We all aspire to be more productive, but at what cost? Is your health taking a hit from all those long hours you put in? Being a highly productive member of society is a noble and worthy goal, but it’s not worth causing your body and mind serious harm.
Consider the following ways in which your pursuit of productivity can negatively affect your health, along with tips for being productive without hurting yourself in the long run:
Table of Contents
Stimulants
Nearly everyone comes to rely on stimulants to stay focused on work. Most people opt for caffeine via coffee or tea. Others – albeit an ever-dwindling number of them – prefer nicotine. I’ll spare the diatribe about the dangers of tobacco smoke since you’ve probably heard it thousands of times by now, but given these health risks, smoking as a means to stay productive is not a good idea.
While ridding yourself of an addiction to nicotine is important, the health risks of smoking come from inhaling the smoke itself, which contains several known carcinogens. With this in mind, those who rely on nicotine to stay focused ought to switch to e-cigarettes or nicotine pouches. These devices heat a liquid, known as vape juice, to a temperature high enough to create inhalable vapor but not enough to produce smoke. Combined with the variety of flavors that come with a single vape box, there’s no reason for smokers to not try vaping.
Diet
Long hours at the office or job site often means an inability to maintain a regular meal schedule. Combined with a habit many people have to eat when under stress, it’s easy to see how the pursuit of productivity can negatively impact our diet. The result, as many of us know, is the expansion of our waistline.
Meal prep is a way for highly productive people to maintain a balanced diet which is both filling and flavorful. Meals which can be placed into airtight containers, frozen, and heated up in a microwave allow people to stay focused on their job duties without sacrificing proper nutrition. As far as snacking at your desk goes, opt for low-calorie chewing gum and fresh fruit to satisfy your sweet tooth. If you absolutely must have a salty, crunchy snack, keep a bag of kale chips in your desk drawer.
Exercise
Many people who focus on getting as much work done as possible in a given day are neglecting their physical fitness. There’s no denying the difficulty in squeezing in time for regular exercise when you’re working 10 to 14-hour shifts and raising a family, but given the fact most people can meet their recommended fitness goals by exercising 30 minutes a day, is it really so hard to make it work?
If 30 minutes is truly too much time to devote to something as seemingly unproductive as exercise, opt for the seven-minute workout instead. There are apps and videos that can help you get started. Consider joining a gym with at least one 24-hour location nearby. That way, you can stop in for exercise no matter when you call it a day at the office.
Sleep
Busy professionals love to humblebrag about how little sleep they get. It seems as though you don’t take your job seriously if you get more than four hours of sleep per night. While siphoning so much time away from rest sounds like an easy way to achieve maximum productivity, the opposite is true. You will slowly diminish your ability to apply the most cognitive power to a given professional situation. In other words, while you may be present at work for more than half a day, your brain is probably not completely there if you’re sleeping for only three hours a night.
Simply put, making time for a healthy amount of sleep per night is essential for maintaining long-term levels of high productivity. Otherwise, over time, you will inevitably crash and consequently be incapable of giving your all. If that isn’t the opposite of optimum productivity, we don’t know what is.
Being as productive as possible is important, but it’s not worth shaving years off your life to achieve. Fortunately, there are ways to maintain productivity without compromising health.
About Carson Derrow
