Getting specific

If you work in the city it's more than likely that at some point you'll be
sent off for some training which may turn out to be a total waste of time or
actually be rather helpful. I recently went on a course on improving
productivity at work that thankfully proved to be the latter.

I picked up lots of helpful tips that I'll be using at work, but afterwards
I got thinking about the application of some of these in terms of health. I
think in the world of work, especially with performance appraisals and
regular reviews, most of us are now used to setting goals or targets but
when it comes to our personal lives, including our health, I think the
majority of us don't do this explicitly.

One of the main points in the seminar was that most people's to do lists
don't actually list actions or things to do, more broad objectives, and so
this slows down actually achieving anything. The same probably applies for
people's health goals - whilst focusing explicitly on your goals for your
health is a very worthwhile exercise, it needs to be done in a way that will
get you to take action!

For example you may write down your objective is to improve your health, but
that doesn't tell you where to start so you could quite easily get nowhere
with it. You could break it down into more specific areas, for example:
Have more energy, improve the condition of my skin, have a leaner body,
however even then these objectives don't tell you where to start. To really
be effective, against each goal you must identify what you can actually do
about it, then pick one action and do it!!

I've put some examples below to get you started:

Have more energy:
- Buy some healthy snacks to take into work
- Eat every three to four hours
- Eat some protein with every meal and snack
- Go to bed at 10:30pm to get eight hours sleep

Improve skin condition:
- Buy a bottle of water every morning to drink through at work
- Buy some oily fish to eat this weekend
- Book a facial
- Read labels to avoid all added sugar

Have a leaner body:
- Resist the biscuits and chocolates at work this week and then reward
myself with a treat on the weekend
- Go to the gym three times this week
- Find a no sugar muesli to have for breakfast
- Only drink alcohol on two nights this week