Daily habits of productive leaders: Keep momentum

Maintaining momentum and productivity can be a tall order, particularly in today’s economic climate. At Selligence, we understand that keeping you working efficiently can be key to everyday success, and improved efficiency and productivity is what our products deliver for all our clients.  

At Selligence, we understand that keeping you working efficiently can be key to everyday success, and improved efficiency and productivity is what our products deliver for all our clients. Talent Ticker and Anaxym’s all-round solutions will save you hours of tedious research, but how else can we help encourage better momentum and improve overall efficiencies?  

Here are a few more easy-to-implement changes to build into your daily routine that will keep your momentum supercharged.

Don’t sit, get fit

We all know exercise is good for us, but you don’t have to be a gym bunny to be reaping the benefits. Even very short periods of exercise such as HIIT or a five-minute yoga flow can help boost your mood, happiness, and help you manage stress. Obviously, boosting your overall health is something most people are interested in, but imagine if you could also help smooth out your working day simply by adding in a few jumping jacks or squats while you wait for your morning coffee to brew.

In 2021, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a resource outlining the benefits of physical exercise breaks in the workplace. The guide suggests that between 5 and 10-minute exercise breaks can be beneficial on many levels as they help employees to break up their sedentary time.

Adding short exercise breaks can boost self-esteem, productivity, and your mood, while also having a positive knock-on effect on your sleep quality. It can also help reduce the risk of stress, depression, and anxiety. With all-round benefits, at the cost of just a few minutes, what’s not to love?

Oprah Winfrey, self-made billionaire entrepreneur and talk show host, has several daily targets that help her get active. Whether it’s hitting her 10,000 steps or a yoga session, Winfrey finds that focusing on small moments throughout the day helps her to achieve all she sets out to. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, is another who spends an hour in the gym a day. For Cook, it helps him manage his stress and keep a clear head. Virgin Group Founder Richard Branson also exercises daily and says it helps him feel great and enables him to achieve more.  

So, whether you’re looking for a mood-booster, or simply need to break the monotony of sitting at your desk for hours on end, a brief burst of exercise can work wonders. Hit reset, release some endorphins, and power your way through the working day with renewed focus and energy.

Cut the commute

Putting aside the pandemic years (which have understandably been something of an anomaly), the Trades Union Congress (TUC) recorded that in 2018 the average Brit spends 58.8 minutes commuting a day, very similar to the average 53.8 minutes for North American commuters.  

Across a year, for those in the UK, that tots up to a staggering 221 hours. Now, imagine what you could do with that time if you weren’t stuck in the car or on public transport. How many things on your tick list could you do in that time? And we mustn’t forget, 58 minutes is just the average – some of you are commuting for a lot longer than that.  

Some of you may be using this time get ahead on your emails, or perhaps you read or meditate for those precious 58 minutes. But while you think you’re getting ahead you could just be impacting your stress. That email that won’t open because the train Wi-Fi is too slow, or your early morning call that drops out when you go into a tunnel? All add to unnecessary stress and can actually put you at risk of appearing less professional and less prepared.

CEO of Square and former CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, walked to work every day for two years. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, he’d also made the decision to work from home two days a week as well. Dorsey recognised that time is precious for the whole workforce, and commutes can make people miserable. At Twitter in 2020, he extended the opportunity that anyone who wanted could remain working remotely, ‘forever’. This sentiment has been repeated by his successor, the new CEO of Twitter Parag Agrawal, who commented that employees could “work from wherever [they] feel most productive and creative”.

A number of other companies are recognising the importance of reducing commutes and are implementing their own remote and flexible working policies. Salesforce, for example, has declared “the 9-to-5 workday is dead” and structured three flexible options for people to work with, including fully remote or partially remote options. Facebook is making allowances to enable 50% of its workforce to be fully remote, while Upwork is permanently adopting a remote-first model, in which remote work is the default for all employees.

What next?

Looking for other ways to save time and boost momentum, efficiency, and productivity? Our all-round solutions can save you hours of time a day and put you up to three months ahead of your competition.

Book a quick 15-minute call with our team to see how you can spend less time doing business development and get more time to build stronger relationships with candidates and customers. You can also check out some other daily habits that will supercharge your efficiency, at home and at work.