Working Smart

The Art of Self Soothing

There is so much going on in the world now. It’s hard watching the news, in fact I am more likely to just quickly check a news ap than I am to watch the news in real time. Many people I speak to are unable to watch the news at all because they struggle to think of the...

Interpreting Dreams

In the last of my series on dreaming we look at common images and symbols in dream interpretation. I love working with the unconscious and find dreams fascinating. We can think of them as metaphors for what might be going on in the dreamer’s life and/or the...

Nightmares and Night terrors

It seems difficult for people to talk about their nightmares. Even if the person has told me during their assessment that they suffer from nightmares, I often find people don’t talk about them in any detail until we have been working together for a while. Maybe by...

Types of dreams

Types of Dreams Every dream is as unique as the dreamer, but there are specific types of dreamsthat most commonly find their way into my consulting room. These are daydreams, vivid dreams, recurring dreams, lucid dreams, nightmares and night terrors. This month, I...

Dream Journaling

How To Remember Your Dreams I often work with people who dream frequently and are interested in their dreams. Many suffer from nightmares and night terrors which they remember vividly.  I will be exploring these in a later post. But a lot of people don’t remember...

Dreaming

Photography by Gregory Pappas on UnsplashPsychotherapy and Dreams During an initial consultation with a potential client, I often ask about their dreams. Do they dream regularly? Do they have significant dreams from childhood? Do they have recurring dreams? This is...

Time for a Mindset Spring Clean

March is a hopeful month. Officially the first month of spring with emerging colour, bulbs bravely shooting through the ground and trees starting to sprout buds. A couple of years ago in the UK we had a mini heatwave in March. With the unpredictability of the climate,...

Cyber Bullying

Cyber Bullying When researching this subject, I was shocked to see the number of people who had taken their lives due to cyber bullying and sextortion. Between March 2019 and March 2020 19% or one in five children between the age of 10 and 15 in England and Wales...

Male Influencers

The MeToo movement has been wonderful for women’s rights and furthering awareness of sexual harassment and abuse. I know very few women who haven’t experienced sexual harassment at some point in their life and there is now an ability for women to have a voice, be...

What’s Your Online Persona?

Who Do You Think You Are? How Do You Want To Come Across Online? We all know someone who exaggerates their life online – we see the ‘official’ glitzy positive image they put on social media. For example, posts of holiday snaps look amazing but, when we meet to hear...

Why is it a good idea to think about working smart?

Well, working smart is the healthiest way to work. It’s vital for our mind and body to rest and play as well as work.

Working so many long hours that we don’t have time to recover is not a good long term situation.  Work related stress is becoming increasingly common and if it continues over a prolonged period it can lead to chronic stress, depression or illness.

The good news is that working smart and being productive doesn’t necessarily mean working longer hours.  By having better structure and a plan to focus on what needs to be done we actually end up accomplishing the same amount more quickly.  Consequently as a result, we may choose to get even more done or give ourself some well deserved time off due to being on or ahead of schedule!

Why not take an honest look at how you are spending your time at work

Do you:

  • procrastinate at any given opportunity
  • get distracted by technology
  • get involved in unnecessary chat or gossip
  • find yourself forgetting what you were going to do
  • find yourself daydreaming

These are all really normal ways of distracting ourselves from what we need to do.  So what can we do about it?

Once we have worked out what our own distractions are we are in a good position to do something about them.

Here are some ideas to help us work more efficiently:

  • clear our desk and workspace to help us focus more clearly
  • prioritise our workload
  • chunk our larger tasks down into small achievable tasks
  • set an alarm, for example 50 minutes to concentrate hard then have a 10-minute break
  • give our tasks realistic deadlines and work to them seriously
  • write a list of easy to do small rewards we can give ourselves
  • reward ourselves for each task achieved
  • turn off our notifications whilst concentrating
  • remove our smartphones from our working area whilst we are focussing on a task
  • And finally, tell someone. Research has shown that we are more likely to get a job done if we tell someone we are going to do it and when we are going to do it by. Find a colleague/accountability partner/mentor to report our progress to regularly.

Here’s to a productive week!

Other relevant blogs to read:

How to manage stress

Read my previous blog: What does mothering mean to us?