How to Stay Productive and Beat the Workday Blues [INFOGRAPHIC]

Let’s face it: more often than we care to admit, each of us is faced with a nightmarish day at work. Quite simply, you have too much to do in too little time; you’re already exhausted from weeks of hard work; and you’re probably going to end up in the office until long after dark.

There’s only one way to deal with such a day, and that is to prepare in advance. Whether you know the day’s coming up and you can plan the day ahead, or you open your inbox in the morning to a nasty surprise, if you have the whole day smartly scheduled before you begin then you can make your limited energy stretch a lot further.

So what should go into this schedule?

  • Make a list of all the tasks you need to achieve that day, and mark out which ones are most important and most difficult. These are the tasks you should do first, while your energy is still fresh.
  • Schedule in some regular breaks. They can feel counter-productive when you have so much to do, but this is not the case: there is evidence that even a thirty-second breather can improve your productivity.

Steal five minutes with every fifty minutes that passes.

Plan in advance what you will do with that five minutes – it could be doing some stretches, moving to a café to work for a while, making some coffee, or simply stepping outside to enjoy some fresh air.

The important thing is to give your eyes a rest and your body a stretch – and to get some fresh air and a change of scene if there’s time. Check out this new infographic and learn some great tips about how to keep going when your day gets tough.

infographic

Image courtesy of http://www.microsofttraining.net

Presto! You have a plan for the day. Keep to it, and the quality of your work will improve. Armed with a good plan, what can go wrong?