Spring Clean Your Work Habits for a Healthier, Happier Work Life
Your Future Self Will Thank-You
Unsubscribe, declutter, and clear your mind. A few hours invested will pay dividends all summer long.
This article is based on a nationwide radio tour Jennifer Moss provided to CBC Radio - Listen to the spot on CBC.
Just like the deep satisfaction of spring cleaning your home, revitalizing your work practices can provide an immense sense of relief and productivity. And let’s clear something up—it’s not always about procrastination. More often, it’s about being so time-starved that certain tasks just don’t make the cut. But beware, the mental clutter from postponing tasks can drag down your efficiency. Adopting a seasonal approach to tackle these neglected duties can boost your mental well-being and work performance.
Digital Decluttering: A Modern Necessity
In the avalanche of 347 billion emails sent globally each day, coupled with constant notifications from Slack, Teams, and Google Docs, it's easy to feel digitally overwhelmed. This state of constant connection is pushing stress and burnout levels sky-high, comparable to what we experienced during the pandemic's peak.
Taming the Email Beast
Unsubscribe and breathe. Start by unsubscribing from 20 emails daily over two weeks, especially if your inbox is overflowing. Did you know it takes about 80 hours a year to manage an inbox for those receiving over 100 messages daily?
Opt out of the noise. Step away from Slack channels, social collaboration tools, and 'copy all' emails that don’t require your attention.
The zero unread goal. With so many emails coming in – it’s challenging to keep your inbox clean. If you aren’t a zero unread kind of person that’s ok. Just use this once a year clean to get caught up and for anything that’s older than a few months you may want to just let it go. Ctrl Alt Delete your stress away – it’s a refreshing part of your digital spring clean.
Meeting Fatigue: Less Is More
With a 252 percent surge in Teams meetings and Zoom hosting over 3 trillion minutes of meetings annually, our tendency to over-collaborate is taking a toll. Here's how to lighten your calendar.
Discuss with your team ways to streamline meetings. Can some be shortened or eliminated? Can attendance be more flexible? Before defaulting to a video call, consider if there’s a quicker way to address issues.
Video conferencing has been shown to decrease collective intelligence potentially, according to research by Anita Williams Woolley. This is because it can create unequal contributions and disrupt the synchrony from audio cues we once relied on.
Prioritize Your Happiness At Work
It’s a tough world, and outright refusing work isn't a luxury everyone can afford. However, we can learn to optimize our commitments.
Audit your responsibilities and determine if they are manageable without contributing to stress. Sometimes, these "extras" are what bring joy to our workdays – but when well-being becomes workload – it becomes unhealthy.
Resist Toxic Productivity
Question the necessity of always being "on." Will you regret not completing a task on your deathbed or missing dinner with your family?.
Stop false urgencies. Practice setting boundaries and clarifying what "right away" means to different people. We tend to jump when someone pings us or asks for help. We need to get better at boundary setting. For a planner, “right away” could mean next week. A person who is always behind will say, “Today.”
Mastering the art of managing up can initially require more effort, but it offers greater control over your schedule and workload visibility.
For those people we can’t always say no to (and who are also not great at planning) try to be proactive. Say, “I have some projects coming due and I want to make sure I give myself enough time for whatever you need – can you let me know by X date if you’re going to need my help?”
Another suggestion, “I have these three competing priorities – which one should I work on first.” This enrolls others in the decision so you’re not making assumptions about the most important goals.
Spring Cleaning All Year-Round
Carve out focused time. Set up periodic out-of-office notifications to allow for uninterrupted work sessions.
Get productive rest. Embrace breaks, which may seem counterintuitive but can enhance performance.
Daily clean up hack. Start each day by spending ten minutes tackling the least enjoyable part of your job. Like incremental spring cleaning, this strategy creates a sense of hope and accomplishment that brightens your day. Instead of pulling out the entire closet and taking a whole day to tidy it up, you’re cleaning one percent of your closet every day until it’s clean.
By applying these methods, you can transform your work experience, improve your mental health, and achieve a happier state of being. Remember, sometimes, the best way to increase productivity is to reduce the clutter—both digital and mental.
Jennifer Moss’s latest book, WHY ARE WE HERE: Create the Work Culture You Want, explores how and why our relationship with work has changed dramatically and how leaders must think differently to find success in the Future of Work. .
Pre-order your copy today on Amazon. Please join Jennifer on LinkedIn to carry on the conversation.