A friend of mine sent links to a couple of articles addressing aspects of productivity in the workplace. The bottom line? Sit less and sleep more.
Sit Less
I pat myself on the back because I exercise 4-6 days a week. Some days are low intensity (golf) and others leave me feeling like I need an ambulance (tennis, running, playing at the beach with the dog, etc.). I remind myself that most people don’t move as much as I do and that makes me feel good … until I read an article from Runners World.
Basically, I’m a ‘Spud on the Run’. I sit for hours and hours a day in the office, car, and then on the couch. All of that sitting decreases circulation and metabolism so dramatically that exercise cannot counteract it. Ick!
On top of everything else, “A 2013 survey of nearly 30,000 women found that those who sat nine or more hours a day were more likely to be depressed and those who sat fewer than six hours a day”. The information age has effectively chained us to our desks and is slowly killing us. But at least we are dying in an air-conditioned room.
I think I mentioned in a previous post that my company purchases desk attachments that allow users to stand up or sit down whenever they choose. I plan on using the ‘Stand Up’ feature a little more in the future.
Sleep More
Now, it is time to sleep more. YES! I’m all for any research that encourages me to sleep more. I think I was supposed to be a cat instead of a person because I could literally nap my entire weekend away if I didn’t have responsibilities.
The main take away from the Forbes article is that losing four hours of sleep is comparable to drinking a six pack of beer when it comes to cognitive impairment. SNAP! Isn’t that horrible? Cognitive impairment without the fuzzy buzz associate it with alcohol. Let’s dig a little deeper.
That means all those new parents who drag them selves into work and make decisions about a company strategy are doing so under the influence of “no sleep”. Doctors routinely operate with very little sleep. People working two jobs or those whose shift changes from days tonight’s in the back again are “adulting” with known cognitive impairments.
We should all go back to kindergarten where we take a little siesta after lunch. Could you imagine how productive and say we would be is a community?
What are some of the health life hacks you use to be more productive?