Mindful productivity audit: 10 questions to improve your well-being at work

A calendar is a helpful tool to manage your time. It is there to guide you, not to rule you.

Review a typical week in your calendar.

• How many events are there?
• How many events did you create, and how many invitations did you receive?
• Could any of these meetings have been replaced by email or a shared document?

Start exploring ways to improve your time management systems. It might be useful to block some time at the start of the day to adjust your calendar.

Research suggests a knowledge worker should spend four hours of deep creative, highly productive work per day.

How many hours do you currently dedicate to deep work? Look at your calendar and count the hours spent in deep work.

If you have too many hours, try to unblock some time for lighter work or recharging your mental energy. If you have too few, try and rearrange your time commitments to make space for up to four hours of deep work per day.

Taking breaks restore your motivation, consolidate your memory, increase your creativity, and prevent decision fatigue. Research suggests we need to take a break for 5 to 10 minutes every hour or so and a longer break (more than 30 minutes) every two to four hours.

Look at your calendar, and ensure you have a combination of short and long breaks during the day. During a break, move your body, do some deep breathing, chat with your peers, or go for a walk outside.

When we have lots of work, we can fall into the trap of neglecting to nourish our mind with enough high-quality input. Ways to cultivate curiosity include reading books, blogs, newsletters, taking online courses, joining learning communities, and more.

• Do you make space for cultivating your curiosity, exploring new ideas, and expanding your knowledge?
• Make a list of all the ways you cultivate your curiosity. Consider if these opportunities are aligned with your goals.

Instead of mindlessly repeating the same action with little regard for how they impact your performance, ensure you have time and space to reflect and incrementally improve the way you work.

A weekly review is a powerful way to direct your life with intention. It may be in the form of journaling. Include questions to assess what is going well, what is difficult, and what your focus should be during the following week.

Your working space can have an impact on your productivity. When working from home, are you crouching on the kitchen table or working from your sofa?

Ask yourself:
Is my chair is comfortable?
What is my posture when I am sitting?
Is the screen at eye level?
Do I get enough light?
Do I have access to liquids to stay hydrated throughout the day?
Do I enjoy my workspace?

It is easy for knowledge workers to accumulate screenshots and random files on their computer "just in case". Performing an audit of your digital workspace can reduce your cognitive load.

• What does your desktop currently look like?
• What apps are installed? Which ones do you regularly use?
• What tools do you use to manage your knowledge?
• Take some time to consolidate, declutter and clean up the files on your computer. Explore potential tools for thought, such as a note-taking app.

People working from home can be tempted to keep working until they feel too tired to keep going.

Creating habits, routines and rituals to frame your workday is essential for sustainable performance.

• Create a hard stop at a specific time.
• Another approach is to give yourself a specific number of work hours per day, which is more flexible as you can start and stop earlier or later.
• Shift your focus from time to actual productivity by creating an adequate list of tasks for the day. Once the tasks are done, you are done.

Winding down before you go to bed will help you sleep better and prepare your mind for the next day.

Write down everything you usually do in the last hour of a typical day. How many activities involve a screen? Do you spend time with your family? Do you read a book? Do you think you have bad habits in the evening?

Consider what you want to change and implement it in your evening routine.