7 Elements to Make your Work-Life simple — Maintaining your Mind space, People space, Physical Space & More!
Your life, your career, and business can be incredibly simple if you wish it to be!
Whether you are working from your office or working from home, the reason why your mind feels like a mess is because you haven’t kept defined boundaries, a schedule, or removed the mess from your physical space, people space, and mind space. Lack of clarity in your mind translates into a lack of clarity in your career or business and in interactions with your team, clients, and others in your network.
To keep it simple, let’s examine what you need to do.
First, declutter your physical space. Look around your bedroom/ home/office space and see if it looks like a mess. Ask yourself, if this is making you feel like a mess?
If it is looking like a mess, you might want to get it back in order. Forget about good Feng Shui, just sitting in a clean room with clean air can be super liberating and can get your creative juices flowing.
You could always read through books on decluttering. But I like to keep it simple.
To start with clean what you can see on the outside. Don’t make it a marathon dump session. Instead, clean out a little bit every day starting with the outside and then cleaning out the inside bit by bit. When you do it in small bite-sized chunks you will feel a sense of relief as the energy starts to shift.
As you declutter and clean your physical space, you will also feel it is impacting your mind space positively. To give it an added boost, you can get an aroma diffuser and use water with a few drops of lavender oil or lemongrass to keep the space smelling nice and invigorating.
Second, now look at your people space. Who are the people you are spending time with? Is their presence or thought process pulling you up or pulling you down? Is it something that supports your growth or inhibits your growth?
As a thumb rule, anyone who pulls you down is not someone you want to spend your time with because it saps you of energy that you could put to productive use. You want to add as many people who are pulling you up. They may not be doing anything special for you but just their presence or a conversation with them is enough to set you in the right direction or path or make you feel good.
Again, there will be people who pull up your energy but can you spend all your time with them? In other words, you will need to be disciplined about spending time with them as well because you need to prioritize work.
There will be people who pull your energy down and you have to work with them. In that case, prioritize your work and talk to them only on a needs basis and limit your time with them but don’t avoid them completely because that may not be possible. Protect your energy through mental and emotional distancing with such people.
There will be people you absolutely have to serve through your work. Since you would have multiple people you need to serve, you need to set the context upfront and connect with them at scheduled times to be able to deliver your best value to them. If you are serving all the people in your network at the same time for different work deliverables, you will not be able to add value to them. If you allocate time to each, you will be able to give your 100 % to each and give them what they need. This is in a situation where each client has a different need.
Third, now look at your gadget/communication space. How many gadgets do you have? How many phone calls do you get? How many whats app messages do you get? How many emails do you get? How many of these are not adding value to you? Is answering too many phone calls pulling you down? Are many WhatsApp messages frivolous and not connected to your work?
Make this assessment and make a conscious decision to keep your phone away from you unless and until you have scheduled meetings that you need to address. Keep WhatsApp notifications on mutes. Check out social media once or twice a day for 5 to 10 minutes to fulfill your need to relax or do your scheduled posts but don’t be there the whole day.
Fourth, now look at your movement space. Are you rooted to your chair the whole day? Do you take short breaks between work to get some movement or stretch? This may sound strange but people are more productive when they do work in short bursts take short breaks and then move from one deliverable to the next.
A short burst doesn’t mean working for 10 mins and then taking a break for 20 mins and justifying it by saying both were short bursts. A work short burst could be anywhere between 30 mins to an hour. A break burst would be around 5 to 10 mins to get movement, breathe, and then get back to work. This helps with blood flow and prevents brain fog. The movement you get could be a walk around the corridor or doing jumping jacks on the spot if you don’t have space to walk, and simple stretches.
Also, budget sometime in the day to exercise. If you are not someone who is too fond of exercise or you have a hectic work schedule, try to at least brisk walk 15 to 30 mins a day. This will go a long way in clearing your mind space.
Fifth, start your day by drinking lots of water and stay hydrated during the day. Water has the property of calming you down, cleanses your system, and helps you think straight by lending your body and brain the oxygen it needs to perform. So keep a bottle of water next to you and keep sipping a little through the day.
Sixth, get some breathing space. Most of us tend to get so work focussed that we forget to breathe. As a part of your movement breaks, you can also spend some time to shut your eyes and focus on inhaling slowly and then exhaling slowly to let out any tensions and worries. While you are working you may also wish to keep some music on at a low volume in the background to keep you energized and focussed. This may help you focus more. However, if it distracts you — you can opt-out of this or play around with instrumental music.
Seventh, claim your mind space back. You are running like a headless chicken because you are distracted by too many things, and need to build your focus back on your key tasks and keep your eyes on the ball to produce results. So claiming your mind space back is the most important of all.
Having said that each of the above contributes to clearing your mind space. Your physical space declutter, managing your people space better and drawing boundaries, setting a discipline around your communication space, getting the oxygen that fuels your brain through exercise, movement breaks, pausing to breathe, and drinking water will each contribute to clearing your mind space.
But this may not be enough.
You may need to do more than just this and spend some time in a day to claim your personal space and get your ‘Me Time’, and meditate. For more information on how to clear your mind space, you may want to read the tips I have shared in my article on: “When does staying positive NOT work & how to make it work?”
While making your life simple is about getting back to the basics, it’s not enough for you to say I know this, and move on. Knowledge isn’t enough. Your true transformation will come through taking action. So start with keeping a daily checklist that will serve as a reminder to you to do each of these actions.
I wish more success to each Leader, each Team Member, each Organization, and each Business. Keep striving! Keep evolving! Keep shining!
If you resonated with this, please share this with the person who you feel needs to read or hear this the most.
Cheers,
Namrata Vishwanath
If you are a Corporate/Business Leader or Executive and would like to learn how to build your career, teams, and business through building a leadership mindset and skills, please join the Leader by Design Hub & click on the link for more information: https://linktr.ee/namratavishwanath