Performance at Work

This is performance psychology mental skills programme to help you at work. It is about learning strategies that will help you to achieve more at work with less stress and effort. A key element of the Performance Psychology learning process is to adopt the rule of quality over quantity.

Imagine an athlete doing a weights exercise in the gym. In one continuous effort the athlete may be able to complete 20 repetitions without taking a break. After this effort the athlete would find it very difficult to carry on working at this particular exercise. However, if the athlete split the exercise up into sets with rests in between, they may be capable of 4 sets of 10 repetitions before fatigue sets in. In this way the athlete has achieved twice as much work, and probably maintained a better quality of exercise technique.

This is the kind of approach Performance psychologists try to get their clients to adopt to a working day in the office. Obviously, things at work are a little more complex than simply lifting weights in the gym, but the analogy still holds. They advise the following daily plan to try to increase both quality and speed of work.

1. Start the day with a list of tasks to complete.
2. Plan to achieve these tasks by certain times during the day. Eg. letter written by 10 am, then edit document by lunchtime etc.
3. Plan to take short breaks throughout the day, maybe between tasks or to split one long task.
4. Make sure you plan regular times to eat, drink, exercise and do any personal tasks.
5. If at the end of the day you do not achieve everything your planned, formulate a revised list for tomorrow and plan to complete that the next day.
6. Do not feel guilty and "take work home with you".

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