One Day a Week

Work from home is the dream I always wanted and I still support the notion. What I didn’t realise in the middle of lockdown, is that five days a week at home behind a screen was draining my energy. My energy levels got so low, that I fell into a spiral of depression. I’ve written a guide to help others find their optimum based on the approach I followed to get back to my best self.

Energy Management

According to Dr Jacinta Jimanez from the Burnout Fix, we don’t need to worry about time management insomuch as energy management. If you feel regularly unproductive, make a checklist of who and what is draining your energy. She additionally recommends spending time in nature. My last personal suggestion is to prioritise sleep, especially during those long summer days. Here are three ways that I prioritise sleep actively:

1. Set a hard deadline on bed time. It’s 10:30pm for me, intended to fall asleep by 11pm after light reading.
2. Switch off tech 30 minutes before sleep. I often wake up at 2am if I don’t.
3. Forget about all the fancy ways to fall asleep out there. Rest is almost as good as sleep and the extra stress of trying to fall asleep doesn’t help.

Office Hours

I need ‘people’ time and I don’t mean Teams/Meet/Zoom calls.

One day in the office a week is my perfect set-up. When I’m around other productive people, I feel more productive and my personality is geared towards getting connected with new people. Every Tuesday, I head into the Edinburgh WeWork office. This is way one in which I get connected with a community, meet new people and generate a positive spike that peaks my productivity for the week.

The company I work for is based in London, so I’m not actually meeting the people I work with in person every Tuesday, so this approach still works irrespective of who you are with physically.
The last part of the one day a week that stimulates me is meeting with friends in town for lunch. This takes the stress off dinner parties to get connected. Try to find your optimum, it changed my life.

Your Best Start

I promised a guide. Here are some tasks for you to complete, after which you will know what your optimum is:

1. At the end of each work day starting now, write down the number of productive work hours you think you had.
2. Try going in to the office once a week when you’re ready (if you are still fully remote) for one month and continue the productivity measurement exercise.
3. Ask yourself how you feel after that month and take note of the change or lack thereof of productivity hours. Just being happy or getting more useful work done in the same amount of time is a big win.
4. Book out deep work slots in you calendar where you put your phone away and don’t ready any notifications or answer any messages and try get a whole task done in this time.
5. Try some sleep tips that I hinted at in the Energy Management section above.

There you have it, my story and some tips that should help you find optimum productivity.