Ironically, productive work begins with a good rest. Paradox? Hardly that. If you think about it, you’ll see it’s pretty obvious. No matter how fixed or not fixed your working hours are, you can not starve the body of the opportunity to relax and recharge.
In any reliable software development company, there are many requirements for employees, but you still need to take care of your health.
These rules are used by our developers in WebSailors.
First of all. Give the body a full night sleep.
You may seem like a Superman to yourself but believe me: a couple of sleepless nights a month – and you will already notice how your eyes and brain begin to get tired much faster than before.
This effect works in a geometric progression, and coffee and energy only aggravate it, causing addiction to harmful substances.
A whole series of scientific studies have been conducted about how many hours do successful people sleep per day. The norm is 7-8 hours a day, but for a certain period of life, 6 hours will be enough. With this, you need to sleep every day and it is desirable to go to bed at the same time, for example, around 10 pm. in this case, with a large load at work, you can just get up early, for example, at 5 am, and after the morning “rituals” sit down to work.
Secondly. For effective rest, you need to create conditions.
It is impossible to have a good rest just by moving your body to the bed.
We can recommend not drinking alcohol or energy before going to bed, be sure to do light physical exercise, regularly use products with magnesium to avoid sleep disorders, ventilate the room and ensure the temperature in the bedroom is about 20oC, turn off all interfering devices, gadgets and dim the light to a minimum.
Thirdly. Use minutes of rest at work.
Depending on the specifics of your working day, plan at least 3-4 breaks for 15-20 minutes, during which you can move (or better, lie down) on the sofa or chair, cover your eyes and disconnect from work tasks. Completing each break is best done with a couple of physical exercises.
Fourthly. And of course, take care of your eyes.
This rule is mandatory, unless you want to become helpless without glasses and lenses by the age of 35 Do eye exercises and do them 3-4 times a day. This will help you to avoid tired and sore eyes.
Fifth. Focus on the most important actions.
According to Paretto’s law, 20% of the effort produces 80% of the result, and the remaining 20% takes 80% of the effort. Instead of increasing the amount of work, we should focus on the actions that bring the most return, and discard everything else. In other words, deal first with the most important tasks. Stop saying “Yes” to things that take up more resources than good.
At sixth. Stop doing it all yourself and let people help you.
One of the most common mistakes on the way to increasing personal productivity is the desire to control all processes and do everything alone. Meanwhile, such an approach only complicates the system and leads to more and more bureaucracy. The longer the chain of intermediaries between the performer and the decision maker, the more information and valuable time is lost. This situation is reminiscent of a game in a damaged phone.
Seventh. Optimize your life with accurate data.
There are many studies that provide insights into performance optimization. For example, it is known that most people are more easily distracted between noon and 4 p.m. This was the conclusion of Robert Mathock, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.
You can do this kind of research yourself. Just keep a diary and note in it the intervals in which you feel the greatest surge of strength, and vice versa, fatigue and lack of motivation. Experiment with different work schedule formats. Perhaps you work more in the morning or vice versa, in the evening.
And the last tip. Do not strive for perfectionism.
“We noticed that perfectionism is preventing scientists from achieving higher productivity in their research. The more a perfectionist a scientist is, the less effective it will be, ”said psychology professor Simon Sherry, who studied the link between perfectionism and productivity.
