Set up your Body and Mind in the Best Condition for Work Using 3 Lifestyle Habits

Have you ever wondered why some days we’re unstoppable, capable of achieving long and intense days of work… while on other days, we can’t seem to get a single word down on paper… Said differently: not doing anything productive?

Work is not just about willpower or using the right tools.

In fact, our daily performance is deeply connected to our inner state.

Let’s dig into 3 lifestyle habits that will ease your way into the most difficult days of work and help you reach this sense of accomplishment at the end of the day!

Know your mental state

Emotions have a big impact on our ability to focus on a task.

Robert Plutchik represents emotions as a wheel, containing eight primary emotions: joy, sadness, trust, disgust, fear, anger, surprise and anticipation.

Some research conducted by Harmon-Jones, Price, Gable and Peterson¹, shows that positive and negative emotions affect our motivation. Did you know? This research even concluded that anger, which is considered a negative emotion, can be a vector of motivation!

In any case, it is important to be aware of our mental condition, making the necessary effort to solve (or at least bring an answer to) our current problems, allowing ourselves to maintain a peace of mind and a positive mindset that can be translated to work.

Dress like you would for your marriage

One way to put ourselves in a positive mindset is… dressing!

Clothes reveal our identity and the values we hold. Dressing in an outfit that makes us feel good will give us confidence, an underestimated factor that contributes greatly to the achievement of our work.
It can be the T-shirt that you recently bought and love, the pullover sewn by your grandmother, or a business suit that you find elegant!

For instance, studies show that wearing a formal suit can make a person feel more powerful and confident. This can improve their ability to think in a more abstract, “big-picture” way, which is often used by executives and senior professionals.

On the other hand, dressing casually can promote a more relaxed and comfortable state, which may lead to different benefits, such as enhanced creative thinking and collaboration, in certain environments.

The key is that the intentional choice of clothing acts as a psychological trigger and prepares your mind for the tasks of your day.

Another key factor in improving our ability to perform manual and cognitive tasks is feeling good in our body.

Strenghten your body

Do not underestimate sports!
Regular exercise is a pillar of mental health; practicing a sport reduces stress and teaches us endurance and discipline. These skills will prove to be a great advantage when focusing on what has to be done.

Exercise stimulates both divergent and convergent thinking, the two components of creative thought. A simple walk can often be all it takes to break through a mental block and find new solutions to problems.

Did you know? Regular physical activity has been shown to boost the size of the hippocampus, the part of the brain crucial for learning and memory.

Plus, increasing blood flow and activating certain brain regions with exercise, helps sharpen our focus and lengthen our attention span, making it easier to stay on task and avoid distractions.

Speaking of distractions, in the following article, we dive into 5 key points to eliminate distractions caused by smartphones, as it is one of the major causes of distraction these recent years: 5 Tips to Get Rid of Distractions at Work.

Thank you for reading until the end. Do not hesitate to take a look into the features of our application, as they can help you prioritizing and achieving efficiently your daily tasks when facing a huge amount of work.

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References:

1. Harmon-Jones, E., Price, T. F., Gable, P. A., & Peterson, C. K. (2014). “Approach motivation and its relationship to positive and negative emotions”.