The focus should not be on the exact amount of time if you can’t control your schedule - as long as you are taking consistent breaks, then you are on the right track! Honor the working hour. Other studies argue that your peak performance window is 90–120 minutes followed by 25 minute reenergizing breaks. Setting a timer to remind yourself to return back to your work after 17 minutes is important too! Be realistic.ĭon’t get hung up on the 52 minutes - this is only one school of thought. If possible, try to do this every 52 minutes.
Without rest, our brains grow more depleted.” - Daniel Goleman, Psychologist Be intentional about scheduling breaks.Ĭreating actual calendar events in your Outlook (or other email system) will allow you to be sure the time is free and will also remind you to walk away from your desk when the event pops up on your screen.
“Top performance requires full focus, and sustaining focused attention consumes energy–more technically, your brain exhausts its fuel, glucose. Here are a few tips to help structure your day with your brain’s energy levels in mind: The results were highest when employees were actually walking away from their computers to take a walk, chat to colleagues about non work-related topics or read a book outside of their cubicle. This allows the brain to re-energize and get ready for the next working block. The most successful time-users were working for a solid 52 minutes, without interruption, and then taking a 17-minute break when they would completely disconnect from their work. They found that the most productive employees did not put in any more hours of work than their peers, but rather, they all had regimented breaks throughout their workday. Using the app DeskTime (an app built to track employee productivity), a study was conducted by the Draugiem Group to determine the differentiating habits between the most and least productive employees. While some of us may be forced into working those long hours and managing large workloads, there is a science-backed way to make those hectic days more worthwhile: Start by breaking it up. The amount of time we are spending at work is not only making all of us exhausted, but it is actually detrimental to our productivity levels on the job.Īdd multitasking to those long hours? The modern workplace’s approach to productivity has created a recipe for disaster.
However, studies show that multitasking and constantly working actually eat away at your productivity and work quality instead of enhancing it.
When we think of productivity, most of us think about putting our noses to the grindstone and juggling as much as possible in as short of an amount of time as possible. Unlock the ritual for insane productivity that flies in the face of traditional thinking.