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Giving your best at work entails more than just taking courses and learning as many skills as possible. It also means paying attention to smaller details and making the necessary adjustments to improve your overall performance.
You don’t need to make drastic changes. Just simple adjustments should do the trick (provided they’re the right ones).
From checking your own lifestyle to performing brain exercises, below are seven easy hacks you can try to achieve peak mental performance at work:
1. Check your lifestyle.
How you live your life affects your productivity at work. So, before anything else, you must make sure that you check whether you’re living a healthy lifestyle.
Focus first on the basics: diet, exercise, and sleep.
Eating healthy foods can keep your mind and body healthy and support better work performance.
You should also make sure that your meals are balanced. It helps to consume foods that have brain-boosting nutrients like:
- Celery
- Bone broth
- Dark chocolate
- Sunflower or pumpkin seeds
- Chia seeds
- Walnuts
- Beets
- Spinach
- Turmeric
Besides your diet, you also need to exercise regularly, especially in the morning.
Jumpstart your body with some low-impact physical activities for about 20 minutes. This helps keep your blood flowing smoothly and improves your focus throughout the day.
Finally, make sure you get enough good-quality sleep to complete the healthy lifestyle trifecta.
This gives your brain time to recover after working hard every day. It also supports all the other performance hacks listed here.
Pro Tip: If you have a sleep disorder, don’t hesitate to ask for help. Getting insomnia treatment in Dubai, along with making some lifestyle changes, can help you establish a healthier sleep routine and become more productive at work.
2. Go to work early.
Heading out to work early is another simple yet effective adjustment you can make to your daily routine. Arrive at work around 15 to 20 minutes before the workday officially begins.
The extra time helps you avoid the stress of rushing through traffic. It also gives you time to get coffee or do other things that help relax your mind before starting the day.
As a bonus, you get plus points with your higher-ups for arriving at work early and always being ready to take on the tasks ahead.
3. Do one task at a time.
Although some think that multitasking is one of the best ways to be more productive, it can actually do the opposite in terms of improving work performance.
You see, when you take on several tasks at the same time, your attention keeps getting redirected to different things. This means you won’t be able to finish anything at all (at least not with the expected output quality).
It’s not humanly possible to do two things simultaneously and still deliver optimal results. Because of this, it is better if you focus on a single task at a time and give it your full attention before moving on to the next. This way, you’ll finish the tasks quicker and with fewer errors.
4. Be organized.
An organized workspace supports an orderly mind. Besides helping you find the items or files more easily, having an organized desk and computer also allows you to stay on top of your tasks more efficiently.
Besides putting everything in place, you must also get rid of things you don’t need or can distract you. Declutter not only your desk but also your file storage, computer desktop, inbox, and mobile phone.
Having a systematic way of keeping files also allows you to streamline your daily tasks, ultimately, making you more productive at work.
5. Exercise your brain with puzzles.
Puzzles can stimulate the brain. Besides, they let you take a break from the heavy mental lifting you do every day.
By doing puzzles regularly, you exercise the creative and analytical sides of your brain – both of which are crucial for your peak performance at work.
Plus, these mind games have the power to reinforce neural connections in the brain and enhance short-term memory. They also trigger a release of dopamine – also known as the “feel-good hormone” – which helps alleviate stress.
6. Set aside time to read.
Besides expanding your knowledge, wisdom, and insight, reading also helps improve your brain’s ability to process information, thereby aiding your quest for better productivity.
This simple act rewires the brain, creating new neural connections, resulting in:
- More ideas and enhanced creativity.
- Better planning, decision-making, and organizational skills.
The mental stimulation you get from reading also ensures brain activity. It also helps reduce your risk of developing Alzheimer’s and dementia.
7. Try the ‘memory palace’ technique.
Considered one of the oldest yet most effective strategies to improve brain power, the “memory palace” technique allows you to remember even the tiniest details more accurately.
Essentially, this entails changing your memories into images and organizing them within a mental location – one that’s most familiar to you. The goal is to build a “memory palace” where you can mentally walk through to look for specific memories whenever necessary.
Achieve Peak Mental Performance/h2>
Your mental capacity directly affects your productivity at work. Work towards achieving peak brain performance and watch your numbers (and your mental well-being) improve tenfold.
Need help managing stress, anger, anxiety, or sleeping disorders to improve at work? Talk to us today about the benefits of neurofeedback training and how it can help you.
Dr. Upasana Gala is the founder and CEO of Evolve Brain Training, a Neurofeedback-centered institute that focuses on using non-invasive brain training techniques to maximize the brain’s true potential.