Training Your Brain for the Workplace

Training your brain for the workplace is just as important as making sure your desk stays organised. Here are a few key tips on how to best mentally prepare for each work day.

Here on OPInfo Blog, we’ve already discussed the various ways for How to Stay Organised in Your Office. Whilst getting your paperwork into order and ensuring your desk is free from clutter are both important, it’s just as vital that you are training your brain for when you enter the workplace.

Check out the guidance points below on how you can make sure that you’re mentally prepared to tackle any work day.

Tips for Training Your Brain for the Workplace

Adopt a Consistent Sleeping Pattern

Before you even wake up in the morning and before changing into work attire, the first part of training your brain should begin at the weekend.

Take some time to consider how many hours of sleep you need regularly to operate at your best. Then, when you can determine if you need 6, 7, or 8+ hours (7 is considered the minimum recommended for adults), aim to stick to a time to go to bed by every night and what time you’ll need to wake up.

Experts have helped to prove over the years that restless nights and sleep deprivation can have a negative effect on our thinking and reactions over time. With every hour of sleep lost, our ability to focus on important tasks and use logical thinking decreases.

If you work from home or are working on a part-time basis (or even if your employer is lenient enough to allow it), you could consider scheduling in a power nap in the afternoon to help you re-energize before the end of the work day.

Take Regular Breaks from Tasks

Once you’ve made it into the office (or booted up your laptop for working from home), ensure you take regular breaks from screens and work in general.

This advice is backed up the neuroscientist and author of The Organized Mind, David Levitin. He suggests that workers should make sure to take breaks from work in order to allow the brain to daydream.

He further explains: “One of the biggest things we can do in the workplace is to give ourselves an opportunity to enter that daydreaming mode every couple of hours or so. You do that by reading literature, by listening to music, looking out the window. The best thing is to take a walk in nature.”

Levitin and many other experts’ advice that these break periods are when you are likely to be thinking the most creatively. Above all else, it helps to provide a productivity boost.

Avoid Multitasking

When it’s time to get started with your workload, try to keep one task as a priority and avoid attempting to carry out any other tasks at the same time.

It can be a common perception that multitasking is the best way to complete several tasks, no matter how small or large they are, at the same time. In fact, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Going backwards and forwards between various tasks throughout the work day is more likely to slow your brain down, rather than speed it up. It can have a detrimental impact on judgement and decision-making too.

This is due to placing focus on completing several things at the same time releasing the stress hormone cortisol inside the brain. As a result, the sense of panic and worry that stems from this severely affects the ability to effectively concentrate.

Staying Organised

Along with these tips on training your brain, it’s important to have the items with you to help you stay organised in the workplace too. Our range of Personal Organisers, Notebooks and Repositionable Notes are perfect to help you keep on track with your to-do lists, urgent tasks and prepare any forward planning too.