- What's up, socials, welcome back to my channel.
Today I wanna talk about afternoon slump.
It is very easy,
especially when the weather is starting to change
a little bit to let those afternoons slip away from you
even when you tried so hard,
setting the day for success early in the morning.
Trust me, I know.
I find in the afternoon that I have a beagle
screaming for food more often and she wants to go for a walk
and she wants me to talk to her
when I'm just trying to talk to the camera.
It's very much distracting, in addition to all of the things
that I'm distracting myself with,
like snacks or doing other things than work.
(laughs) So the afternoon slump is very real.
I'm sure that you're dealing with that kind of thing
all the time in your own ways and so I wanted to talk
about some of the things that you can do to make sure
that those afternoons stay on the productive side.
It's never gonna be perfect, people, but we can try,
so let's go over some productive afternoon tips.
Here are seven ways that you can
prevent that afternoon slump.
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The first big piece of advice I have
is to set your email off hours.
The whole world doesn't need to know this.
You don't need to turn on an away message,
but I think it's very important for you to set boundaries
in the afternoon when you know things are gonna be
the most critical for somebody else to determine your day
or for you to determine your day and say, "You know what?
"After lunch until about four or five o'clock,
"I am not going to check email."
It's just so easy to let whatever comes in,
especially somebody else trying to figure out
getting things done for the rest of their afternoon
so they send you a request or they say they need this
or that and all of a sudden their emergency is your urgency
and I always say that backwards, but regardless, it's not.
So, if you're not in your email, it never becomes an issue.
Set those off hours.
What are the times that you are not going to let yourself
log into somebody else's demands?
Number two is probably one of my favorites
and that is the five minute clean desk challenge.
You heard it here first, folks.
I can tell you right now that if your desk is a mess,
you are much more likely to not
be as productive as you could be.
It doesn't even matter if you claim to be somebody
that's like, "I know where everything is."
That clutter is affecting you.
I'm just gonna tell you.
If I'm the first one to let you know,
you being let know right now.
Challenge yourself to clean up your desk
in the afternoon, maybe after lunch,
especially if you eat your lunch at your desk,
which you probably shouldn't be doing that either,
but take a minute, clear the desk.
If something belongs in the kitchen, move it.
If something belongs in the trash, get it going.
Circular file for the win.
Move things out of the way.
If you do not have room to write things down
or can't even find your notepad, then get things cleaned up.
Put the pens back into the container
and make sure you go get a disinfectant wipe
if you're seeing some of the remnants of your lunch.
If you can't clean your desk in less than five minutes,
then this is something you now need to schedule
in your life, but if you can, then you're gonna be
much more productive for your afternoon.
Number three, take a walking meeting,
even if that meeting is not necessarily in person.
It could be a phone meeting
or it could just be a meeting with yourself,
just like go do a minute of thinking while you take a walk.
Exercise is gonna help stimulate that a little bit more.
Maybe you can listen to a podcast
if that's the kind of meeting you wanna have.
Schedule it, make it happen.
Take a walk around the block.
Honestly, the fresh air is good,
especially when you're really wishing it was cooler outside,
but it's not, so you're guilt-tripping yourself
that you're not outside more because it is so nice out
and it's October and you're super confused.
What am I gonna wear for Halloween?
I don't know what the weather's gonna be like.
Just take a minute to enjoy it.
Number four, take a power nap.
I wish I took this advice more often.
I actually find that I'd much rather just get bomb sleep
at the end of the day and just eight hours, amazing,
but I do think that there's a lot of research out there
that proves 10 minutes of shutting your eyes
in the middle of the day will zip you right back up
and ready to go for a much more productive afternoon.
I do drink a little bit of coffee
or caffeinated tea before I take a nap
so that after that 10 minutes,
my body's like, "You're awake.
"What are you doing taking a nap?"
And that caffeine and the energy boost
that you get from that power nap really pays off after that.
That has worked for me in the past.
I don't know why I don't do that more often,
but it certainly would help anyone
with a more productive afternoon.
If you're powering through a project
and you're really struggling to get focused,
I love using the Pomodoro Technique.
The reason why is if you haven't heard me talk about it
before, which it's absolutely been in another video,
you get 25 minutes of just plugging away
at the thing you've got to do and then a five minute break
and then every three or four of those
sort of rounds of 25 and five
you get a little bit longer break,
but if you just power through three or four of those,
you're gonna be much more likely to have gotten
further along in that project that you need to get done
and you also won't feel like you're ready
to just oh my god, I can't even focus anymore because
you've given yourself those five minute stretch points
and take the time during that five or 15 minute break
that you do get for Pomodoro and stand up
and walk away from your computer
or walk away from the project.
Stretch, do a yoga pose, meditate.
Whatever floats your boat, do that for the five minutes.
Here's a tip and also a thing that you could do
during those five minutes and that's tip number six.
Read a chapter of a book,
or if it's not a chapter, a page is fine too.
I always find that when I read a non-fiction book,
something that's either self-help
or development of some kind,
I get so much more motivated because of the story.
I'm hearing about somebody else
or the experience or advice of somebody else,
so I've just found that if you allow yourself to learn
something from someone else's success for a couple
of minutes that you get reenergized really quickly.
The final tip I wanna share is
if you have gotten through your afternoon,
maybe you're watching this video right now
and it's the afternoon and you're looking
at your to-do list and you're like, mm.
I have done nothing.
I have done literally nothing.
Then my tip for you is to zero in on one thing.
It's a very high likelihood that you gave yourself
a laundry list of tasks to do,
which is not working out too well,
so what is one thing that you know
is going to get done by the end of the day
so it's not gonna carry over to tomorrow's to-do list
and you can say you did get something done.
Zero in on that one thing.
Those are seven ways that you can have
a much more productive afternoon.
If you liked this video,
then there's a thumbs up button for that.
Let me see you hit it and leave a comment below
with how you've been able to get reenergized
or more productive in the afternoon
when you find yourself slipping a little bit.
That's all for today, socials.
Thank you so much for tuning in, I appreciate it.
As always, make sure you subscribe for good vibes
and remember to stay productive and get things done
and go after those outcomes that you want to see happen
for you so that you can continue
to go after the life you want.
Cheers.
Lucy.
You did good, you did good.
You let me talk to other people.