WELLBEING LAUREN PARSONS
wellbeing and performance By Lauren Parsons
Wellbeing expert, Lauren Parsons, looks at how we can work together to enhance our sense of satisfaction with work, home and life.
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icture yourself, returning home after a productive day at work, having completed all of your most pressing tasks, having great energy throughout the day and feeling connected and engaged as part of your wider team. Imagine being home in time to see your kids play sport, cook with your partner or just to relax in your favourite chair, feeling satisfied about the day. Sadly, this isn’t the reality for many workers who, instead, feel constantly busy, yet go home feeling they haven’t achieved everything they wanted to. Finish times creep later and later, in an attempt to get ahead, but somehow it never seems to make a difference. Meanwhile, families suffer and work–life balance is a constant struggle. Research shows that the average employee performs only 2.8 hours of productive work each day. Imagine if you could create a workplace culture that supports staff to increase that number so they can be super efficient 14
HUMAN RESOURCES
SUMMER 2019
and effective and able to head home and switch off, satisfied with the value they’ve delivered in the day. If you want to improve your own productivity as well as that of your team – and at the same time improve work–life balance – you need to create a workplace culture that empowers people to work in sync with their ultradian rhythms. When you want to be more productive, it’s really a case of enhancing the way you use your energy and effort throughout the day. By structuring the day in blocks of time, synchronising breaks and ‘golden hours’ as an organisation and empowering staff to work with their body’s natural rhythm, you can create huge efficiencies and ensure staff thrive.
Ultradian rhythms
Ultradian rhythms are your body’s natural energy cycles, which rise and fall regularly throughout the day. ‘Ultra’ meaning many and ‘dian’ meaning day, these cycles overlap your circadian rhythm with regular 90-minute upswings followed by a 20-minute downswings. During the upswing, you can engage in focused, mental activities, after which time your body and brain need a short recovery break to recharge.
Similar to the way your sleep cycle consists of several 90-minute periods that take you through the five stages of sleep, ultradian rhythms take you through peak moments of productivity and necessary moments of rest. The 20-minute downswing is, surprisingly, the most important aspect of your ultradian rhythm. This is the time when your body needs to take an ultradian break to recharge ready for the next upswing. The challenge, however, is that when we have an important task to complete, it is tempting to keep going and ‘work harder’. But this is actually counterproductive.
An ultradian break should consist of activities that relieve your stress and relax the mind. When you notice the signs that your body and brain need a break – for example, you feel sluggish, unfocused, easily distracted, tired, hungry, thirsty or uncreative – you can choose to ignore the signals and push through. Your body will then respond by treating this as an emergency situation because, from its point of view, if you’re not listening to the clear cues it’s sending, perhaps this is a life or death situation.
