How Improving Mental Health Boosts Your Productivity
So you want to be more productive and get more done throughout the day. However, you can’t do it without sound mental health because it is essential to getting work done and how productive you are daily.
What is Mental Health?
Mental Health – “the state of our emotional, psychological, and social well-being” that impacts every aspect of our life, from how we think and feel to how we act towards others
Mental health is critical for decreasing stress levels and improving overall wellbeing. Therefore, the quality of your mental health not only affects you long term but also is significant in your day-to-day life, especially in your overall work and productivity.
Further, mental illnesses, such as depression and anxiety, can negatively affect your mental state, affecting your overall work and productivity. Mental conditions can be debilitating, making it difficult to simply get through the workday.
How Does Sound Mental Health Significantly Impact Your Productivity?
For example, suppose that you are worried about an upcoming presentation you have to give at work. Although it is weeks away, you can’t stop thinking about it. You are experiencing ruminating thoughts as these thoughts pop in and out of your head, and if left unaddressed, they turn into anxiety. These thoughts start getting in the way, destroy your focus, and ultimately prevent you from getting things done.
Instead, you can take action and improve your mental health by eating that frog and going to therapy regularly. You should schedule a reoccurring time once every week to work through your thoughts, emotions, and worries with a therapist. Therapy has been researched to improve your mental health, which will, in turn, support your productivity. For more, check out these inspiring productivity quotes.
How Therapy Helps You Improve Your Mental Health and Productivity
There are several benefits of therapy to help you to be more productive and achieve your goals:
- Clarify Your Values and Goals
- Develop Stronger Communication Skills
- Enforce Healthy Boundaries
- Improve Your Focus and Concentration
Clarify Your Values and Vision
First, improving your mental health through therapy will help you clarify your values and long-term vision. Your values are “the things that you believe are important in the way you live and work.” Values act as a filter for your thoughts and behaviors and help you navigate your world.
Going to therapy will help you gain a strong sense of self and clarify your values, both professionally and personally. When you understand your values, you determine your priorities and know if you are working toward your goals and overall vision in life. With your vision, you can get organized at work and determine the action plan for how to achieve it.
When you have clarity in your values and vision, you will not be as worried about doing the right thing or what to do. As a result, you will likely feel that your daily actions contribute to the bigger picture. In turn, you will be less overwhelmed and anxious, giving you the momentum you need to move forward.
Develop Stronger Communication Skills
Therapy can teach you about the roles you want to play in your day-to-day life, as well as communicate what your wants and needs are. It becomes a powerful place to practice communicating your thoughts and emotions to your therapist. Then, you can communicate better with those around you to improve your well-being and productivity in your day-to-day life.
When you strengthen your communication skills, you won’t keep thoughts and emotions bottled up in your head. Instead, you can clearly ask others for what you need done or need to provide at work or your business to get the work done. This could mean asking for a break, delegating a task, or getting help with a project.
Without sound mental health, when your needs are not being met, you may reinforce that you are flawed and enter a negative thinking spiral. Instead, with therapy, you will experience mindset shifts to help you determine the reasons why you get stressed. Over time, this mindset shift can take a massive weight off your shoulders, improve your self-confidence, and ultimately reduce your stress.
Enforce Healthy Boundaries
In the book, Boundaries, Henry Cloud and John Townsend argue that enforcing clear boundaries is critical to living a healthy, balanced lifestyle:
Boundary – “a personal property line that marks those things for which we are responsible”
Put another way, boundaries define who we are and who we are not. All aspects of our lives are affected by boundaries:
- Physical: “Help us determine who may touch us and under what circumstances.”
- Mental: “Give us the freedom to have our own thoughts and opinions.”
- Emotional: “Help us to deal with our own emotions and disengage from the harmful, manipulative emotions of others.”
When you take control of your mental health, especially in therapy, you can set healthy boundaries with your friends, family, coworkers, bosses, and even yourself. You will understand your needs and wants to identify your non-negotiables, whether at work, in your business, or your personal life.
For example, you identify that in order to perform at your best at work, you need to make time to work out and exercise. However, you lack firm boundaries with yourself and may feel guilty that you could accomplish more work for that hour. Instead, you can commit to a minimum workout time per day and reframe your negative thoughts by saying, “This is what I need to be the best manager, so working out is the most productive use of my time.”
Additionally, therapy will help sharpen your ability to say “no.” The boundary of no is difficult for most, especially for those with people-pleasing tendencies. Saying no can be empowering, as every time you say “no,” you reinforce the current opportunities you have already said “yes” to. Over time, you will say yes to the most important things while saying no to almost everything else.
Improve Your Focus and Concentration
Being productive is more about the quality of the time put into your work over 10Xing the quantity of time spent “working” on something. Therapy can help you become aware and remove distractions, both internally and externally, so you can get quality deep work done. In his book, Deep Work (book summary), Cal Newport discusses this superpower concept:
Deep Work – “the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task”
He argues that the “the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.” And Research shows that a focused five total hours of “flow” of doing your most important work is much more effective than eight hours of scattered, unfocused time. Therefore, after embracing this idea, you can get into focus, push your intellectual abilities to the limit, and feel more fulfilled in your life and work.
When doing deep work, choose stimulating tasks to awaken your creativity to get into the flow and prevent burnout. Seeing a therapist can help you become aware of what tasks and projects excite, summon, and bring out your best work. Here are some considerations for what your specific working styles and preferences are:
- What distractions do you encounter during the day? Can you remove or minimize them?
- When do you do your best work? In the morning, afternoon, or evening?
- What recurring negative thoughts distract you from fully focusing on the tasks at hand?
Regular therapy can act as a container to leave all your negative thoughts, stresses, and worries. Then, during the week, you are less distracted by ruminating thoughts, can prioritize tasks, and focus entirely on getting stuff done and being more productive. Additionally, your stress levels and anxiety will drop significantly.
Next Steps: Try Out BetterHelp
Are you struggling with negative thoughts (depression, stress, anxiety, etc.) or external conflicts, and it’s taking away from your work and making you less productive. You should check out BetterHelp Online, an affordable online counseling website that helps you see a therapist at your convenience online.
Maybe you are considering therapy but are worried about the cost or believe the timing will be tough to do? BetterHelp provides need-based help and matches you to one of their 22,000 licensed therapists who will fit your needs and time zone. Check out the link here to learn more about how therapy can help you improve your mental health and become productive in your day-to-day life.
