12 Oct These 12-Minute Reflection Exercises Could Nearly Double Your Productivity And Happiness
via Forbes by Mark Murphy
Getting a hard-charging leader to pause, breathe and reflect for even a few minutes can be like trying to calm a toddler on a sugar-high. But as you’ll see, if you do two very specific types of reflecting exercises, you could see huge boosts to your productivity and your happiness.
Tens of thousands have taken the free online test “How Do Your Time Management Skills Stack Up?” And one of the discoveries we’ve made from the data is that about two-thirds of people check their email immediately upon waking up. That’s probably not surprising, as so many of us sleep with our phones next to the bed, but it is problematic.
What if, instead of reaching for our phone, we grabbed our morning coffee, cleared our head and made a plan specifying exactly what we needed to achieve that day to make it a successful day? The data says that we’d be far happier and more productive if we took that simple reflecting step instead of checking email.
Only 47% of people who begin their days by checking email say they often leave work feeling like “today was a really successful day.” And If the first thing you do in the morning is check your email, you’re about 82% more likely to have over half your time wasted at work.
But 68% of people who begin their day by developing a plan say they often leave work feeling like “today was a really successful day.” That means that you’re about 45% more likely to leave work feeling like “today was a really successful day” if your start your day by reflecting and planning rather than checking email.
And it’s not just the beginning of the day where pausing and reflecting delivers huge results. A tech-support outsourcing firm assessed people graduating from their training program. One group of trainees completed the training and started taking tech-support calls for a full eight hours a day.
A second group spent seven-plus hours taking calls but then were also given 15 minutes at the end of the day to pause and reflect on what they had learned. When both groups were tested a month later, those who had 15 minutes each day to pause and reflect scored 40% higher than those who worked straight through the day. In other words, pausing and reflecting made people smarter and more effective at their job.
How can you implement these lessons to increase your own productivity and happiness? I’m going to detail two reflection exercises that you can use, and each one takes about 12-minutes. One is done at the beginning of the day and the other is done at the end…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE
#happiness #happy #happier #productivity #success