Stress is a killer. Many of us don’t realize it, but stress, especially continuous or long-term, can genuinely put a huge strain on so many aspects of our mental and physical function and well-being. But, once you’re already stressed it becomes something that plagues every aspect of your life and can become difficult to function with or reduce and limit enough to function. Reducing your stress helps you feel better, become more productive, and avoid a lot of long-term health ailments. So, let’s talk about 5 life hacks to boost your productivity and reduce stress.
1 Pause and Evaluate Often
Life is full of never-ending movement, especially as you age and have more to focus on at once like family, pets, work, and other aspects of your life. Taking time to pause or to evaluate can really do wonders in fixing what you’re struggling with. Pausing for meditation, visualizing your goals, and taking care of yourself reduces stress. And evaluating how you’re making progress and how to move forward improves productivity tenfold.
2 Care for Your Body and Mind
Again, we know you want to just get everything done at once and try to be the most productive you can with little to no regard for your own well-being when life gets hectic. But, caring for yourself is important too. You’ll find that by making sure you have proper hydration, nutrition, movement, and mental health care you can feel much better and therefore do much better in all aspects of your life.
3 Routine and Schedules
When life throws things at you that are unexpected, you’re not always able to keep up or keep a genuine routine. But you can control some aspects by creating routines and schedules for your time that you can stick to. For example, having a routine for work helps get more tasks done with less stress; and you can have schedules or routines for other parts of your day too in order to find some organization and know what to expect.
4 Reduce Distractions
Distractions can be a lot of things. They can be your social media or phone when you’re trying to do other tasks, additional to-do lists and tasks that may not be necessary right then, and crowded thoughts or clutter in your home. Reduce these as best you can on a daily basis to keep yourself moving forward. It really is true that decluttering your mind and physical space can do wonders for your function and stress levels.
5 Be Patient
Patience is one of the biggest factors you’ll need in every part of your life. Being patient with yourself, others, and your entire life can help you in so many ways. Letting yourself take a little longer on a task that’s troubling you, or having the patience to take a break when needed, can mean you can return to that task or new ones with a better attitude and more productivity. Practicing patience helps you feel less stressed and you may find you get more done too.
Often how productive we are and how stressed we are goes hand in hand, since productivity is usually needed to succeed in life and not doing enough can make you feel behind or get in trouble with your job or home life. But, working on both at the same time is actually pretty easy and simple. Similarly, when you’re more productive, you’re able to be less stressed; and when you’re reducing stress, you can get more done in the day without feeling stuck or suffocated. These life hacks can help you do precisely that. Good luck!