Be More Productive With Work Sprints
Don’t panic! I’m not sending you out to do your work while you’re actually sprinting. What I’m suggesting with this title is that you break your work up into chunks of time and “sprint” through your tasks, rather than sitting down at your desk and trying to marathon your way through 8-9 hours. (Let’s be honest - a good chunk of most of those hours are spent scrolling through IG, texting, or incessantly checking your email like you’re waiting for a message from Queen Bey herself).
The Power of Work Sprints
As you may have guessed, “work sprints” are short bursts of time when you are hyper focused on your work. You can break these up any way you’d like, as long as they’re under an hour, and with the condition that you take a non-work related break after each one. Here are some examples:
25 minutes of work/ 5 minute break
30 minutes of work/ 7 minute break
45 minutes of work/ 10 minute break
50 minutes of work/ 15 minute break
The goal with your breaks - in addition to not doing anything work-related (and yes, that includes checking your email) - is that you GET UP from your seat and leave your work area. Sitting for a long time is terrible for your circulation anyway, so leave your seat and take a real break.
Breaks When You’re Working From Home
If you’re in the office, it’s easy to take a break because you just have to leave your desk. You can go for a quick walk, head to the room specifically designated for breaks, or go bug a co-worker. When you’re home is your office, though, it gets more complicated.
Here’s what you absolutely can NOT do - housework.
Washing the dishes, putting those folded clothes away, putting things in your online cart (I can’t be the only one who does online grocery shopping) - these are things I’m going to challenge you to move into your “work” block. Why? Because housework is still work, boo.
Now here’s what you are allowed to do:
Read a book
Shut your eyes for a few minutes (set a timer, because minutes can turn into hours quick)
Make yourself some coffee
Leave the whole house and go for a walk around the block
Sit outside and have a drink (non-alcoholic, friend. You have to go back to work)
Anything else you can think of that doesn’t involve work or a screen is fair game. The point here is to give your brain a rest. If you’re working from home, the odds are that your job is very brain-heavy. That means that you may not need a physical break, but your mind needs to be allowed to run on auto-pilot for a bit so that it can restore the energy it needs for the next block of work.
Be the Most Productive You’ve Ever Been
There’s a quote floating around the internet that says something along the lines of “even the most productive people can only focus on something for 4 hours.” I don’t know who said it, but I do know that it has a high likelihood of being a fact.
When I worked a traditional job, I would be physically at work for 8 hours, but I certainly didn’t spend all of them in productivity mode. There was a LOT of snacking, IG-scrolling, and chisme (gossip) that filled the gaps between bursts of actual work. I tell you this with zero shame, because it’s unreasonable to expect any human to be hyper focused on ANYTHING for long stretches of time. Our brains just aren’t wired that way.
My personal favorite way to work is 45 minutes with a 15 minute break. Anything less than 15 minutes of a break won’t be enough to make me power through a work block, and I’ve found that if I set a timer, I really do get a LOT accomplished in that short stretch of time. On the other hand, I have a friend who prefers the 25 minutes on/ 5 minutes off model because she gets really squirmy if she’s been sitting for anything longer than that. Play around with what works for you, and then commit to following that model for at least a week.
Things to Remember
Put. Your. Phone. Away.
Not just down, literally out of your sight and on vibrate. I know what you’re thinking:
“Is you NUTS??”
And you’re going to hit me with all the excuses about how people need to reach you, or you need your phone because it’s your timer, or you use it to listen to music…
I call BS on all of it.
It’s 2021, my love. The internet has blessed us with the ability to do all the things on ONE device. You can listen to music, set a timer, and even tell what time it is all from your laptop. If somebody needs to reach you, it can surely wait until your work block is over. It’s literally less than an hour.
I could go on for a whole post about our unhealthy attachment to these digital human leashes, but all I need you to know is this - your phone is your biggest distraction and if you expect to be productive, it needs to be out of your sight. This is not a challenge. I’m not daring you to have it next to you and be productive to prove a point. I’m telling you about a lifestyle change you need to make to keep your work blocks sacred. Put it away.
Join the BellaValiente Community for Accountability & Support
This is a shameless plug, but I did start an online accountability group with one of my closest friends, and we specialize in helping women set their most audacious goals and then holding them accountable to the things they said they’d do to achieve them. Check out our BellaValiente website if you want to learn more.
