Key Messages
How To Find Work-Life Fulfillment: Breaking Free From The Monotony Of Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat
If you’re feeling bored, frustrated and unfulfilled in your work-life, it’s time to take control and make a positive change.
In Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat – by Hussain Manawer – you’ll learn how to be happier at work.
From understanding stress to diagnosing Hurry Sickness and the importance of entering monk mode for distraction free focus, the book is packed with actionable advice that will help you live a satisfying life at work.
In this book, you’ll gain insight into your daily struggles and find ways to tackle them head-on.
With techniques such as reestablishing connections with passion projects, setting healthy boundaries between work and personal life and embracing creative breaks from routine – you’ll find yourself feeling more engaged with your job.
By learning strategies on managing productivity levels along with emotional wellbeing tips, the Eat Sleep Work Repeat will provide the tools necessary to live a happier life while striving towards success in the workplace!
The Devastating Impact Of Unhappy Workers On Productivity And Health
Workplace unhappiness is an all-too-familiar problem for many people.
Recent surveys have found that the majority of American and British workers are stressed out by their jobs, with 83 percent and more than half feeling burned out respectively.
A stressful job not only makes life unpleasant, but also has a negative impact on physical and mental health, as well as productivity.
Studies have shown that long, excessive hours in the workplace can lead to extreme weight changes, panic attacks, insomnia and even cancer in some cases.
Evidence suggests that a large percentage of workers suffer from depression, anxiety and addiction due to their stressful job situation.
Moreover, such unhappiness negatively affects a worker’s performance; research has proven that happy employees are 22 percent more productive than unhappy ones.
Stress brings with it fatigue and lack of sleep which in turn provokes mistakes on the job – something corroborated by studies conducted across various sectors such as healthcare or military fields.
It’s therefore important for employers to recognize how widespread workplace dissatisfaction really is and take action towards reducing negative emotions within the workplace so that both workers’ health and productivity can be positively impacted.
Stress Can Diminish Creativity And Stifle Innovation
Stress is generally bad for creativity.
That’s not what many of us like to believe, but it turns out that when we’re feeling stressed, our risk-taking instincts are suppressed and our ability to think creatively declines.
To better illustrate this point, let’s take a look at a study conducted by Teresa Amabile at Harvard Business School.
Amabile asked office workers to participate in diaries while they did their jobs.
The results showed that the greater the time pressure they were under, the less creative their work tended to be.
This makes sense when you consider how stress affects our brains biologically.
When our bodies perceive stress, it activates the fear centers in the brain and deactivates those responsible for exploration and taking risks; in turn, we become more fixated on familiar patterns than on creative new methods.
This can be seen in music: progressive bands may experience a professional slump due to an excess of pressure from success or anticipation by fans.
The takeaway here? In most cases, trying to push yourself hard with a strict deadline won’t lead you to great creativity – as seen by The Strokes example – it will only limit your capacity for innovative ideas and ultimately make your work feel less impressive than it could have been without any external pressure on you.
Workplace Unhappiness Is Bad News For Everyone: How To Turn It Around
It’s no secret that employee engagement is an important factor in how productive and profitable a business is.
Unfortunately, a 2018 Gallop survey found that 53% of US workers are not engaged and another 13% are actively disengaged with their job.
This lack of engagement leads to less productivity, creativity, and innovation, which ultimately impacts the bottom line.
What’s worse is that disengaged employees don’t put in the discretionary effort to help move the company forward.
So while they may be meeting targets, they’re not motivated to go the extra mile and solve bigger problems which could make the business more successful in the long run.
The solution? Companies need to focus on creating a positive “employee experience” – one where workers feel engaged, connected, and enthusiastic about their jobs as well as their contribution to the greater good of their organization.
A happy workplace pays off – companies who adopt this mindset are 4 times more profitable per employee than average businesses – plus it drives them 28x more likely to end up on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list!
It’s clear that investing in your employees has both short-term payoffs (like high employee performance) as well as long-term rewards (like increased profits).
Hurry Sickness: Why We’Re Always Tired And Busy In The Modern Workplace
These days, it seems like many of us are drained by how much we have to do and by all the different ways that keep us connected to our jobs.
We’re expected to work long hours and be constantly occupied, squeezing in tasks whenever possible.
We can never take a break because there’s always something waiting for our attention – whether it’s an email, text message, or notification from a colleague.
And if we’re not glued to our desks responding to emails and messages that come across our devices, then we feel obliged to participate in yet more meetings.
It’s no wonder why so many people feel like they can never catch up with their workload – especially when you consider that 60 percent of professionals have a total of 70 hours connection time per week!
This means that even outside of working hours, some of us are still trying to stay on top of our work responsibility.
It leaves us feeling tense and anxious about what may come next – and exhausted from the overwork, constant connectivity, and endless distractions.
Recharging Our Depleted Energy: Simple Solutions For The Workplace
Are you feeling overwhelmed and exhausted from work? Are you constantly connected to your job and unable to disconnect? Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be that way.
By making some simple changes in the workplace, you can recharge your energy and feel like yourself again.
Start with something easy – turn off notifications from emails on your phone and computer.
It’s hard to resist the urge to check emails every time there’s a notification, so it’s best just to remove the temptation completely and check emails only at designated times.
And don’t forget lunch!
Not only will skipping lunch deplete your energy for the day, but studies suggests that it might interfere with sleep later in the week as well.
Eating alone can make us feel unhappy, so try having lunch with colleagues or friends instead – this social interaction releases endorphins into our brains which makes us feel good and happy.
Go for a walk too!
The physical benefits are obvious and there are mental health benefits as well – researchers found that taking regular walks helps both creativity and concentration (who knew?).
To take it up a notch, combine these walks with a colleague by having a “walking meeting” – one of you talks about any work issues while the other listens – then before you know it you would have solved any challenge!
The length of the walk could vary anywhere from 7 minutes to half an hour – whatever works for you!
So remember – some small adjustments can help restore our energy at work and lead us away from exhaustion.
By Taking Advantage Of Monk Mode, Designated Hours And Going Off-Grid, Employees Can Work Together With Their Employers To Recharge And Regain Lost Energy
With the help of their employers, workers can take radical steps to recharge their energy.
The most effective solution may be implementing “monk mode”, which involves blocking all forms of contact for a certain period each week (e.g.
Wednesday and Friday before 11am) so you can fully focus on work with no interruptions.
If monk mode is not possible, another option is designating hours when workers are allowed to wear headphones at the office, which allows them to tune out noise from their surroundings but still remain connected to their workplace environment.
Workers might even go off-grid for a day if necessary, giving them time away from email and text messages for uninterrupted focus on one task in particular.
Even just taking weekends off has been proven beneficial in improving productivity.
Finally, trying out shorter work hours (e.g.
six hours/day instead of eight) may also positively impact productivity and health while reducing missed days at work – all with the cooperation of your employer!
How To Combat Workplace Loneliness Through Simple Tweaks Of The Work Environment
When it comes to improving our relationships with our colleagues in the workplace, minor changes to the work environment can make a significant difference.
This is backed up by research done by MIT professor Alex Pentland, showing that one-third to one-half of all improvements in productivity come from innovations that originally arise out of informal interactions.
To encourage more informal conversations between teams, companies should look at small tweaks they can make to their workspace.
For example, co-locating coffee machines and water coolers close together would create more opportunities for team members to start a conversation while grabbing their much needed caffeine or hydration.
Moreover, social events during work hours – such as weekly Friday get-togethers – can help break down barriers between colleagues and ultimately bring them closer together.
To make these events successful, there needs to be a little structure and food or drinks provided.
Structured conversation starters can prevent awkward silences (and aid extra shy people) while providing drinks and snacks will subsequently encourage people hang around for longer!
Overall, these minor tweaks suggest that employers don’t need extreme measures or drastic actions in order to build strong connections between their employees; rather, better relationships at work can be achieved simply by making some small changes!
How To Create Lasting Workplace Buzz: Promote Positive Affect And Psychological Safety Through Hack Days And Weeks
Creating a buzz in the workplace isn’t as difficult as it seems.
Companies can promote positive emotions and breed psychological safety to do so.
Positive affect is this feeling of general well-being that suffuses one’s entire outlook on life, while psychological safety is the sense of comfortability and security around one’s coworkers.
One way to foster these two feelings simultaneously is by having a hack day or hack week where everyone at the company takes some time off from their usual tasks, forms into teams and experiments with new ideas for improvement in a product or service.
This helps people build bonds with each other and encourages them to take risks without having a fear of judgment from co-workers.
Having themes for such events also helps to structure it better – for example, Twitter had an event focused on improving its ability to create conversations between users.
Ultimately such events have led to innovative ideas for the website and app like threaded conversations or ways to combat abusive users.
Wrap Up
Eat Sleep Work Repeat provides an insightful look into workplace unhappiness and how to solve it.
It points out the various sources of such unhappiness, including overwork, constant connectivity, continual distraction, loneliness, and lack of a sense of buzz.
To address these issues, companies can take various measures to energize their employees and foster connections between them.
These measures include taking breaks, disconnecting for set periods of time, limiting hours worked per week and weekdays, hosting social events like hack days or hack weeks.
Finally, the book emphasizes that successful companies don’t obsess so much with overall culture; instead they focus on creating a culture within smaller teams made up of 8-9 people.
This approach helps facilitate communication between team members and encourages collaboration which is vital to success in the workplace.
