Are you finding it difficult to make the adjustment to working from home or remotely?
Are distractions sapping your energy and causing you to crash? These tips can help you harness better energy whatever your working conditions.
The pre-pandemic era shackled you to a workplace routine that was not necessarily of your own making. Perhaps it included lunching for lunch's sake, or grabbing something now because your workload dictated you wouldn't get a chance later, which sometimes lead to less than ideal choices. Now is the time to break free from that ritual and use tools as flexible as your schedule on any given day.
Get a superior fuel choice
Food science tells us that one gram of fat has twice the number of calories as either 1g of carbohydrate or protein, 9 calories to be exact. Fat is the new breakfast of champions! Knowing how to combine the right fats to fuel you will help smooth out energy dips. You can surreptitiously change the mileage you get from your food for even energy regardless of what the day brings.
A hybrid Keto diet (high in fat) is the diet of choice for high performing frequent flyers who need to optimise their meals on the go. Now you are at home or working remotely you can take the time to make sure you have access to this type of meal set up over and above any other.
Optimise meal timings
Breaking free from a compulsory/ill-timed lunch break is a good way to take advantage and retrain your metabolism. This is what you are doing when you choose to go the high-quality fat route. If you choose to set yourself up for a day of intensive work on a high-fat diet, you will find that your hunger pangs don't kick in till much later. Potentially this means you could get more done for longer without distraction.
Working in Ultradian cycles
Another efficiency to explore is pacing your workday to your innate rhythms for better efficiency and productivity using ultradian rhythms. These rhythms exist naturally and are of a duration of more than an hour but less than a day. We are focusing on a type of that rhythm lasting about 90 minutes.
Ultradian rhythms are a natural entrainable rhythm because we already use them. It has been hypothesised that one such rhythm that follows the ultradian model is nostril breathing. It is believed that we breathe predominantly through one nostril for 90 minutes and then switch. Reference to this can be found in a book written by the chronobiologist Dr. Chris Idzikowski, titled Learn to Sleep Well.
What is the pay-off? If you choose to work in smaller batches of time you have more opportunity to be focused and efficient. Frequent breaks also support learning and retention.
How can you put all this together?
A solution for those who would like a "done for you" option would be Long-Range Fuel by Resilient Nutrition. (I have no affiliation, I just think it's a great product).
Resilient Nutrition has put together a product based around good quality fat's with some choice nootropics to help you ramp up performance. The killer feature for me is the fact that it comes in convenient 100g pouches. Their offerings help you maintain sustained energy to perform better recuperate and recover.
I hope these suggestions are useful, as always with health recommendations if you are in any doubt consult with your primary healthcare practitioner or nutritionist. Tip - If all this seems revolutionary start small, try adding better quality fats to the meals you eat and watch your energy patterns shift for the better.
If you are particularly stressed at this time I'd like to offer you a simple guide I helped produce with the Business Travel Association (BTA) at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is part of the BTA's Factsheet series for the travel and related industries.
My hope is that wherever you find yourself working from you make the time to settle in and enjoy your "new normal" working conditions and are able to capitalize on the opportunities it brings.
Comments