Tips for Leaving Your Problems at Home and Improving Productivity at Work

Guest Contributor: Paige A. Mitchell

In today’s society it is often difficult to separate our homelives from work, and vice versa. The ability to stay connected, both with work clients and friends and family, on a constant basis is blurring the lines between home and work productivity. There are many problems people may be facing at home, family obligations such as childcare or an aging or ailing family member that needs additional care, or even just the daily list of items that need to be addressed such as managing annual doctors appointments or scheduling regular home maintenance. If these items are constantly occupying your mindit will affect your work, so here are a few tips to help you leave your problems at home and improve your productivity at work. 

Establish a morning routine 

Being able to separate yourself from your home environment and jumping into work isn’t going to happen just because you walk into your office or sit down at your desk for the day. Have a set morning routine to help get your mind focused on work. 

Whether it is leaving early and getting in some exercise prior to work, taking advantage of public transportation to check-in and catch up on emails for the day, or getting your first cup of coffee at the company coffee bar. Have a set routine that will help launch you into work mode.  

Schedule check-ins 

If you have a large stressor at home schedule specific check-in times during the day. Some of the examples listed above won’t stop because you are at work. But it is important to not let them take over your thoughts during the day if you want to increase your work productivity. 

If you have a small child and are changing daycares schedule specific times you can call to check in on them. Have an ailing parent? Again, schedule specific check-in times or arrange for long-term care assistance to be there when you can't. 

Re-work your to do list 

Writing down a to do list every day is vital to staying on task. But try re-working your to-do list.Instead of writing down every small item you need to complete, try evaluating the top three most important items every day and write them down. 

Focus more of your attention on these to help increase overall productivity. Having just three main things to focus on will also help you to cut off at the end of the day and leave work behind, getting you home to the items that need your focus. 

Track where you waste time 

If you are struggling with productivity you may want to throw your usual routine out the window and try new solutions hoping it will spur on changes. These new routines won’t help if you aren’t able to uncover the real problems affecting your productivity. 

Try tracking your activities for a week. See where you are wasting time and getting stuck in ruts that affect your productivity. Track how many times you are distracted by problems at home and see how often your attention spent on those items really made a difference.  

Forgive yourself 

We are all human and we all have problems and stressors at home that will distract us from work. Accept that some days will be harder than others, and some days will be less productive than others. Don’t dwell on those days and instead focus on moving forward to help continue to leave problems at home when you head out the door to work every day.  

Workplace anxiety isn't always a bad thing: It can boost performance

April 17, 2018

Science Daily/University of Toronto

Researchers have developed a new comprehensive model of workplace anxiety. It includes triggers for anxiety in the workplace and its effect on employee performance.

"There are a lot of theories and models of anxiety that exist, but this is the first model situated in the workplace focusing on employees," says co-author Julie McCarthy from the Department of Management at U of T Scarborough and the Rotman School of Management.

McCarthy, along with her former grad student and lead author Bonnie Hayden Cheng, now an assistant professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, looked at both the triggers of workplace anxiety and also its relationship to employee performance.

"If you have too much anxiety, and you're completely consumed by it, then it's going to derail your performance," says McCarthy, who is an expert on organizational behaviour.

"On the other hand, moderate levels of anxiety can facilitate and drive performance."

If employees are constantly distracted or thinking about things that are causing them anxiety, it will prevent them from completing tasks at work and that can eventually lead to exhaustion and burnout, says Cheng.

But in certain situations anxiety can boost performance by helping employees focus and self-regulate their behaviour. She compares it to athletes who are trained to harness anxiety in order to remain motivated and stay on task. Likewise, if employees engage in something called self-regulatory processing, that is monitoring their progress on a task and focusing their efforts toward performing that task, it can help boost their performance.

"After all, if we have no anxiety and we just don't care about performance, then we are not going to be motivated to do the job," says Cheng.

She says that work-anxious employees who are motivated are more likely to harness anxiety in order to help them focus on their tasks. Those who are emotionally intelligent, can recognize their feelings of anxiety and use it to regulate their performance, as well as those who are experienced and skilled at their job, are also less likely to have anxiety affect their performance.

The model of workplace anxiety Cheng and McCarthy developed is broken into two categories.

One covers dispositional aspects, that is those that align with individual character traits. If someone already experiences high levels of general anxiety for example, their experiences with workplace anxiety will be different from those who don't.

The other covers situational aspects, those that arise in specific job tasks. Some employees may be more affected by job appraisals, public speaking or other tasks that can distract them and lead to poor performance.

The study, which is published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, also outlines many of the triggers for workplace anxiety. The most prominent include jobs that require constant expression or suppression of emotion -- think "service with a smile" -- as well as jobs with constant looming deadlines or frequent organizational change.

Office politics and control over work are other important factors. Employee characteristics including age, gender and job tenure can also affect the experience of workplace anxiety.

The authors note that anxiety is a growing issue for workplaces. Recent research has found that 72 per cent of Americans experiencing daily anxiety say it interferes with their work and personal lives.

While the authors do not condone inducing anxiety in employees to foster high performance, the good news for employees who chronically experience anxiety at work, or who experience it from time to time, is that it can help performance if they can self-regulate their behaviour.

"Managing anxiety can be done by recognizing and addressing triggers of workplace anxiety, but also being aware of how to leverage it in order to drive performance," says Cheng.

She says there are many strategies organizations can use to help employees. Some of these include training to help boost self-confidence, offering tools and resources to perform tasks at work, and equipping employees with strategies to recognize, use, and manage feelings of anxiety through emotional intelligence development.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180417130111.htm