按照你的方式度过一天

I have to admit that I find it difficult to
stop what I’m doing when I become extremely focussed on something.

在一些情况下，这对我来说是有好处的，因为它使得完成任务变得更加容易。我感觉超级高效，并且处于最佳状态。

但是，经过那样的高强度工作后，我的能量水平经常暴跌，让我感觉需要睡上一周才能恢复正常！

随着年龄的增长，我对这种起伏循环的耐心达到了最低点，我把减少重复这一消耗性事件链的可能性作为我的使命。

导致
高潮然后低谷
窍门
R eview
后记

Lets Go — Photo by @sennnnnya via Twenty20

导致

典型的情况是这样的。我开始做工作需要很长时间。我继续前进，知道某个时刻我会弄明白我在做什么并完成大部分任务。我到达前面提到的点，然后疯狂地工作。最终我完成了工作，但最后我感到筋疲力尽，很高兴这一切结束了。然后我得到了需要完成的新任务，过程重复。

虽然完成工作很棒，但过程起初可能看起来压力过大，直到你进入状态，然后工作似乎毫不费力。问题是工作完成后的部分。

做所有那些工作只是为了感到太累而无法欣赏投入的时间和努力有什么意义？如果你知道你有这种工作模式，开始可能会非常令人沮丧，因为进入状态部分需要付出很多努力。

高潮然后低谷

过去，我发现做一些事情确实有助于开始过程，但开始的努力可能会延长到达工作周期中真正高效部分所需的时间。

然后一旦进入高效阶段，因为我想完成任务，我发现很难停下来，因为我不想冒失去我努力开始的那一刻的风险。这对我的生产力目标有好处，但对我的能量和幸福感有害。

事实上，我花了这么长时间才开始，以及在我的工作时间结束后我感到如此疲惫，证明了某些事情需要改变，因为我工作的方式是不可持续的。

在我的研究中，我发现我表现出经典的疲劳症状，如果不纠正，这些症状会变得更糟，最终可能达到我无法“正常”功能的地步。

疲劳的一些迹象包括：

思维模糊
反应时间变慢
生产力下降
倦怠

窍门

幸运的是，一旦我认定自己可能疲惫不堪，尝试纠正它的事情并不简单，无需服用处方药或看医生。

顺便说一句，如果你觉得你可能患有疲劳，并且已经表现出症状一段时间，请预约看医生或医疗顾问，以确保你没有患上可能严重影响你的健康和幸福的疾病。

因此，以下是我爆炸-崩溃工作方式的三个可能原因以及我如何解决它们。

Sleep Deprivation
Was I getting enough sleep? I decided to use a sleep tracker on my Apple Watch to see the quality and length of my sleep. Apparently we humans need between 7 and 9 hours of good quality sleep a day. During my tracking period I was getting between 5.5 and 7 hours a day. So it was fairly clear to me that I would have to increase the times that I’m actually sleeping and not lying in bed trying to get to sleep.
A fix for that problem was to increase the amount of exercise I did, changing my routine from every other day to everyday. This worked fantastically and had the beneficial side effects of making me get more healthy and boosting the quality of my sleep.
Work Patterns
Setting up a daily routine helps with structuring my day and getting my mind ready to focus on what it needs to. I realised a while back that I’m more of a morning person when it came to certain tasks, so it made more sense to me to structure my work around that. Further I found that working to my circadian rhythm helped with my focus and productivity. As an example of my typical day, I structure my more intense, hard thinking type work to be worked on during the mornings and my more routine work after lunch. If I start working at 09:00 then I make a point of finishing for the day no later than 18:00. I stick to this schedule Monday through Friday and I believe that it has made things so much better. When I’ve worked longer days or stray from the schedule, I notice the difference immediately.
Time on Tasks
This was my major issue and correcting this noticeably increased my productivity whilst at the same time helping to correct my boom-bust work cycle.
Our brains like any muscle or body part for that matter, when used to excess becomes tired and non responsive. Any physically or mentally demanding tasks will take its toll on us. Because we sometimes overlook the amount of time that we spend working on a task (which is what I do all the time), it is very easy to burn ourselves out without noticing.
To correct this we must insure that we take regular breaks throughout the working day. When and how you structure this is deponent upon your own work circumstances, but luckily for me my workplace is fairly relaxed when it comes to taking breaks (as long as there isn’t an impending deadline, but that’s for another post). Up until recently I was just using the Pomodoro technique of working for 20 -25 minute blocks, taking a ten minute break, then back to another block. This worked well but didn’t account for the times when my alertness levels weren’t so great. Now days I rely heavily on our Apple Watch app,V-CAF Stay Awake Stay Alert, to notify me when my alertness levels drop so that I can take a natural break at the times when I need it most.