You probably know moving is good for you in some way. But recent studies show us just how important it is to move regularly. Physical activity can have huge impacts on our ability to perform. It increases our compassion and creativity and changes your hormonal flow in positive ways.

Tip #1: Regular Physical Activity

The studies present neurological evidence, stating that regular physical activity increases your compassion and creativity.

Physical activities engage our parasympathetic systems, which influences our brain and activates it. The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for regulating the body’s unconscious

Compassion and creativity are both things that are very useful when performing any work. Especially in a work environment with other people, compassion is needed just as much as being creative.

Creativity seems to be one of those things you cannot really evoke and we do not yet really understand it, but this could be a great way to increase yours nevertheless.

Physical activity, moving your body regularly by going to the gym or rock climbing then makes us more productive and overall lets us perform better.

Another study gives us another good reason to exercise often: It shows evidence that activating our parasympathetic nervous system by working out also changes our hormonal flow.

Hormones control a lot of things in our body, they can completely change our attitude and mood. They regulate most functions in our bodies and influence us in critical ways. What this means is physical exercise might have very distinct impacts on your ability to perform, changes you might not even recognize at first.

Tip #2: Optimizing your Work Environment

The second big factor in your ability to perform at work is the environment your work in.

Several studies show that working in a good environment, namely one that satisfies workers and reduces unnecessary stress, has a huge impact on the productivity and performance of all workers.

Higher Cognitive Ability and Perception

One study found that any strain on a person impairs them cognitively, perceptually and emotionally. Your brain is occupied with dealing with the stress and can therefore not really focus on the work at hand. Work that takes a huge cognitive effort, such as thinking outside the box and realizing different perspectives, becomes nearly impossible.

You are unable to see the box and can therefore not think outside of the box.

According to another study, people that are happy seem to be more satisfied with their jobs and report having greater autonomy at work. This leads to an overall more positive and less stressful work environment.

More Happiness and Support

Another study also shows that happy workers perform better than their less happy peers and receive more support from their coworkers.

More Motivation and better Health

And last but not least, studies suggest being positive reduces the chance of being unemployed, and the individual is more likely to be physically healthy and live longer.

Positive workers do not only have more motivation and fewer burnouts and stress, they also work more.

My Final Thoughts

This sounds great, but I think there are two final things to consider.

None of this is really surprising, but all this leads to a chain of events that have a huge impact on the work performance of everyone. Creating a less stressful environment at work leads to more positive workers, which then means the workers are more productive, even happier and also more healthy.

A single simple change can influence workers in all those ways. The resulting improvements increase the work performance overall.

To be clear, all this does not only work for offices. All those results also affect your performance when working on your own. The studies focused on companies, but you can use the benefits for yourself all the same.

Secondly, being “happy” or “productive” is hard to measure and very subjective. All those studies are therefore to be taken with a grain of salt, but still the overall results show a clear trend.

Summary

To summarize, there are two main things that increase your overall work performance: