Improve Your productivity

Improve your productivity to boost your career. Probably you work many hours, arrive home tired and consider that after a day of work you deserve to relax. Then you realize it is 02:00 AM and you are only going to have 5 hours of sleep. The next day you are tired, you do not eat breakfast or you eat the first thing you have within your reach and you survive on coffee or energy drinks. You know perfectly well that this scenario is unsustainable, but you don’t know how to correct it If your case is similar or has some similarities, let us fix that situation, in this article I am going to teach you how to repair your work routine and rhythm of life with the aim of not only being more productive at work, but also improving your quality of life and thus enjoy the process.

We live in time when the majority never rests, many times the pressure to obtain better results at work leaves many companies with employees suffering from BURNOUT or with chronic stress, discontent and also being less productive in all areas of life. Nobody wins in this scenario. In nature, even worker ants rest on average 70% of the time they are awake. If we are going to work most of the rest of our lives, it is absolutely necessary that we have good physical and mental health so as not to end up hating our work. To understand if work is negatively affecting our lives, we can ask ourselves 8 key questions that will help us identify the problem:

1. Do you wake up tired, without energy, have to push yourself to work and have a hard time start?

2. Does your patience decrease with the months?

3. Are you disappointed in the work and don’t complete your tasks on time?

4. Have you experienced distractions in sleeping or eating that may be related to your work?

5. Do you have headaches without purpose?

6. Are you became a more cynical person?

7. Do you consider that you have low energy levels?

If you answered yes to two or more questions mentioned above, it is time to repair ourselves, you do not have to feel bad, quite the opposite, because from now on you will understand what is happening to you and things can start to go better, you will have a better mood, higher productivity, your immune system will be strengthened and you will begin to enjoy your work again.

Although it may not seem like it, blood glucose controls many processes that have to do with your productivity, mood, and health. Blood glucose is the main mechanism that will determine your alertness and concentration levels, it also affects your mood.

When we have low blood sugar levels we can first have a loss of our cognitive abilities, hindering our ability to concentrate and worsening our mood, irritability or anxiety, this having a direct impact on our productivity. But the key is balance. In fact, if we eat a sweet to bring sugar up fast, then we will experience a drop sugar levels again. Many people prepare a coffee with sugar and condensed milk or a sweet at the moment, but trying to raise glucose levels quickly is not the solution, this only causes a very large release of insulin that will bring about a sudden drop, making us feel tired. The key is to have a proper diet that allows us to have stable blood sugar levels. For this, it is recommended to start the day with a balanced breakfast, which provides us with slow-digesting carbohydrates, also proteins, vitamins, minerals and a source of healthy fats. Having a proper diet during the day will not only make you feel good physically, it also has direct improvements in our concentration, energy levels throughout the day and productivity. Hormones such as CORTISOL or ADRENALINE can also cause these alterations. When we are subjected to high levels of stress in our daily lives, we secrete cortisol and adrenaline, causing sudden spikes and drops in our blood sugar levels and directly affecting our mood, concentration, ability to make decisions and productivity.

Improve your productivity to boost your career.Most of us experience lack of the necessary number of hours of sleep and, on average, we sleep much less than we need. LAck of sleep has many negative effects on us than simply feeling tired in the morning when the alarm clock rings, it also makes us feel irritable, depressed, anxious, makes difficult to concentrate, worsens memory, negatively affects decision-making and makes us impulsive and less rational. If the workers of a company do not rest well, they suffer a great negative impact on their productivity, in addition, this picture of irritability, fatigue and frustration also affects our interpersonal relationships, it affects to the performance of our team. Sleep and rest are also related to blood glucose, poor rest brings with it changes in blood sugar levels, generating the problems that we discussed at the beginning of the article. People who sleep better have stable blood sugar levels throughout the day, this helps them feel more satisfied and makes it easier for them to practice healthy diet, therefore, there is a correlation between sleep disorders and the weight gain of the population. Deep sleep induce regeneration of our neurons. Improving neural makes it easier to change habits and support various types of memory for learn new things. To improve your sleep we have prepared an entire article that we will share later, in the meantime, you can improve your rest by following these tips:

We are loosing memory. For previous generations memorizing things was essential. People needed to memorize the addresses of the people they had to visit, their phone numbers, dates of birthdays, etc. Our ancestors in the Paleolith had to remember the location of bushes with edible fruits or they would starve, “memorize or die´´. Today most people have lost the habit of training their memory, we can take a photo, schedule a contact, search for an address on internet and social networks notify us the birthday of our friends and family. We can improve our memory in different ways, later on we dedicate a specific article – how to improve our memory and how to make ourselves smarter. It will include:

1. Types of foods and natural substances help us to be smarter

2. How can we improve our memory by hacking our brain

3. Types of food that are toxic to our brain

4. And other strategies to improve memory

Meanwhile, there are two tools that we can use and that have been shown to have a very positive effect on improving our memory and cognitive processes. The first one is the exercise – necessary to improve our ability to concentrate. Second one is a sleep. It is very difficult to increase the ability to concentration and retain memory if we experience lack of sleep. Apart from everything we have mentioned above, during sleep our brain cleaning itself of toxic substances that are produced daily.

Companies spend billions of dollars every year to design ergonomic products. Let’s take an example of how we sit. When we sit for a long time, we increase the pressure on the discs of the spine, particularly in the lower back, and the more we lean forward, the more pressure we put on our vertebrae. In addition, sitting for many hours increases the temperature of the pelvic area, decreasing testosterone levels in men, as well as their fertility, sperm count and increases the risk of the appearance of certain diseases. There are chairs that have been specially designed to solve this problem, but in most companies they are not available in offices. During your work try to walk a little for some time or do some exercise such as squats, push-ups or stretches, particularly in the areas that are compressed when sitting, such as the hips and lower back. When you work with computer, emember to place the screen at eye level or above, because it helps you not only to not overload our cervials with more weight due to the tilt of the head forward, but also keeps us more attentive due to the position of our eyes and eyelids.

Biohacking is the set of actions that an individual carries out through a series of techniques and tools to improve body and mind health. We are going to apply 3 improvements that we can put into practice starting today and that have a GREAT IMPACT on the performance and productivity:

1. AIR QUALITY

2. LIGHTING

3. ENVIRONMENT

AIR: On average, indoor air quality is 2-5 times worse than outside. This directly affects our performance, a polluted air negatively affects the metabolism of our brain, leading to worse cognitive and attention abilities. But it also brings greater risk of respiratory, cardiovascular illnesses and, in addition, a greater probability of infecting viruses. We can improve air conditions by maintaining the appropriate humidity and temperature levels and by using air filter. Breathing by mouths cause loosing hydration faster. Incorrect brathing affects vasodilation of the arteries that we have in the frontal lobe of the brain, changing the attention span. Improving indoor air quality will increase our and our team productivity.

LIGHTING: Working near a natural light sources allows us to keep our circandian cycle in tune and helps to regulate biorhytm. This effect can also be enhanced with lights which imitate the sun.

ENVIROMENT: What can we change in our office? Add more green colour, which affect on brain by decreasing anxiety levels. If we add some plants in our offices we improve our mood at work, but also the quality of the air we breathe. Better oxygenation and mood result in better performance and productivity.