Depression is an example of a mental condition that can negatively affect your productivity. The World Health Organization (WHO) says more than 300 million people worldwide experience depression. They also tend to suffer anxiety.
A study done by the WHO estimates that loss of productivity amounts to USD$1 trillion in annual losses. If you want to know more information about mental health or consult a psychiatrist, you can check out Prairie Health and other similar sites.
Here are some reasons why improving your mental health can help make you more productive:
1. Improves Concentration And Productivity
If you can improve your mental health, it’ll increase your capacity to concentrate. You might not realize it, but almost every aspect of your daily life requires some degree of mental focus. It’s needed in almost every activity you do or engage in.
One of the signs that your mental health isn’t that well is if you tend to have a low capacity for focus and concentration. In every activity you do or every task you perform, your ability to focus on what you’re doing will affect how fast you complete the task as well as the quality of your work. You should try to do some unique things to improve your mental health.
2. Minimizes Stress
Stress can have negative effects on your health. This, in turn, can have an adverse impact on your productivity. For example, if you work long hours every day, this can give you a lot of mental stress and, thereby affecting your mental health.
Not all kinds of stress are negative, though. Some kinds of moderate stress can be beneficial for your mental health. When you experience short episodes of good stress such as excitement and anticipation, this can trigger certain physiological chemicals that enhance your memory. They can also improve your energy level and heighten your mental alertness.
There are stress triggers that can have negative effects. Being subject to chronic and intense stress for extended periods of days or weeks can have a debilitating impact on your health as a whole. It can also have a negative impact on your mental health.
The effects of these chronic stressors can show up as negative symptoms such as migraines and other forms of severe headaches. You can also experience fatigue and ulcers. All of these will disrupt your ability to do meaningful and productive work. Some even suffer from heart attack and stroke.
You should avoid chronic or intense stress because it’ll have negative effects on your intellectual and emotional well-being. Try to have some leisure time in between periods of work involving mental concentration.
3. Increases Ability To Memorize
Your ability to memorize and retain information in your mind is often one of the essential abilities that you need to be able to do your work effectively and efficiently. Not all kinds of work require that you have a sharp memory. Not all activities require that you remember even the minutest details of what you did. Yet most of your daily activities and tasks certainly require that you’d be able to remember a few things every now and then.
If your work requires a lot of mental focus and being able to remember things, your productivity will be affected if you can’t remember many things about the task you’re working on. Having a good memory can greatly improve your productivity since you won’t have to constantly rely on reminders and written notes. You may not notice it, but a lot of the mental work you do requires you to memorize things. For example, the simple act of typing and encoding requires you to memorize specific portions of what you type at each time before you type them.
4. Decreases Risk Of Mental Ailments
If you suffer any mental ailment as a result of poor mental health, this will have an adverse impact on your ability to do your work as it’ll hamper your productivity. Even if you suffer from a minor illness only, you might have to be sidelined for a couple of weeks. Your doctor might require you to take some bed rest, and you’ll have to be absent from your work. This will have a negative impact on your work productivity.
Your mental ailment might make you unable to think clearly or process your thoughts well. This would impair your capacity to do your work effectively and productively. Your boss might even say that you’re not able to do your work well.
5. Reduces Anxiety
Poor mental health can also sometimes cause persistent and intermittent bouts of anxiety. You might find yourself being anxious about so many seemingly endless worries and concerns, which would affect your concentration at work. When you’re in the middle of work, for instance, your thoughts might roam to one of those things that you worry about. It’d take off your mind from the time you should’ve put into doing and completing your tasks.
An even worse thing that can happen is if you experience sudden attacks of anxiety or even panic when you’re in the middle of doing something important. This can disrupt your tasks and activities for the day. The intermittent disruptions to your concentration at work, though seemingly short episodes of anxiety attacks, can total into hours of lost focus, thus resulting in loss of productivity.
Conclusion
The state of your mental health has a direct impact on your capacity to do your work efficiently and effectively. This can only mean that improving your mental health will also increase your level of productivity. After all, being in the right frame of mind would help you at all times.
This article discussed some of the reasons why your mental health can make you more productive. Consider the ideas mentioned here as you plan and prepare.
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