Lunchtime Playtime

Imagine a playground at work!

 

 

When you were at school the day would be broken up with breaks in the playground where you could talk to friends, play games, have a run and generally let off steam.  In the world of work it’s not so easy to find a chunk of time everyday where you can do your own thing but it maybe possible to dedicate one lunchtime to doing something that will relieve stress and allow you to recharge you batteries instead of eating at your desk, in the staff restaurant or rushing to the bank. 

Making a change to your routine by carving out one hour in the middle of one of your work days to do something different will give you something to look forward to and may yield great benefits in reducing your stress and tension levels  making you feel more able to deal with the demands of work.  Here are 3 suggestions to try one day this week:

Walking club

Why not start a walking club with some colleagues, where you can agree in advance a series of walks in the local area lasting for about 40 minutes allowing some time at the end to eat.  The walks don’t have to be particularly vigorous but the club do need to take responsibility to take part consistently. The benefits are numerous but will include, getting to know colleagues better, increasing fitness levels and reducing tension. 

Start or join a games club

This can be a simple yet very effective idea where a few of you can decide on a game such as scrabble and arrange to play every week for an hour over lunch. The group can remain small but if more colleagues show interest then perhaps go to your employers and present it as a morale improving initiative for staff.

Start or join a book club

Workplace book clubs are gaining in popularity and are again an effective way to do something completely different from your work while getting to know the people who work in your organisation. The concept is very simple and will mean the group decides on the title of the book for the month and you all then buy a copy and then meet back at regular intervals to discuss the story. In some cases book clubs will arrange to watch a stage or screen adaptation of the story adding another feature to the social aspect of the club.

The workplace ‘playtime’ is an opportunity to use some of the valuable time you have in the middle of your day which may teach you something new, improve your health and help you to make new friends all of which are excellent ways to improve confidence and reduce stress.

Say hello with a smile and be more confident meeting new people

Sometimes it’s difficult to try something new because we are worried about how to meet and speak with new people. More to the point, we are afraid of looking silly, out of place or stuttering our words.  We can often build up situations in our minds to a point where we will believe that it’s not worth going to a social gathering, starting an evening class or evening changing our jobs because we won’t be accepted and worse still will be rejected by those already there.

There is no magic trick for making new friends or breaking the ice in a way that feels totally comfortable if we are usually shy or  lacking confidence. There is a way to reduce the pressure and will take practice and that is to make sure you smile when greeting someone and more importantly make eye contact.

This is something you probably hear often and in fact is a basic principle of getting to know new people but the power of smiling sincerely cannot be taken lightly.  Think for a moment when you walk into a room for an interview or go to the see the doctor, if you see a smiling face and you are acknowledged with warm eye contact you feel more settled, comfortable and more able to speak  freely.  If however the person interviewing you doesn’t look up or has a less than enthusiastic expression then it’s likely you will feel less confident in making the conversation work well.

In his classic work, ‘How to win friends and influence people’, Dale Carnegie said “If we want to make friends, let’s greet people with animation and enthusiasm. When somebody calls you on the telephone use the same psychology. Say “Hello” in tones that bespeak how pleased YOU are to have the person call.”

A simple experiment
There are many ways to start to build confidence when communicating and trying new situations and will be covered here in future posts, but I would suggest an experiment over the next few days. When you meet someone you don’t know, smile warmly and make eye contact as you do so. Notice the way they react and then the way the conversation goes. A non- threatening way to do this is to try it out with a shop assistant or a colleague in a meeting. The key is not to worry about whether they smile back or to engage in a heavy discussion it’s about confidently trying something new and measuring the results.  Making this small behaviour change you will eventually change your feelings about meeting saying hello to new people.

3 steps to improving your life balance

The frustrations of life often come about because we lack information or sufficient control over how we choose to use our time. In order to make adjustments to the way we use your valuable minutes its important to really know how we are choosing to use them now. Here’s a technique to start straight away which may give you some surprising information about your life.

1 Start a 7 day life log

This might seem like a big job but you need to keep it simple, a list and maybe a couple of words for each activity. This will paint a good picture of how you are using your minutes and highlight areas where you could save time by combining activities and also illustrate just how balanced your days are between the stuff you ought to do and the stuff you want to do. Just like a food diary, if you can see it all laid before you then you can start to see opportunities for more fun activities, improving the way you complete tasks and the things that waste your time. Achieving balance is all about putting everything on the scales and adjusting as you go.

2 Use three highlighter pens on your log to identify:

• Necessary tasks – such as work, paying bills and caring responsibilities.

• Time wasters – such as looking at junk emails throughout the day and channel surfing when not actually watching a programme of interest, there are lots more you can think of!

• Fun things – reading, catching up with friends, time with the kids

You need to be totally ruthless with this exercise, remember the aim is to get to know your life so that you can gain some control over your minutes.

3 Seek and change

List the time wasters you highlighted and pick one off the list to replace with a fun activity or a necessary one such as doing the shopping earlier in the week to allow more time for something else after. If you feel able maybe do this with up to three time wasters. It’s a gradual process and you can reduce channel surfing by half if that feels more manageable.

You can also list the necessary and fun things and identify where you can improve how you carry out a task to save time or increase the amount of time you spend on something you enjoy.

The key to this exercise is to feel completely familiar and present with how you spend your life rather than blindly frittering away your minutes and feeling more frustrated or stressed.

Good luck and do Let me know how you get on.

Work life balance could just be a life in balance

The term work life balance conjures an image of our lives split into 2 parts where work is an unwelcome intruder. Not so long ago it was a term we might have had to explain but now it is almost part of the package on offer when you go for a new job.  The term is an accurate one but the common perception maybe needs to change to allow a little more harmony.

The pace and commitments of modern living have pitched our income stream against the things that we deem really important such as family, interests and friends.  In generations past where work was normally nearer to home and within the community in which you lived, there would be a natural link between your lives and where you made your money. Now of course, commuting is the name of the game and we are increasingly spending more time getting to far flung meetings and conferences than we do at the event itself!

Expectations of our bosses, colleagues friends and neighbours means that we have to keep chasing the next opportunity to increase our income to appear ‘successful’ and of course to service that creeping debt we always thought would be paid off in a few months.  So the choices we are making are often driven by the gain to progress and keep up rather than by what might fit in with who we are, what we enjoy doing and the sort of people we like to be around.

Of course it is not practical to change what we do and throw in that boring stressful job, of course we have bills to pay and a life to maintain, but isn’t it possible to make some changes to move towards welcoming work into your life and achieving a better balance?

It is possible to make small changes in how we do things to start to make work feel a part of your life rather than something that needs to be balanced with it. For example, working from home one day every couple of weeks may not seem significant but perhaps you could go the gym or pick up the kids with the hours you save travelling on that day.

It is not always possible in many jobs to work from home, and in situations such as retail or call centres it maybe a case of exploring ways to work flexible hours or you may be able to find more creative work patterns where business needs allow.

Feeling like work and life are working together reduces the feelings of tension and guilt and allows us to be more present and happy in both.  Small changes to the way we commute, the patterns we work and over time aligning what we do with what we are passionate about can slowly create the sense of balance that we are encouraged to find.