Lifestyle Hacks for Peak Work Performance among Men

Working men are finding themselves with even less time given how fast-paced and competitive the world has become. To accommodate all their commitments, they usually try to cut down their time in other areas like their lifestyle.?

This isn't sustainable as it would lead to burnout. But what if we tell you that you can be more time-savvy with your lifestyle? Whether you're juggling a business, kids, or higher education, here's how you can maximize productivity without sacrificing your health in the three key areas of your lifestyle.?

Efficient Lifestyle Techniques?

Rather than cutting down whole areas of your lifestyle together, which would be detrimental in so many ways, you can optimize the way you do self-care instead.?

Sleep?

Out of the five key areas, sleep is the most critical aspect of your lifestyle. Unfortunately, you cannot compromise on sleep. It's inadvisable to shave off a few hours just so you can "budget" time better. A good benchmark for how long you should sleep is 7-8 hours, but this really depends on your body. Age, gender, and underlying health conditions affect how much total sleep you need. Some need more than 9 hours.?

Lacking sleep also creates more problems for you. You may end up sick, your mood will crash, you may also make mistakes due to being sleepy which would just create more work for you in the end. Rather than risking sleep deprivation, the best thing you can do is to shorten the time it takes for you to fall asleep. Start by having a stable body clock through good sleep hygiene. If you're still struggling to fall asleep, consult with your doctor and consider taking melatonin pills.?

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Exercise?

Just like sleep, it's not advisable to shave off hours from exercising to "budget" your time. The difference is that, unlike sleep, exercise is flexible because you can cut it up into portions. Most people think of exercise as spending 1-2 hours, or maybe even longer, in the gym doing a solid workout. But if you're only doing this once a week, you might not reap the full benefits of your workout and be at risk, instead, for a sedentary lifestyle.?

Exercise works best if there is consistency. Of course, rest is needed for muscle recovery, so it doesn't necessarily need to be daily. It's better to spend shorter time exercising but doing it more frequently. Experts suggest spending at least 150 minutes a week, around 22 minutes a day, on aerobic exercise. You can even halve this by doing intense exercise. We recommend trying out high-intensity interval exercise (HIIT).?

Of course, exercise can also be something as simple as walking so you can do more incidental exercises, movement from doing your daily routine, instead. And it doesn't even have to be done in one go. For example, you can plank for a minute each time you finish a chore.?

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Diet?

There are more options compared to sleep and exercise when it comes to having a balanced diet. Though meals need to be cooked, you can outsource the entire process to someone else. All you must do is eat. If you have the funds, you can hire a house helper to do it for you, subscribe to a nutritionist-backed weekly meal service, or simply go to a local eatery that has healthy dishes on its menu. This is a much better choice than eating cup noodles or ordering fast food takeaway.?

If that’s above your budget, then you can still cook but you don’t have to do everything by yourself. There are farmer-to-local services that allow ingredients to be delivered to your doorstep. You can also buy meal kits from shops like HelloFresh, so all you must do is follow the recipe because the prep work is done. You can also just buy pre-cut vegetables in the grocery or ask the butcher to slice your meat a certain way. You can also use tech for prep work like an electric mixer or an automatic chopper.?

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Task Management Methods?

Now that we have sorted out what you can do to make your lifestyle more seamless, you can still take it to the next step using task management methods. Task management methods can also be applied to your lifestyle since actions you take concerning it also qualify as a task. They aren’t limited to homework from school or tasks at work. Here are our top picks to use as a framework for your day:?

1. Eisenhower Matrix – the beauty of this method is that it teaches you how to segment your tasks. You can sort tasks depending on what two combinations of important, not important, urgent, and not urgent they fall on. It also recommends a course of action which cuts down your decision fatigue. For example, if it’s urgent but not important, delegate (useful for managers).?
2. 3-3-3 Method – compared to the 1-3-5 method, what is amazing about this method is how it talks about deep work and it’s also less vague. The 3-3-3 method stands for 3 hours deep work, 3 shorter tasks, and 3 maintenance tasks. It doesn’t matter how many major tasks you finish as long as you do “deep work” from quality focus. It also clearly distinguishes between shorter tasks and maintenance tasks. Regular tasks like sweeping the floor or checking your email count as maintenance tasks. Ad hoc tasks that pop up in work or in your day-to-day life count as shorter tasks.?
3. Pareto Principle – also known as the 80/20 rule which means that 80% of the results you get come from 20% of what you do which also applies when it comes to lifestyle. You might find that 80% of your happiness and success comes from 20% of your activities. For example, spending time with a few close friends or engaging in a particular hobby might bring you most of your joy and satisfaction, even though these take up a small portion of your overall time. Recognizing this can help you prioritize these activities and manage your time to maximize your happiness and well-being.?
4. The 5/25 Rule – another time-saving framework, the 5/25 rule allows you to prioritize what matters and be realistic with yourself. The way it works is that he asks you to think of your top 25 tasks, reorder them by importance, then have you ignore the bottom 20 tasks until you finish the top 5 tasks.?
5. Task Batching – yet another ingenious strategy, this tactic allows you to get into a flow state. It’s a step further than time blocking by telling you to organize your tasks based on similarity. Doing similar tasks in one go allows you to finish multiple tasks faster rather than constantly switching from one different type of task to another (it’s mentally taxing).?

Other Productivity Tips?

We have more tips for you apart from what hacks you can do for a specific area of lifestyle such as these:?

• Plan – So much time will be saved by moving strategically with your day and not spending so much time deciding. Before you go to bed, plan out your coming day. Make a to-do list on a planner or a notepad. This way, you don’t forget what you’re supposed to do, and you can also reorganize the task based on urgency and difficulty.?
• Utilize AI – There are many kinds of artificial intelligence (AI) nowadays that can make your life easier. You can use AIs like Dall-E to generate custom high-quality images for graphic design and Bing AI to create an itinerary or shopping list for you.?
• Automate – wherever you can, automate so that you don’t have things done manually. It just saves more time. For example, if you have a database, creating a dashboard with filters will make it so that you don’t have to manually search for each statistic that you are trying to get every single time you need it. As for lifestyle, you can utilize technology by buying appliances you can leave like a rice cooker and electric kettle or even a smartwatch so that you don’t have to manually measure how long you’ve been exercising.?

Outlook?

Chasing success shouldn’t mean that you sacrifice your own well-being. You can still grind for your ambitions while also taking care of yourself properly by following these tips. If you have circumstances that make it so you must work multiple jobs, the same goes for you. Remember, you don’t need to do everything perfectly and you don’t need to do them all by yourself. You just need to do your reasonable best on the things that truly matter.?