The month of June is known for a lot of things.
It’s the first month when summer begins, it enjoys having the longest day of the year, and it’s also when a lot of schools and even career colleges might wind down until the fall.
At CTS Canadian Career College, every June also marks our Employee Wellbeing Month!
Lasting from the start of the month until the end, we’ll be focusing on all the different things that can help us (both those working here at CTS and elsewhere) take better stock of their health and wellness along with their work/life balance. You’ll be able to find posts all month long on our social media channels (such as Facebook) as well as some longer content pieces right here on our blog.
Employee Wellbeing Week 1 – Organization & Smarter Work Practices
This week, as we kick off our month of health and wellbeing, as our topic of focus suggests, is all about adjusting the ways we work and keep ourselves organized. By looking at our day-to-day work routine, there’s often little things that can make a big difference in both our energy and output.
The reason why we want to focus on the little things is that, while it might not always be obvious, they do add up! So realistically, anything we can do to prevent burnout, boost creativity, and general satisfaction with what we produce is always a big win for our mental and emotional wellbeing at the workplace.
That said, we’ve put together a list of tips and suggestions that might help us make small but effective changes to our daily routines at the office and elsewhere.
Let’s get started!
6 Tips for Improving Our Daily Work Routines
1. Ask for help! This might seem obvious to those of us who regularly work in a team, but at the same time many of us probably have a tendency to want to get things done on our own terms. Sometimes, however, that leads to us spinning our wheels or wanting to smack our heads against the keyboard when we hit a problem we can’t easily solve.
Asking a colleague for help or suggestions or their opinion on a problem is sometimes the quickest way to resolve it. Maybe there’s something simple we missed – like a keyboard shortcut, a trick, or something else that they know about and would love to share!
2. Try booking focused times in advance. Ever have those days where you’ve got 1-2 things on your todo list, but you keep getting pulled away by calls or other odds and ends? Not getting to your priorities can sometimes be a big source of workplace frustration!
One way of helping you carve out the space the things you need to work on is to block out times in your calendar in advance where you can use an hour or two to work on whatever you need. If your colleagues are considerate, they won’t try to bring you into meetings when you already have something marked “busy” or even better “meeting” when you need to plug in.
3. Take mini wellness pauses. When work is busy, it can be pretty easy to keep doing the same thing for hours on end (like sitting hunched over in front of our monitors) without a break. Naturally, spending our days like that doesn’t do us any favours, which is why countless experts recommend taking little pauses.
They don’t have to be anything major, and a lot of them you can do even at your desk. Consider mixing into your routine little things throughout your workday like squared breathing, resting your eyes, doing light stretches, or even just standing up. You’ll probably need to remind yourself at first, but eventually they’ll become second nature!
4. Practice consistent hydration. Staying hydrated is key at all times – and not just if we’re working outside. It helps keep us focused and feeling well-regulated. However, it’s generally recommended that we drink about 8-10 glasses of water a day and let’s be honest, not many of us consistently drink as much water per day as we should.
Fortunately, we’re also the kinds of people who if we have a cup of water next to us we’ll probably drink it without even realizing. A good change to the routine would be to carry around a large water bottle or thermos with you, fill it with cold water, and just have it beside you, ready to be sipped at any point in the day.
5. Prioritizing tasks by hand or with the help of AI. AI tools like ChatGPT can do a lot of things well and a lot of things, well, not so well. But one thing they seem to be consistently good at is helping organize a whole bunch of ideas or tasks into something that’s easier to get through.
The next time you’re feeling overwhelmed by a hundred little tasks, or ideas, or other items, try this: jot them all down into a document and then ask your AI assistant for help organizing. You could ask to group similar tasks, prioritize by importance, or even have a dialogue with the chat bot to help you think through them.
6. Brainstorm with AI. AI tools can be great assistants, especially if we consider them as the equivalents of eager coworkers or interns. One thing they do well is come up with a whole ton of ideas on just about any topic.
The next time you’re trying to generate ideas for a big list, or fill in some thoughts around a bullet point, try asking an AI tool for help. Not every idea they generate is gold, but you might be amazed at how many were things you knew about or might have considered but just couldn’t remember at the moment.
There you have it! Those are 6 tips for better wellbeing, less frustration, and hopefully for keeping burnouts at a distance.
Do you have any ideas or suggestions of your own? Be sure to head over to our discussion on the CTS Facebook page and let us know what else you do to keep yourself focused and feeling well at work!