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21
Mar 2011

Increasing Your Productivity {Remove Distractions with White Noise}

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I am always looking for ways to make the most of my work day. Here are some surprising, but effective tips to increase productivity and efficiency:

  • Prioritize your day – Always jump into the most important tasks first thing in the morning, before checking your email or answering phone calls. This guarantees that the priority tasks get done while you are freshest.
  • Use white noise – Random office noise, completely unrelated to you and your work consumes almost two hours a day for most people. Try out this free white noise generator to see if you could benefit from masking the miscellaneous noise at work.
  • Establish a ‘No-Interruption’ Mode – New studies have found that people distract themselves at work almost as often as they are distracted by other people. Designate a specific period of time to turn off all distractions (such as Facebook, Instant Messenger, Email and even your phone) in order to optimize your focus on the project at hand. At the end of your time, take a short break to check your phone and email, then go back to the ‘No-Interruption’ mode.
  • Take a break – Get up from you chair and walk around. About once an hour, stretch your muscles, look around and breathe deeply. This will help relieve stress, relax your muscles and increase blood flow to your brain.
  • Drink more water – Your brain is about 75% water. Getting even slightly dehydrated can decrease your productivity and energy by up to 20%. As a general rule aim for eight full glasses of water a day.
  • Sit up straight – Good posture one of the most important changes any computer user can make to improve comfort and productivity. The ultimate goal is to maintain a neutral typing posture while using your computer more productively.  Start with a good, ergonomic chair and adjust it to support your body. Move the back rest up or down to find the angle that best fits the curve of your back. Make sure your lower back has enough support, or add portable lumbar support. Lower your chair height so your feet rest firmly on the floor and adjust your arm rests to provide easy elbow and arm movement.
  • Get Organized – Clear off all the clutter on your desk and stop wasting time looking for things. Place the frequently used items, like your phone or stapler, within easy reach. Try using an adjustable keyboard tray to open more space on your desk, and to allow for better typing posture.
  • Upgrade your keyboard – Ergonomic keyboards are designed to help you type faster, more comfortably and more efficiently. Try out several different keyboards to find one that best fits your hands. Give yourself a few weeks to adjust to the new fit and style.

These simple tips can help you make the most of your time. Eliminate distractions by turning off your phone or email, and by adding a personal white noise generator to your work. Increasing your comfort with a well-designed, ergonomic chair or upgrading to an ergonomic keyboard can also help you remain productive all day long.

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29
Oct 2010

Is Multitasking Really Working for You?

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Recently a study came out about multitasking and memory. Turns out that perhaps we can’t multitask as well as we think we can.

“Heavy multitaskers are often extremely confident in their abilities,” says Clifford I. Nass, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. “But there’s evidence that those people are actually worse at multitasking than most people.”

Indeed, last summer Nass and two colleagues published a study that found that self-described multitaskers performed much worse on cognitive and memory tasks that involved distraction than did people who said they preferred to focus on single tasks. Nass says he was surprised at the result: He had expected the multitaskers to perform better on at least some elements of the test. But no. The study was yet another piece of evidence for the unwisdom of multitasking.

If you find yourself struggling to remember things, making mistakes, or having trouble getting tasks done, perhaps you are trying to do too much at once. Instead, put on some white noise to drown out distractions and focus on a single task at a time.

For the rest of you who can’t do that because your job won’t allow it, then try not to do more than seven things at once. Any more than that and you can’t really do it. :)

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28
Jun 2010

Not Getting Enough Sleep Effects Many Areas of Life

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According to a recent survey, “seven out of 10 Americans are getting less than seven hours of sleep on weeknights accumulating a deficit of more than one hour per night based on experts’ recommendations that a full night’s sleep is about eight hours.” This probably comes as no surprise to you. However, the far reaching effects of too little sleep were surprising.

Could lack of sleep be effecting your productivity?

The survey results also showed that

One in five Americans has missed work because of feeling tired. And many of those that do drag themselves in to work after a bad night’s sleep are not very productive – a sleepless night has caused a lack of concentration during an important meeting or conversation for almost half of Americans (47 percent).

The consequences of not being able to concentrate during an important meeting could be potentially devastating. You don’t want to come across as disengaged or uninterested.

Effects on Your Skin

Here are some more surprising results.

  • After a bad night’s sleep, most Americans’ (85 percent) skin suffers – the most common results are dark circles under the eyes (59 percent) and dull (31 percent) or splotchy skin (16 percent).

“Sleep allows your skin time to repair itself from the daily damage done by stress and the environment,” says Dr. Jeanine Downie, certified dermatologist. “When skin does not have adequate time to repair itself, the long term effects can be similar to those of sun exposure.”

I’ve been using sunscreen every day for years now trying to save myself skin cancer (and, I’ll be honest, I’d like to continue to look young and unwrinkled as long as I can.) Perhaps I should start focusing more attention on getting to bed on time.

Are you a Danger on the Road?

Finally, this startling statistic should convince you of your need for a peaceful nights sleep if nothing else does.

One in five Americans has ever fallen asleep while driving and almost half of Americans (48 percent) “drove while drowsy” in the last month.

That doesn’t only affect you. It effects all the drivers around you.

Tips to Get Enough Sleep

Now that you are convinced that sleep is important and that you aren’t getting enough, what can you do to change this? How can you help yourself to get enough sleep?

The Mayo Clinic offers these 10 tips.

10 Tips for Better Sleep

  • Go to bed and get up at about the same time every day, even on the weekends. This helps your body’s natural sleep and awake patterns to stay on track.
  • Don’t eat or drink large amounts before bedtime. If you do need a snack, eat something light.
  • Avoid nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol in the evening. All three can effect the quality of your sleep.
  • Exercise regularly. Its hard to be sleepy if you never do anything.
  • Make your bedroom cool, dark, quiet, and comfortable. Make sure the temperature is comfortable and the room is dark. If you live in Scotland like I do, black out blinds are a must for the summer.  A white noise generator may be of use to you so you don’t hear any ambient noise that will wake you up. (I live on a busy street. I am awakened nightly if I don’t use white noise.)
  • Sleep primarily at night. If you take long naps during the day, then you won’t be tired at night when it is time for bed.
  • Choose a comfortable mattress and pillow. Can’t sleep if you aren’t comfortable. Also, memory foam is wonderful.
  • Start a relaxing bedtime routine. Works with kids and it works with adults. Perhaps you could take a bath or read for a bit before falling asleep.
  • Go to bed when you’re tired and turn out the lights. Stressing about not sleeping doesn’t help a person fall asleep.
  • Use sleeping pills only as a last resort. You don’t want to train your body to need sleeping pills to be able to fall asleep.
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25
Feb 2010

6 Tips to Keep You From Getting Sick

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Cold & Flu Season

I always dread this time of year. Christmas is over, and it feels like forever ago. It seems like it should be spring by now, but alas it isn’t.  A lot of us even still have snow on the ground- it’s pretty unless you can’t get to work or to the store.  To top it off, this is always the worst time of year for illness for my family, which is not surprising because February is the peak of cold and flu season.  In fact, we are still recovering from having the flu last week.

Tips to prevent illness

In light of all the illness going around right now, I thought I’d post some reminders about how to prevent  it so that way you can use your sick days for ‘mental health days’ instead of actual sick days. There aren’t earth shattering revelations—just some helpful reminders.

  1. Wash your hands! My entire family washes their hands as soon as we get home from going anywhere. If you don’t have soap and water handy, then hand sanitizer is also very effective. This is your first defense against getting sick.
  2. Wipe down your work area periodically. According to a study done at the University of Arizona, work stations can contain nearly 400 times as many microbes than bathrooms. (Go ahead and go grab that antibacterial wipe and wipe everything down. We’ll wait for you until you get back.)
  3. Avoid touching your face. This one is obvious. If the germs are on your hands, you don’t want to give them a chance to get into your body through your eyes, mouth or nose.  Plus, nobody likes watching you pick at your face.)
  4. Get enough sleep. I don’t know about you, but when I am tired, not only do I get sick more often, but it is a lot harder to cope with being sick. (Can anyone say, “Whiny?”)    Try to get better sleep- and because I think you’ll like it, a free white noise generator to help you tune out your annoying neighbors or snoring bedmate.
  5. Take your vitamins. A lot of people are running low in the Vitamin D department this time of year. (Fewer hours of sunlight + lots of layers of clothing=vitamin D deficiency.)  Vitamin D deficiencies have been linked to higher rates of cold and flu, so now is the time to supplement since you most likely are not getting enough.
  6. Think Spring! Okay, I don’t actually know if this will help you not get sick, but it will help your mindset. Perhaps put up a nice wallpaper on your computer background to remind you that spring will be here soon.

If you want to help your coworkers remember to also keep the germ spreading behaviors to a minimum, the CDC put out a helpful little poster for that very purpose.

(Please note. We aren’t doctors. Just people with common sense. Always ask your doctor before starting a vitamin supplement.)

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