How to cultivate well-being at work

Most of us spend a lot of time at work. In fact, if you work 8 hours per day (and most of us actually work more hours than that), that means you spend 1/3 of your life at work.

In the words of American writer Annie Dillard, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

So the time you spend at work has a huge impact on the overall quality of your life. Is your time at work inspiring and uplifting, or is it dull and draining?

Since most people agree that experiencing happiness is one of the major goals in life, it follows that we should make sure our time at work is spent in a way that generates as much well-being as possible.

Quite apart from our choice of profession, which obviously has a big effect on how much happiness we experience at work, there are a number of things we can do to cultivate well-being at work.

Here are 3 important steps you can take to make your time at work more positive:

Take regular breaks

At many workplaces there seems to be a high level of expectation to maintain a continuous level of maximal output throughout the day, with just 1 or 2 short breaks, usually for lunch and coffee.

But numerous studies have shown that when people work at a maximum level for more than 2 or 3 hours in a row, their concentration decreases.

As a result, they lose focus on their specific task, plus they lose sight of how their task relates to the bigger picture of their company’s goals, not to mention their own life goals.

Also, if you work at maximum capacity for 8 or 9 hours in a row, your well-being tends to decrease, and you’ll find yourself exhausted and drained at the end of the day.

So, instead of powering through your whole working day in one continuous effort, it’s better to break it up into blocks of about 2 hours of concentrated effort, followed by a short break of 15-20 minutes. 

While some employers might feel that they are losing out on productivity with such a system because their employees are taking more breaks, studies have shown that the opposite is actually true.

People who take regular breaks can generate a higher degree of focus and productivity even towards the end of the day, and therefore generate more meaningful results.

Practice mindfulness at work

If you take regular breaks during the working day, one great way to spend those breaks is by practicing mindfulness.

Mindfulness is a meditative practice that is about becoming aware of everything that’s going on in your experience right now.

In order to be successful at work, we learn to focus almost exclusively on the job or task that needs to be completed.

So, in a sense, mindfulness is the opposite of our mindset at work. It’s about allowing our focus to widen, and to include all the small details happening in our experience right now.

If you’re not used to practicing mindfulness, this can be quite difficult at first, since we are so used to focusing all our attention on specific tasks.

In that case, a great way to start is by focusing your attention on your breathing.

As you pay attention to the coming and going of your breath, you’ll find your mind becoming quiet, and you’ll probably also start to notice a lot of other small things in your experience that were drowned out by your thoughts before.

Mindfulness is a great way to balance the intense focus on specific ideas and activities that we need cultivate at work, and thus can help us to feel refreshed and re-energized after just a few minutes of practicing it.

Reflect on the significance of your work regularly

Most of us are so busy at work just getting the job done, that we rarely stop to think about the significance of our work.

But that’s a very ‘short-sighted’ way to relate to our job. Instead, a very powerful practice is to spend some time thinking about how our work is helping other people.

No matter what our job is, there’s a very high likelihood that someone will benefit from the results of it. Apart from getting a financial reward for our work, this is one of the major factors that makes our professional efforts meaningful.

It can be extremely gratifying and at the same time motivating to think about this every day.

You could even turn it into a short ritual that you incorporate into your working day. Just take a few minutes to think about how your work is touching the lives of others, and how it is helping them to get what they want.