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In this episode of the Office Relations Podcast, the guest speaker Christiana Jumbo-Everill discusses the key elements for a successful workday. These include productivity, positive social interactions, mental well-being, and emotional satisfaction. Christiana also shares her strategies for overcoming challenges and getting tasks done, such as breaking tasks into smaller bits and delegating when needed. The importance of morning routines is also emphasized, as they create structure, mental clarity, and efficiency. Christiana addresses the belief of not being a morning person, suggesting cognitive restructuring and positive affirmations to change mindset. The topic of digital distractions is discussed, with statistics showing that many Millennials and Gen Zs spend significant time on their smartphones during work hours. Christiana advises practicing mindfulness to manage distractions and maintain productivity. Welcome back to a brand new episode on Office Relations Podcast. Today we'll be having a good expansion on the topic, Tricks for Successful Navigation Through a Workday, The Psychological Dive. And with me here today is our guest speaker, a seasoned professional, a passionate psychologist, and the founder of Precious Mental Care Services, Christiana Jumbo-Everill, and she will help us unpack the vital information and knowledge that are surrounding today's topic. Christiana, you're welcome to today's episode. Thank you so much, Stella. I'm happy to be here. It's great to have you here. Work experiences vary with individuals. This is due to the fact that there are, of course, different work schedules and work styles that different persons operate on, the standard work schedule, that is a regular nine-to-five work period, the shift schedule, the part-time schedule, and much more. Bringing those things together, we are going to explore critical elements that will make every work day turn successful. Now, over to you, Christiana. When we talk about a successful work day, what picture should we actually have in mind? I would say the term success is very meditative. However, there are very key ingredients of a successful work day that cross across different areas and fields. The first thing is productivity. We cannot talk about success in the workplace if we do not talk about productivity. A successful work day should be a day where you're able to meet critical deadlines, where you're able to manage the tasks that you have to do for that particular day. Then we cannot fail to mention the social engagement, the social side of life, because we are social beings. So when you work in an office or with people, a successful work day would also be a day where you're able to have positive social interactions with your employees, with your supervisor, and then your mental well-being is also very important. So it should be a day where you're able to feel at peace, a day where you're able to manage stress, take healthy work breaks, and emotional satisfaction comes into play when we talk about success too. So have you been in a situation where you struggled with getting things done in a work day? If you have, can you walk us through that experience? What was it really like? I think that is something that every single career person, or even a business person, has had to deal with at some point or the other in their career, and I am no exception to that. It's not even a one-time experience, and it's not something that, even if you have all the answers, or you know what to do, these are just challenges of life that you're going to experience in the workplace. So for me, one thing that has really helped me is trying to break down my tasks into small bits. When I feel really overwhelmed, or I have a work day where there's just so much to do, I try to break down into bits, and then I try to delegate. I always delegate, or even if I don't have anyone in my direct line of duty to delegate, I ask for help from my colleagues or people that I feel have the expertise in that area, and they always come through for me. Thank you. Now, we're going to go to the start of the day to talk about morning routines. When we look at morning routines, what actually comes to mind? Do you really believe in morning routines? Looking at the fact that morning routines ring around a set of activities that are habitual, or actions that are habitual that serve as status for the day, what is your take on morning routines? Well, I think morning routine is like a universal concept that is not just limited to the work. As the press says, morning routine trains your brain for success. It creates structure. When you have a habitual set of actions that you do each day, it creates predictability, and that helps your brain to avoid decision fatigue, where you're taking up too much time. So, a morning routine is something that everyone should adopt and stick to because the benefits are really enormous. I think that's great. So, how relevant is it, and if we spell out the relevance, how can we create a successful morning routine that can really help us for the day? One of the most beneficial aspects of morning routine is that morning routine helps to create mental clarity. It just helps your brain to just know, okay, this is what I have to do. So, the actual thinking of what comes next, it creates that predictability, and predictability increases focus. So, morning routine is very good for mental clarity. It also helps you to be more efficient because you're able to plan your day in advance. So, your actions actually align with your priorities. There are simple things you can do. It doesn't have to be big things. To plan yourself, you can just be preparing your clothes before that morning. Maybe you're going to go to work by 7 a.m. in the morning. Make sure you set out the clothes you're going to wear. Make sure you've thought of what you're going to eat. If you're a person that cooks or prepares meals in the morning, just lay these things all out. Then you wake up, you try to maybe incorporate a little exercise, just something to straighten you off. It doesn't have to be intense. If you're not an exercise person, it can just be stretching. Then you make sure you take a healthy meal. Don't go out in a mental stomach as much as you can. You're going to just eat two things. Then when you get to work, there are also routines that you can do. Make sure you clear your desk. Make sure you have a to-do list. It can just be this little stick note where you write, you itemize the tasks that you are going to achieve for that day. Those are the two habits that actually go a long way to plan you for success for the day. Mental clarity, I spoke really hard. Okay, so when someone says, I'm not a morning person. There are more persons that you talk with and then they tell you, oh, I'm actually going to push this task forward because I'm not really a morning person. So when you hear people say things like that, what will be a response to people that use this particular phrase and how does it link with procrastination? You know, when you keep telling yourself you're not a morning person, you're not going to have a great morning because it's going to be like a social feeling prophecy. Yes, it's very possible that certain persons are more active in the afternoon, maybe because of how they've trained themselves in that time or they don't get enough sleep at night. So their mornings are usually not, you know, their prime time of the day. But if you find yourself in a work space or a situation where you have to be provocative in the morning, then the first thing is cognitive restructuring. You have to start changing the way you think. You need to start telling yourself instead of I am not a morning person, you can adopt positive affirmations like mornings are a beautiful time to start my day or I have productive mornings, even when you don't feel like it. The first step is that mental push. You start restructuring your mind cognitively and everyone can be a morning person. It just takes a little hard work, a little focus. It's not going to be automatic. We know it takes about 21 days to form a habit. So if you just stick to it, keep doing it, keep showing up, make sure you go to bed at least a little earlier than you would normally do so that you wake up and you have a refreshing sleep. Then you plan yourself, you talk to yourself and do interesting activities for the morning if you know you're not a morning person. Make sure that activities that excites you, you keep it in the morning. Then one other trick you can do if you don't really wake up early is to set an alarm clock and use very good music, a music you actually enjoy that you like to listen to. You can use it as your alarm ring tone. So when it starts, it just starts your day on this beautiful note and helps you to become a better morning person. That's great. Everybody can be a morning person and I so agree with that. So now we're moving over to distractions. What is hard? Distractions are plentiful and time is short. This is a quote by Adam Hochschild. Another anonymous quote also reads that distraction isn't always a bad thing. It all actually depends on the timing and the type of distraction. Let us zoom in a little bit on digital distraction and the type of distraction that can interrupt workflow on a workday. Some companies actually do have some policies regarding how to use phones and digital equipment and they term this as acceptable use policy or they can actually call it digital use policy. In this policy, you find out that they have rules regarding when this device can be used or when this device cannot be used. Now, there is also a very interesting survey that popped up by Udemy. This survey is on workplace distraction and is centered on the smartphone problem. It states that more than a third of Millennials and Gen Zs say that they spend about two hours or more checking their smartphones during the workday and that adds up to at least 10 hours every week. So if you put this together, you find out that these individuals, if they're working on a 40 hours per week schedule, they are losing about 10 hours out of those 40 hours just using their smartphone at work. This is a very serious concern. The question is, how can we manage digital distractions in order not to lose productivity or reduce productivity while at work? That's a million dollar question. Thank you guys. In our world today, it's not just like put away your smartphone because it's like everything is on encompassing. But as a person, it's important that we begin to practice mindfulness. Yes, again, I will always come from the psychological perspective, but mindfulness is a concept that this generation lacks. And it's something, it's a concept that cuts across different spheres of life. You can decide to incorporate mindfulness into your life. And we have this culture of multitasking. We have so talked about multitasking. It may look like a very good thing. But studies are beginning to show that multitasking actually reduces productivity. So mindfulness will teach you to do one thing at a time in a very focused manner and help to minimize distractions. When you begin to apply the techniques of mindfulness, it cuts across use of devices. It cuts across your relationship with other people. So in a way to incorporate mindfulness in reducing digital distractions, you can start by putting your phone on the do not disturb mode when you are at work. Or you can start by turning off your notifications while you are at work. You can start by giving yourself a time block where you tell yourself, okay, for the next one hour, except there's an emergency, I'm not going to use my cell phone. The next hour, you can reward yourself. Maybe give yourself a five-minute break to go through what's happening and set a timer. So when that five minutes is off, you get back to what you're doing. Because most times it's like an addiction. When you try to stop abruptly, you can easily fall. But when you take little incremental steps, you can actually do without social media for a while and checking your phone all the time to ensure that you don't have a messy workday due to distractions.
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