Could self-awareness be the real key to productivity?

If you’re feeling unproductive or stuck in a rut, it might pay to look within, writes Steve Glaveski, author of Time Rich: Do Your Best Work, Live Your Best Life and CEO of Collective Campus. He explains how self-awareness can help us become productivity rockstars.

We’re distracted.

The typical person switches screens once every 40 seconds in an eight hour workday. And this costs us big time when it comes to our productivity.

But most of the time when we’re switching screens, big tech isn’t to blame. We are.

Our internal discomforts — anxiety, stress, loneliness, boredom — drive our desire for a momentary reprieve by way of checking Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, pursuing Inbox Zero, or responding to messages on LinkedIn.

However, we can get on top of these internal distractions simply — or not so simply for some — by becoming more self-aware.

Becoming aware of our best work rhythm

We all have great days — days where we spent numerous hours in ‘the zone’, got a whole bunch of high-value work done, and finished our day feeling fulfilled and basking in an accomplishment-driven neurochemical cocktail.

But we have bad days too — days we spent too long staring at our phones, switching to email, mindlessly scrolling Instagram, touching up a Powerpoint presentation for the 17th time, and not getting any real, gratifying work done.

The key is to notice. Notice the conditions surrounding your good days, and the conditions surrounding your bad days.

What kind of conditions?

Your sleep

Did you have a restful sleep last night?

Your pre-work routine

Did you exercise, meditate, or do something else that gets your engine firing? Or did you start your day checking email for an hour from your bed?

Your physical environment

Is it conducive to getting great work done? Is it comfortable?

Do you have the tools you need to succeed (e.g. extended monitor and keyboard, uninterrupted wifi, natural light)?

Is the environment relatively free from distraction and interruption?

Were you working from home or from the office, or maybe from a cafe?

What you’ve eaten (or haven’t eaten)

Did you eat something that provides you with sustained energy (e.g. low GI carbs), or are you prone to crash because you started your day with a high-sugar snack, like a doughnut?

Are you working through a 16-hour fast? If so, your brain will be in a heightened state of alertness.

Conversations (or arguments) you’ve had

You might’ve had a pleasant deep conversation before getting to work, which left you in a great mood and gave you more energy to transfer to your work.

Similarly, you might’ve had an argument with someone you care about, or a colleague or client, and it has temporarily messed up your neural circuitry!

What you’re working on

Perhaps you’re working on something that you are genuinely interested in, that aligns with your strengths, and that you find a sense of purpose in.

If you’re working on something where all of these are void, you might struggle to get started.

Whether you’ve been moving or exercising

Perhaps you went to the gym, or for a long walk in nature today?

On the flip side, perhaps you’ve rolled right out of bed and onto your desk chair?

The time of day you worked

Perhaps you get your best work done early in the morning, in the afternoon, or late at night.

Almost half the population are night owls — they get their best work done about 10 hours after waking up.

Chances are you might be one of them and your 8am start mightn’t be doing you any good.

Your digital environment

Finally, you might have countless notifications popping up on your monitor and smartphone. You might have 37 browser tabs open. You might have your inbox open on an extended monitor all day long.

But perhaps, on those more productive days, you’ve turned off notifications and closed all of your surplus screens.

Notice, write it down, and reflect

Learning how to work is yet another one of those really important things we never learned in school, such as how to make decisions, how to learn, how to love, how to manage our emotions, and so on.

But when it comes to the school of self-awareness, our best teacher is observation and reflection.

The next time you find yourself in the zone, or struggling to get in the zone, consider writing down the extenuating conditions and circumstances. If you do this over a period of, say, a month, you’ll no doubt identify trends that you can use to inform how you design your day and your environment.

For example, whenever I have a podcast conversation first thing in the morning — circa 7:30am — it typically leaves me energised and confident. I like to transfer that energy and confidence into one of two things; writing, or making follow-up sales calls.

It’s a simple thing that can have a significant long-term effect on the quantity and quality of your work.

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This article originally appeared on steveglaveski.com, read the original here.

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