The past year has brought around a lot of change!
Zest Active Brand Ambassador Shane Finn is your one-stop-shop on how to Win The Day. From practical advice on health and fitness to small changes you can make to improve your life, we highly recommend checking out Shane's Instagram.
Change in our work lives, change in our personal lives and of course change in our social lives too! As Covid-19 started to make its way into our lives last year we needed to pivot & adapt pretty quickly.
Gyms closed, races/events were cancelled all over the globe & we were told to work from home. One of the biggest changes that a huge amount of us faced was a simple change in routine.
Perhaps the commute was eliminated, perhaps the Monday morning meeting is now happening on Zoom & the Friday coffee with colleagues isn’t currently happening.
One thing to note here for the working professional is that a visit to the gym, a morning run or that yoga class after work was a crucial part of their daily routine. It was a part of their day, it was something they did before the commute or something they did with friends after work on a Friday.
So in the new work-from-home era, how do we maintain this important part of our lives?
Routine
Before we settled into a global pandemic I’m sure you had your daily routine going and you were happy with how it worked for you. Everyone is different of course when it comes to how their day works out but we all faced a shift here.
Simply sitting down and planning out your day and week can be a hugely beneficial thing to do. It takes 10 minutes each night but having a structured plan for the next day can give you the focus and direction that you need to win the day!
I speak about winning the day very often on the Pushing Limits Podcast, winning the day is a concept I came up with at a point where I felt a little overwhelmed by the number of things I needed to do. Or rather, what I thought I needed to do.
Instead of worrying or stressing out about what’s to be done down the road, I would focus on winning the day in front of me. The tactic remained simple; give the day the best I could. Repeat it the next day!
A final note on routine & it is a simple one.
Another productivity “hack” I live by is the PowerList concept. I create a list of 5 critical tasks I need to do every day and I get them done no matter what. This ensures I both see & feel progress each day!
Simple but very effective!
Set An Appointment
Right now, as you read this blog post you are possibly in between calls or virtual meetings. These appointments are what we call “non-negotiable,” we need to be there and we need to attend.
What I want you to do is also set some “non-negotiable” meetings with YOURSELF. This action might require a little bit of a mindset shift, set a meeting with yourself to go for a walk or a run or home workout.
This is very important! Not just for your physical fitness but also for your mental performance & health. So we need to look at this from the perspective of making time for yourself too.
I understand it's easier said than done but with a little bit of thought and action, this particular step can be very beneficial to you managing your day during the #WFH era!
Be A Little Bit Selfish & Create Boundaries
Being selfish is something we are often afraid of doing. It’s difficult! But in this current day and age, we are bombarded with buzzing phones, binging emails and a long list of notifications.
Try your best to create a finish time for yourself. If you worked in an office pre-Covid, you would have left in the evening and returned to work the next morning. Some days you work a little later etc., and that’s okay too!
But create some boundaries within your day to keep some control. It will leave you feeling a little less stressed & a little less overwhelmed.
One of the biggest productivity “hacks” I implemented in the last 12 weeks is turning off ALL notifications on my iPhone. It rings if someone rings me, but no binging, no buzzing every minute.
Helps me focus a lot more on what I am doing right now.
There we go. Three useful tips to help you along in the new world of working from home.
The final tip is to keep control of your day. Hold onto that control with dear life!
Head along and check out the Pushing Limits Podcast on iTunes & Spotify!
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- Shane
