Supercharge your performance at work

Whether you’ve just started a new job, or you’ve been in the same one for a long time, there'll be times when you feel lacking in motivation or you’re not achieving your goals. This can have a negative impact on how you feel about yourself, therefore, affecting your wellbeing. Ongoing stress or feelings of inadequacy can leave us feeling tired, anxious and even depressed.

Ways to supercharge your performance

So, what can we do to get our spark back and find the motivation to do better at work?

Listen to music

Many places of work allow their employees to listen to music either in the place of work or through headphones. Research undertaken by the National Centre for Biotechnology Information has demonstrated that instrumental music can improve your attention and increase productivity.

Stay healthy

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that eating healthily and keeping physically fit helps our bodies and minds deal with stress better. There are certain types of foods that can improve our focus and boost our mental energy. Water, fish, seeds, berries and vegetables are great brain foods which will aid concentration.

Get plenty of sleep

Although it might be tempting to get as much sleep as you can, too much sleep can almost be as detrimental to our health as not getting enough sleep. It’s important that we do get quality sleep though, so there are a few measures you can take to help with getting a good night’s sleep:

Make sure your bedroom is dark at night.

• Don’t drink too much before bedtime.
• Don’t watch television or look at a screen for an hour before you go to bed.
• Go to bed at a reasonable time and try to get between 7 and 9 hours sleep a night.

Keep learning

No matter how experienced or knowledgeable you are in your line of work, there is always something new to learn. Many employers will pay for staff training so long as it is beneficial for your job, so consider a course that will add to your skillset and knowledge.

Visualisation

This is a great way to focus and help you achieve your goals at work. Whenever you visualise situations with positive outcomes, you're creating neural pathways in your brain that will help you achieve your goals in the future. Find out more about the impact of visualisation on the brain in this study by the National Centre for Biotechnology Information.

Meditation

Practising meditation daily, either at home or in your lunch break at work, can increase levels of concentration which, in turn, will make us much more productive in the workplace. Meditation can also help us cope better with stressful situations, so we worry less and become happier, therefore improving our working relationships with others.