to. There are many reasons why the workday can spill over into the evening or weekends. One of the most effective ways to address the problem is by planning your week. A weekly planner will help reclaim your time and improve your work-life balance.
If you are feeling lonely at work, you are not alone. One in five people reported feeling lonely at work on a typical day in the UK, and the most recent EY Belonging Barometer study found that 80% of people globally said they feel or felt lonely at work.
A To-Do List is a list of everything you need to do and is an excellent way of getting all those tasks out of your head and on to paper. The problem is that we always start a To-Do List with good intentions, but it often doesn’t take long for it to change from being a productivity tool to a cause of procrastination, confusion or even stress.
Have you ever felt overwhelmed with tasks at work but didn’t know how to decline additional responsibilities? You’re not alone. Saying no in a professional setting often feels counterintuitive. After all, teamwork and collaboration are usually at the core of a company’s values.