Category: Corporate

At the moment everyone – especially in Cape Town – is aware of the importance of saving water.  But this is no excuse to skip your 2 liters a day. At Sensory Intelligence® Consulting we are all too aware of today’s busy, on-the-go world.  Unfortunately our bodies often take a backseat and we neglect to take care of ourselves.

Here are 5 practical tips to start your wellness journey:

1. Buy a water bottle and keep it on your desk. This will remind you to keep hydrated and give you a reason to go browsing for a nice bottle. Pick something that reflects your style and personality – make drinking water fun!
2. If you don’t like plain water, zoosh it up! Some great water mixes are: strawberries and mint, lavender and lemon, watermelon and basil and mango and pineapple. Or be creative and make your own gorgeous water mix. You can even share your favourite water recipes with friends and colleagues.
3. Keep healthy snacks with you in your bag or at your desk at all times. Proteins like nuts are a great source of sustained energy and their crunchiness gives great self-regulation when we are stressed. Prevent getting “hangry” because your body will start to crave sugar and have you heading for the vending machine before you can say “chocolate”.
4. Make sure you eat a substantial breakfast. Most of us rush out of the house 5 minutes past our deadline. But skipping breakfast will catch up with you later in the day when your energy levels dip and can have you over-indulging at lunch or even dinner. Top entrepreneurs and CEO’s like Richard Branson eat a high-fibre meal every morning.
5. Plan ahead! Spend an hour over the weekend planning your meals. You can prepare ahead and freeze them, or simply write out a meal plan and do some shopping for the week. It will save time in the week and your body will thank you when it’s well-nourished and taken care of. A little planning goes a long way!

With these tips we aim to just re-focus on the core basics of health, namely drinking water and eating healthy.  After all, if you don’t take care of your body, where will you live?

Do you want to know more about your body and brain and what regulates you best? Your Sensory Matrix™ provides easy, practical and effective tips and tools to keep yourself calm, focused and working optimally.

By Karlien Terblanche

Are you struggling with time management for yourself and your team?  Feeling overwhelmed by the ‘To Do’ list?  You are not alone.  So perhaps it’s time for a different approach?

One of the most common complaints I hear from managers is how busy they are and how much work they’ve got to do.  Have we become afflicted by “death by to-do lists?”  While we enjoy the advantages of technology, there has never been a time when we were so overwhelmed with social media and the expectation of instant communication.  E-mails, text messages, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and the list goes on…

No doubt you’ve read a book about time management, attended a training session and used some sort of system to try to list, organize and prioritize all the things that you and the team have to do.  Yet, somehow you probably feel like you still can’t get everything done.  Perhaps time management is a waste of time?

So I wonder, should we be managing our time?  Or is it better to think about how we manage our attention?  Managing our attention allows us to work at our most productive.  In doing so, we can achieve what matters the most.  In turn, we can end each day knowing that we’ve done our best and made the most of the time that we have available.

5 Top Tips for ‘Attention Management’:

1. Be Clear
   What are the most important tasks for the day?  Get everybody in the team to begin each day by getting clear on this.  Write it down, use it as a screen saver, whatever works best.  Make sure that you keep checking back to this across the day.
2. Stay Focused 
   Now everyone knows what they need to do.  Help them keep focused on this list during the day.  Time block tasks, turn off the phone, don’t get distracted by the constant emails, etc (unless it’s their key job to do these things of course).
3. Manage Alertness
   Teach the team how to monitor their alertness.   Do they need to increase or decrease their alertness?  Working in the zone of optimal attention enables everyone to work productively.
4. Take Regular Breaks 
   Regular breaks help everyone to stay focused, a bit of movement thrown in there also helps to manage alertness.
5. Manage your working environment  
   Where do you and your team do the best work?  In silence?  With music?  Office too hot or too cold?  Make sure you think about the environment and how this impacts on everyone’s work.

By Tania Barney, a registered Occupational Therapist with the Health and Care Professionals Council (HCPC), UK.
Professional qualifications:  B App Sc (OT), M App Sc (Health Sciences), University of South Australia.