The 5-minute formula for a more productive day

Published Oct 29, 2024, 2:00 PM

Organisational psychologist and executive coach Simi Rayat discusses the significance of a structured morning routine and her simple PRIME formula for a more productive and energised day.

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Welcome to Extra Healthy Ish. Yes, you have tuned into the Big Sister podcast Still Healthy Ish from Body and Soul. I am your host, Felicity Harley. I'm joined via our online studio by organizational psychologist and executive coach Simmy Rayet. Now she wants us all to find the joy in productivity. Yes, she has a new book. It is called Productivity Joy, and today she discusses the significance of a structured morning routine. Well, she has one. It has an acronym. It's called prime that you can do in just five minutes a day. So she's going to break all that down for us so you can feel more productive and energized throughout your workday. Simmy, nice to have you on Extra Healthy Is today. How are you really Goodlicity?

Thank you?

Oh yeah, I'm very excited to chat to you about this. I think we we all need to put more joy into our productivity into our days. But before we talk about well how to be joyfully productive, how do you stay extra healthy in your life?

Oh? Love. For me, it's really important for me to go to the gym in the morning. So first thing in the morning, I have my gym routine. Just really moving my body, getting that sense of energy back into me, but also giving me that mental clarity. So the gym in the morning is definitely my must do.

What do you do when you go to the gym?

Yeah? I did my cycle class, which list year I really didn't ever used to enjoy. It was a hard spin class of all exercise class in my day all week. But I knew that if I could do that at the start of the day, I did the hardest thing that I needed to do at the start day.

I've done tick exactly, so that for me, my.

Speed Cloud, body pum Hit classes are really a core part of me trying to stay healthy.

Ish I like it now. As I said to you before we pressed record, I went away on the weekend in your book. I saw your book everywhere in every in every bookshop at the airport. Mind you, it was probably the productivity Joy the title that really spoke to me and to many people I'm sure who are listening to these podcasts. Why can we find joy in productivity? Talk to us about well, your whole mission about finding joy at work.

Yeah, the look productivity and joy are not two words that we often put together when we think of productivity. Where we're thinking, oh, I need to do more in less time, and it can really have a sense of stress and hard work. So we can seem quite disconnected from the concept of joy. But if we actually really look at how we go about doing what we need to do and what we really want to do, and the approach that we take to doing that and connecting with our values, our superpowers, our energy, and doing that all at the start of the day in this very systematic, formulate way that I share in the book Preductive to Joy, that really helps you to be calm, intentional, energized, and be effective throughout your day. So my mission is the joy of work. The joy of work is really close to my heart. It's not just my mission, actually, fe it's our mission. It's to help equip and empower five million busy professionals globally move from a sense of daily surviving to daily thriving at work and at home. And this is so important because the research show, according to Missus Talent Global Report in twenty twenty four, that eighty two percent of professionals globally are feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and at the brink of burnout. That's eight out of ten people.

Yeah, that's a lot, but I agree. I mean, I just see it on these podcasts. The episodes that do really well are ones around burnout, stress, overwhelm, and hopefully you're one around finding joy.

Yeah. And the thing is when we're feeling like that, when we're feeling stressed and overwhelmed and at the brink of burn now, it's so hard for us to experience joy, and it's so hard for us to then be a joy to be around and do business with and work with. So it has this massive ripple effect. And that's why the Joy of Mission, which is my global mission, is to really support and equip individual so that they have this tool to set their day up so that they can not only just get done what they need to get done, at the same time, they can experience joy and they can spread joy to others. It's that ripple effect.

Before we go into your well formula prime, we'll talk about that in a minute. Talk to us about the importance of the five minute morning routine, because that's the clincher, isn't it start right and then the rest will follow?

Absolutely, And the research shows is felicity. You know, how we start our day in the morning shapes everything else that follows, and you know, starting your day, rather than reaching out for your phone as many of us do, like we can reach our phone, go through our social media feed, check our messages.

Our emails, a lot of it we're leaving up to chance because whatever comes up in your feed or whatever you've got to respond to then starts to shape how you feel, how you.

Think, what you focus on. And we've become very quickly captured in this reactive mode. So five minutes at the start of your day is so important to be able to prime your mindset and your emotions in terms of what you're going to think about, what you're going to feel, what you're paying attention to, and what's important for you to achieve in your day. And then finally, how you want to show up for your day. I think many of us don't think about how we want to show up for our day, and we're not very conscious and intentional about it. So the five minutes is so critical. I wanted it to be really practical, so we worked really hard on trialing and testing the formula so that we could confidently want so you know, the formula apply in just five minutes.

Okay, what's the formula. As I said, it's an acronym prime that we could So we can do this prime and we'll talk through the listeners now in five minutes. Oh, you're speaking to me. Okay. Pay is for pinpoint emotions and feelings. What's this all about.

Yeah, So many of thes go through our days without acknowledging our emotions. We don't pay attention to them, and then what happens is they say this at some points when we're lowing energy or when someone's ticked to sample, when something isn't going quite right, and now our emotions start speaking louder, and that can then hinder the impact that we want to have or how we want to feel. So paying attention or pinpointing your emotions and feelings at the start of the day is a great way to recognize and acknowledge your emotions. You don't need to analyze them, you know, you just spend time dwelling on them. Simply just acknowledging and pinpointing recognizing what you're feeling is great.

So that's the p the R recognized gratitude. Now this talk to us a bit about this because we all know we need to be grateful writing it down, it's sometimes hard to well, it's easy to say, often harder to do. Talk to us about first the science of gratitude.

Yeah, so, the neuroscience behind gratitude shows that even if you spend two minutes of your day thinking about things that you are grateful for and cultivating gratitude in your life, it increases two key neurotransmitters, dopamine, which is our motivation hormade, and then also serotonin, which is our feel good, happy hormones. So you know, cultivating gratitude is so so important from a hacking your brain, from a happiness motivational perspective, We found that with our research, traditional methods encourage you to write down a list of things that you're grateful for, that absolutely will help you. But if you want to sustain those levels of dope mean and those serotonin levels, we need to get a bit deeper. And in the formula, I suggest that you ask yourself two questions. One is, think of a time when someone has expressed gratitude to you, because what that does is it helps you think of a time where you've been recognized, You feel valued, you feel like you're contributing that in itself makes us feel so good and it helps and reminds us that we're doing good. We're doing good out there. And then the second part of that question is think of someone in your life that helps or inspires you to be a better version of yourself. Now, this question is so it's such a wonderful question because when it does, it helps you seek out qualities that you admire in others. Often when we see qualities that we admire in others, we actually have those qualities in ourselves. We just haven't unlocked.

Them or don't recognize them.

You know.

Often I think we don't sit there and actually validate that, Yeah, I'm actually I do this as well, or I do this as well. We always think, oh I do that, I want to do that. I'm not good enough. We're get into that cycle of I'm not good enough, I'm not you know, perfectionism, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah. Absolutely, So again, this anchors it back to helping you really recognize the contribution and the impact that you're already having and you're making. So that's the gratitude piece.

We're back after this shortbreak with more from Simmy. Now, let's talk about the I identify what's working and could be working harder. How do we go about doing this?

So this question really helps to hack in to our brains negativity bias. So we all have a negativity bias that comes from our evolutionary days of being cave men and cave women. Our brain's primary job is to keep a safe small and hidden from any threat to harm. So the brain is on high alert to really seek out anything that's negative that could cause any shame, harm, guilt. So by asking ourselves that question, is what you know? Identifying what's working well in my environment is really helping your brain to bypass that negativity buyers and look out for even those small things. It could be that you've had a really good night's fleet, like your children haven't woken you well.

That it could be a great your name's not mowing the lawn person in the morning, and I've had a chance to have a bit of a lane perhaps on the weekend.

Just those small things that you can potentially be grateful for or recognize that they're working well. And once you do that with one or two things at the start of the day flicity, it's like a domino effect. Your brain then starts to look for even more small things in your day that are positive and working well for you.

I like that now. M. We did talk about on healthy each but for those who didn't listen, this is magic for me. This is M is for magic. But what is M? What does M stand for in your prime acronym?

You're gonna have to look at it calling it magic. This is really about making a list of three high impact tasks. So most of us have a long laundry to do list of things that we feel we've got to get done in a day. And I completely get it. I've been there and I've operated in that way, but it can feel really unsatisfying and unfulfilling because that list never gets smaller. Even if it starts to get smaller, more things get piled onto it and we get stuck in busyness. So this question really gets you to think about, with your goals and your higher purpose and your mission, what is the three things.

That are going to really move the dial for you that day, and then helping you to prioritize and focus on those three things rather than trying to do everything now.

Last week E and I think this is a really well perhaps the most empowering one envision how you want to show up today in that that's obviously we're still in the morning routine. What is this all about?

Yeah, so this is really about being intentional. This is about being intentional and connecting at the start of the day with your values, your superpowers. We all have superfasive powers. These are things that we're really good at and things that energize us. And thinking about our energy because if we're wanting to achieve those three high impact tasks in a day, we need to show up in a certain way that's going to enable that to happen. And being clear at the start of the day. You know, it might be that you know you've got a lot going on, and you've got some really important meetings and you feel that actually to do those really well, you want to show up being really curious. You want to show up being really present so you can connect really well with others, and you want to show up being calm and feeling balanced. Just priming yourself with those two or three words of how you want to show up really helps you stay accountable throughout the day and it's a great reminder to the impact that you want to have with others as well.

What about for you wake up and you're feeling pretty crap and you're like, I'm not I'm feeling like it. Now I'm going to show up not in a good space. How can we trick our brain into feeling perhaps more positive?

Yeah, so that the first question of the five Qu's formula is to pinpoint your emotion or your feeling. So that's why that question is. That's right at the beginning, because it might be that you wake up and you're not feeling great and you're not in the best of moods. Like we're all human, that happens to many of us, you know, frequently, And if that happens, that's okay because you've recognized it. But then as you go through the other questions of the five Qu's formula and you start to think about what you've got on in your day, you may then also think to yourself, okay, for me to really achieve that, well, what's one small thing I could do to be more calmer or a little bit more positive today.

So it gives you an opportunity to adjust, one to accept or two to adjust, and three to just regulate your emotions throughout the day.

So have you how have you been doing this formula yourself? I mean, how has it impacted your life? I mean? And also the days where you might wake up tired or can't be bothered or as you say, you're having all the human experience. How do you work it in your life? Yeah, I was one of the four you know.

Four and a half years ago. I was one of those professionals. I was juggling work, home, a business, two young kids. We were living in a two bed apartment in the trendy, transient West London suburb Chiswick, and life was it was busy, and it really felt overwhelming at times. And I remember this precise momentlicity when I walked in on Friday evening to my home, opened the front door, and I could see like shoes here, and pairastops there, and a bag and toys. It was a mess, and I could hear all this joy and laughter from my TV room and I was furious, serious, flammed my bags out and I'm walking down the hallway and I opened the door to the TV room and my husband and my two kids stopped what they were doing and they looked up at me and they said, oh, here comes the ball, and oh my god, yeah, and look, don't way. They loved me then and they're still loving the door mean now, and they was saying in jest, but it was really a moment of truth for me that I was, you know, always so stressed and highly strung and so focused on the to do list. I wasn't really experiencing much joy. And those closest and my loved ones to me, they I wasn't a joy to be around. And this is where I knew that things needed to change, and the change needed to start with me. And that's why I then went away and started doing research into what could really help at the stars a day to prime our mindset our emotions so that we can experience productivity and joy. And I was finding that many of my clients that I coach, you know, very successful business owners, leaders, people leaders, also with finding themselves in that similar grind. So I knew that it wasn't just me. And then this was a you know, a system, a reliable, science backed system that could support and help many people. So that's where it came from.

Are you still known as the ball?

Do you know what they mean? They really teasy, don't let the ball come out. I like it to help me manage the ball. You know, I do practice the formula every days. Become a core part of my routine and my system, whether when I'm getting dressed in the morning, I actually do it, when I'm on my drive to the gym in the morning, that ten minute commute, I've got five minutes where I just go through the five Qu's formula. Yeah, and it helps me to be to be really connected with myself, with my day, and more importantly, with the people that I interact with every day.

Yeah. I meant to that, Simmy, thank you for coming on Extra Healthy.

Thank you so much for having me.

Well, if you want to read more about prime how to apply it in your life. Simmy's new book is called Productivity a Joy and it is out now. Just reading the title makes me feel more joyful. Anyway. I hope you did enjoy this chat. If you have any ideas for an upcoming up, DM me across social media at Felicity Harley, anything else, head to Body and Soul dot com, dot you follows and socials. Grab our print edition, which is out in your local Sunday paper and until tomorrow stext to Healthy