This article has been updated to mark the Mental Health Ireland awareness campaign in October 2024.
A recording of Moira’s Mind Fitness webinar from National Workplace Wellbeing Day can be viewed here: Mind Fitness Tips Webinar
In today’s fast-paced work environment, constant deadlines, requests and distractions can be overwhelming. If we get stressed about our workload, our ability to think clearly reduces. Then it is hard to make the right decisions about what work to do. So we don’t make progress. And low productivity then leads to further stress and anxiety. So it is a great idea to have some techniques you can use to stay calm and clear when you face challenges during the workday. Some Mind Fitness Tips for Productivity and Wellbeing.
Why Mind Fitness?
If we consider Wellbeing we can vary simply look at two aspects: 1) Physical Wellbeing (exercise, diet, sleep, etc.) and 2) Mental Wellbeing (focus, concentration, anxiety, coping, resilience).
Some of those ‘Mind’ factors help us get our job done (focus, concentration) and others stop us getting our job done (anxiety and stress).
This is particularly relevant when we face Challenges and Setbacks. We want to be able to reset and rebalance our minds so that we can move forward in any situation. And make the right decisions during the working day.
1) Dealing with Challenges and Setbacks
When a setback occurs in work many things can happen:
- We are thrown off course
- Our plans go out the window
- We get stressed
- We feel anxiety
Lets think about what is happening in our mind. Our emotions are high so our logical thinking diminishes. At a time when we need to problem solve, figure out what to do next and make decisions our brain goes into fight or flight mode! And that’s why we sometimes make wrong decisions, wrong conclusions, get upset, don’t move forward or react in away that we wished we didn’t.
So we want to get back to a calm brain as soon as possible. And here are some ideas to help you do that. Firstly start to expect the unexpected. Things won’t always be plain sailing so try not to let a challenge or setback have such an impact on you. We can even do some Risk Management in advance and consider what could happen. And often this helps us avoid it happening at all.
Another tip is to “have a limited time for disappointment”! By this I mean, don’t get stuck in what happened or why. Park the why (to return to when the crisis is over) and start thinking about how to move forward.
Uncertainty increases out emotions so
2) Resetting and Rebalancing your Mind
A great way to reset your mind is to flip the narrative. When you face a challenge you can respond in one of two ways: 1) I can let this ruin my day/pull me off track or 2) I can learn from it, move forward and still get something from my day. Ask yourself, who can I speak to? Who can help me? Who do I need to inform? Then work through what we can do and what we know. This instantly moves your brain out of the emotional catastrophic mode into a clam forward thinking mode.
Taking action helps the brain return to a calmer state, because it is now focusing on the action. Also the anxiety reduces as we start to feel less worried as we work towards fixing the issue. We have a 60-Second Rest template available in the Resources section to help work through this reset. You can download a free copy here to try out.
3) Moving Forward in Any Situation
So now we can move forward with a calmer mind. Concentrate on what you can control rather than what you can’t control. Assess this, decide some next steps and start to work on ideas and solutions. A great tip is to focus on being “curious not furious” when something goes wrong. Here is a step-by-step approach to help you move forward:
- Reframe into an achievable goal
- Break the large goal down to smaller tasks
- Take action
- Make small progress
This calms the mind and builds momentum. Once you and others take that first action, the momentum builds and you can keep making progress. Your logical brain will help you work things out.
Mind Fitness Tips for Productivity and Wellbeing
In summary, these Mind Fitness Tips for Productivity and Wellbeing can help you to: 1) calm the mind, 2) return to logical thinking and 3) take action. Bets of luck, let me know what works for you!
In-House Mind Fitness Talks
If you would like to include a Mind Fitness Talk in your Wellbeing Programme, contact Moira here. She also speaks on a range of other topics that promote Employee Wellbeing. You can see the full list of Motivational Talks here.
Employee Wellbeing Programme
We designed an Employee Wellbeing Programme so that organisations can help their employees boost their wellbeing with practical tips. This programme also gives leaders and managers the chance to identify how they can enable productivity and wellbeing within their teams.
Moira delivers a series of Wellbeing & Productivity Talks over a period of time. This allows participants time to reflect on their own work life balance. She shares tips and ideas to help people make small practical changes to their lives.
The standard programme includes 3 Employee Wellbeing Talks. These sessions are delivered on a weekly or monthly basis. We provide a menu of topics so that each organisation can customise their own programme.
The programme can also be extended to 6-parts to suit your Employee Wellbeing goals and requirements. For all the details, click here.
Being Productive
Mind Fitness helps mental wellbeing and productivity. And being productive allows people achieve more in their roles, with less stress. People can get their work done in normal work hours and then switch off afterwards. This brings a feeling of satisfaction and helps overall work life balance.
You can read more about the link between Wellbeing and Productivity in our latest blog here.
Check out our full list of Productivity and Wellbeing Training Courses here.
