8 Mind exercises to boost productivity

8 Mind exercises to boost productivity

Many organizations already provide their employees with perks like gym membership discounts so that they can improve their physical wellbeing and have more energy for work. But just as our bodies gain strength, speed, and stamina when we engage in physical exercise, so too do our minds become sharper, quicker, and more creative when we engage our brains. Doing mind exercises can help boost productivity, so here are some that may benefit everyone in your organization.

Play games during break time

Not only are games fun ways to destress and bond with coworkers, but they can help develop brain functions such as memory and logical reasoning.

Card games

Playing card games like poker entails many mental skills, such as assessing known information, intuiting the cards others may be holding, and devising strategies that can produce the best outcomes in the short or long term. For example, it may be wise to up the ante in one round, but fold in another.

Speaking of ante, letting staff put real money on the line may induce stress and distract them from doing their jobs once break time is over, so you might want to regulate the gambling aspect so that people play for marbles instead — or you can opt for gambling-free family-friendly fare such as Uno or Exploding Kittens.

Chess

This ancient battle of wits develops many skills, such as thinking ahead and adapting to changing conditions. And since chess can be played online, it’s the perfect game for remote workers.

Jigsaw puzzles

If you have the space for jigsaw puzzles, then supply your staff with a few. It can take great mental effort and a long time to find where every puzzle piece fits, so you may want to provide small puzzles first, lest they spend too much time away from their tasks.

Sudoku

Sudoku is a challenging logic puzzle involving numbers. It can teach players how to be more meticulous, especially when it comes to crunching numbers and developing code. And when one is more meticulous, they are less prone to making errors and are quicker to recognize and correct their mistakes.

Unconventional mental activities

Sometimes, doing the same tasks for a long time can start to feel monotonous and unrewarding. Shaking things up once in a while can help people get out of a rut.

Look at things upside down

If you watch a ballgame right side up, you can predict how the ball bounces and travels through the air. This is because the left side of the brain — the logical side — is already familiar with everyday physics.

However, once you lie down on your back on a bench and watch while your head hangs down, the ball’s trajectory will be unpredictable. Its behavior in three-dimensional space will be fascinating to behold because gravity won’t seem to work normally. While the left brain will say, “Error! Error!” your right brain will work extra hard to make better sense of what’s happening. This will eventually increase your brain’s capacity to think creatively.

More than encouraging staff to watch things happen from a different point of view, you can also have them compete in an upside down texting contest. Have them retype and return a text message verbatim and see how accurate they’ll be. Everyone’s blunders are likely to be hilariously funny.

Use only the non-dominant hand

If you’re right-handed, writing handwritten notes or typing solely with your left hand engages the right side of the brain, which is used much less often than the left side. You can also try spiking a volleyball or playing table tennis using your non-dominant hand. You may be surprised at what you can do with it despite it feeling awkward most of the time.

Practice mindfulness

After a strenuous physical activity, cooldown exercises help the body transition into a more relaxed state. Mindfulness activities can also do the same for our minds after long hours of addressing problems, participating in planning sessions, and keeping and ticking off items in our to-do lists.

Meditate

One effective way to destress is to declutter our minds by meditating. Meditation has many productivity benefits, namely:

  • Improved focus
  • Greater attention span
  • Quicker mental access to insights
  • Reduced job burnout

What’s good about meditation is that it only takes a few minutes and can be done whenever we have free time. This makes it a perfect way to freshen up our brains at the start of our day, release the buildup of anxiety in the middle of it, and let go of our worries when we get back home to our families.

Unplug and engage the senses

Just like how we can’t always be working out, we can’t always be on the job. Don’t let your staff bring lunch to their desks and work while eating. Instead, have them go on food trips around the area and have them savor their meals. Encourage your employees to immerse themselves in activities they enjoy, like listening to music, walking in the park, and folding origami. By unplugging from work and engaging our senses in these moments, we get to slow down, recenter ourselves, and remember what it is we’re striving so hard for in the first place.

Another thing that can help put everyone’s minds at ease is freedom from IT problems. Work is already hard enough without wonky network connections and slow PCs to deal with, which is why having Founders Technology Group as your IT partner will be a great benefit to your company. Let our IT specialists take care of your tech concerns for you. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help.