How do you do your best work?

Previously, we wrote about The End of the Desk and we considered three massive workplace trends. Also, I’ve been writing a bit lately about working in your strengths, overcoming your weaknesses and exposing your hidden talents.

When you bring all of this together you reach this basic and fundamental question:

How do you do your best work?

Your Ideal Day

In a lot of goal-setting and vision creation programs there is an exercise called ‘Your Ideal Day’. As the title suggests you map out what your perfect day would look like.

For instance, you wake up with your lover/partner/spouse with beautiful sunshine streaming into your room, you walk out of your bedroom, take a few steps onto a beautiful sandy beach and jump into a shiny blue clear ocean, have a refreshing splash, enjoy your favourite things for breakfast and so on…

You get the picture… It’s a worthwhile exercise. And, if you haven’t done this before I’d suggest you have a go at writing and defining your ideal day. Once you’ve written it, compare it to your typical day.

[Tweet “A great exercise to do is to describe your ideal day”]

Your Ideal Work Mode

Whilst we talk about the ‘what’ of our ideal day, we rarely talk about our ‘how’. And, today we want to consider: How do you do your best work?

[Tweet “To get more done with less effort ask this simple question: How do I work best?”]

If things are going mobile, shifting to audio and sitting is going to kill you then this is a good prompt to rethink how you get things done. And, not just here and there. It’s time to rethink how you’re spending most of your time.

Here’s some questions for you to consider…

• Are you working in solitude enough or too much?
• Are you working in public enough or too much?
• Are you spending too much time working alone?
• Are you spending enough time working in partnership and collaborating with other people?
• How can you start speaking your words instead of typing them? For instance, you can either have your words transcribed at modest cost online or use dictation software.
• How can you read less and listen more?
• How can you sit less and be more active?
• How can you work on the run?

My New Work Practices

Here’s some of the new work practices that I’ve been experimenting with this…

• Instead of sitting down to talk on the phone I stand and walk about.
• I listen to more podcasts and read less books.
• I go for a daily walk and either make phone calls or listen to podcasts.
• I do my emails first thing in the morning standing at the breakfast desk.
• Instead of sitting at my desk for hours on end, I get up and do some star jumps or push ups a couple of times during the day.
• I’m recording more of my conversations and turning the spoken word into written words.
• I’m exploring a make-shift stand up desk to see what will work best as a permanent solution.

PS: Love to hear how you work best and what practices you’ve adopted from the three trends of mobile, audio and movement.