Living a healthier lifestyle is all the rage nowadays. Special diets and foods, exercise regimes, cleanses — many people have tried one thing or another to detoxify our bodies and improve our health and wellness. When we”detox” our bodies, we purge them of unhealthy inputs and supply our systems with healthy foods and nutrients to repair any damage. The very same principles can be applied to other regions of our lives, such as our families and our work environments. The concept is the same: eliminate or reduce the unhealthy aspects and boost the things which sustain us. Let us explore how that may look in our office… Surroundings Look around you in what you find every day while you’re working. What drains your energy or irritates you? What are you putting up with? Maybe your desk is uneasy, the light isn’t conducive to work, the color on the wall makes you want to puke, the pipes ping annoyingly, or your desk is totally disorganized. These are the things that will need to be purged, or minimized.
Take five minutes and write down everything that does not feel like it feeds your motivation and energy. Pick three things which you could do something about, and commit to addressing them in another 3 days. By way of instance, hang a poster or painting to cover up that wall (or paint it, if your office permits ), get a desk lamp on your way home from work, get noise-canceling headphones to drown out the pinging pipes, rearrange your desk so that it works for you, or program a few hours to clean the clutter. Now that you have eliminated some of those”toxins” it is time to refortify your environment. Most organized? Most”in the stream? Maybe music does it for you or silence. Maybe the noise of water, a soft shade of green, or having plants nearby. Take another five minutes and write down at least five ideas for things you could increase your surroundings that would improve your productivity and enjoyment of your environment. Commit to yourself to set up at least three of those ideas within the next week.
Relationships The people we interact with each day may also have a major effect on the enjoyment of work, our ability to remain healthy and positive, and our effectiveness. So now it’s time to evaluate the strength and nature of our professional relationships and communications. We will need to comprehend which relationships are healthy and strong, which require strengthening, and that is detrimental to our well-being. Produce four columns next to the titles. Systems Let us now explore the best way to do things. Are there areas of your job where you twist your wheels or reinvent the wheel? By way of example, once you’re putting together the monthly report, do you think to yourself each time”why does this take a lot of the time? What effect does that have on the way you feel about that job or obligation? Find one thing that could be done better, more efficiently, faster, or with less strain. Ask yourself what you would want to do or have to be able to make it work. Then put it in position or ask for what you require.
Streamlining your workflow will be an additional way to improve your energy and motivation, and also make you more productive. Of course, it’s also important to recognize there are things we have control over, and people that we do not. Change what you are able to minimize the negative effects of the ones you can not, and concentrate on giving yourself with as healthy a workplace as possible. Do assume nothing can be done; request it, or get creative about how it can be altered for the better. We can make that commitment to ourselves, just as we would if our own body was desperately sick. The fantastic news is that we are able to leave a dangerously poisonous work environment, even though we can not leave a body that has too many toxins. And when a place is simply too toxic, sometimes we owe it to ourselves to get out of such environments until they start to have a negative health effect. You are well on your way to detoxing your work environment! Can you feel better yet? If you would like help deciding what should go, what could be tweaked to work, and can remain to get a healthy work environment, contact me? These are problems I deal with every day with my clients.
