Using exercise as a tool for increasing productivity and ways to help you successfully incorporate it.
Having to carve out time in your schedule for exercise may seem like it’s taking away from your most limited resource (time) but you may be missing out on a very effective tool for increasing your productivity.
Does exercise actually help?
If so, how should you be approaching your training sessions to ensure you’re benefitting your productivity and not wasting important time?
It makes sense that you’re more productive when you feel like you have more energy and less fatigue.
Exercise helps.
During exercise, bodily processes are enhanced that aid in the creation and feelings of more energy. These include processes such as reductions in inflammation, improved transport of hormones (important for the creation of energy) and increases in neurotransmitters associated with feelings of energy and motivation.
A review by Wender et al., 2002 looked at how exercise effects energy and fatigue states, these are some of the main takeaways:
• Exercise training interventions are associated with big improvements in fatigue, energy and vitality. (1)
• I’ve discussed before (Will Strength Training Help My Mental Health?) how beneficial exercise is for areas of your mental health like cognitive functioning, anxiety, chronic pain etc. yet the authors concluded that the improvements in fatigue, energy and vitality were even greater than these (exercise may also be more effective than CBT and pills (pills are inconsistent and their effects lessen over time)). (1)
• The exercise interventions that included some form of strength training were more beneficial than if it were just aerobic training alone. (1)
• Adherence is important, moderate intensity was more effective than light intensity and as the duration of exercise increased, fatigue improved. (1)
Exercising consistently (with an emphasis on strength training, but I would encourage some aerobic training alongside it) is a powerful tool for improving your feelings of fatigue, energy and vitality. If you’re approaching your feelings of fatigue and lack of energy with the use of various pills (*excluding medical conditions) and not consistently exercising, you may be missing out on the most effective means of help.
Feelings of greater energy/less fatigue are going to be considerably advantageous for your productivity.
“...physical activity has been shown to be positively related to several economic outcomes, such as higher earnings, higher employment, and lower unemployment...” (2)
Poorer health is going to weigh heavily on your ability to perform quality work and also on how comfortable you are doing it. This includes your energy levels (as mentioned above) but also how your body physically feels (aches/pains) and functions (ability to physically perform the work). How does exercise help in these areas?
A paper titled “Exercise is more than medicine: The working age population's well-being and productivity.” (2016) investigated worker’s productivity and areas of their health when they participated in an exercise training intervention; these are some of the results:
• Neck, forearm, lower back and shoulder pain was reduced among the various occupations (3).
• They experienced improved health markers (like BMI) and capacity for work (eg. fitness/strength levels for physical aspect of work or less stress/more energy for workers stuck at a computer) (3).
• Quality of work: Even when these workers performed their exercise during work hours, there was no decrease in ‘on-the-job performance’. Instead, health care workers had an 8% increase in productivity and dentists reported better quality of work (3).
• Again, similar to the last paper, the size of the changes was dependent on training adherence and compliance (3).
The less you’re sick, the more you can get done.
Exercise is well known for its ability to help regulate your immune system.
If you engage in an exercise session that’s of moderate to vigorous intensity (think a solid strength training session) for less than 60 minutes, your immune system’s defence activity is increased (4). In other words, your body is more prepared to fight off various illnesses when engaging in exercise and these effects can compound over time (with each exercise session) resulting in a better functioning immune system!
There’s also evidence of improved gut health (diversified gut microbiota) from engaging in exercise (4). Good gut health is also an essential part of a well functioning immune system.
With a better regulated immune system that is prepared and ready to fight off potential illnesses and disease, you’re setting yourself up for less time away from engaging in what’s important to you and what needs to get done.
Even if you don’t have the intention of specifically seeking out other health and fitness behaviours, with consistent training there’s a good chance you end up paying a little more attention to these other areas that influence your ability to perform and recover.
This could mean greater attention to your diet or including some sleep strategies so you’re ready for a big session the next day.
The great thing about these other related health behaviours is that they can further boost your productivity. For example, improved sleep is well known for boosting productivity and your ability to work.
There are two main things worth thinking about:
As mentioned above, a crucial component of achieving positive productivity outcomes in those papers was the participant’s adherence and compliance to the exercise intervention.
One of the main issues that can pop up when it comes to maintaining high levels of adherence:
• Decision Fatigue:
Adhering to an exercise routine is going to help your levels of fatigue, yet when you’re experiencing fatigue it’s hard to get yourself to engage in the exercise routine and/or make the decisions needed for it. You may be familiar with this concept of ‘decision fatigue’, ‘ego depletion’, ‘mental fatigue’ etc.
“… the limited reserve of stamina for decision-making becomes drained, which leads to poor self-control subsequently.” (5)
“… that numbness you feel at the end of an overloaded day, after you’ve decided how much to spend, whom to hire and what to do, over and over.” (5)
The main idea behind decision fatigue is that you have a limited capacity to regulate your behaviours. After a day full of making decisions, you have little left to make more and instead experience things like impulsivity, passivity, avoidance, less physical endurance and less cognitive ability (5). In other words, you’re a lot less likely to be able to get yourself to engage in something like a physical exercise routine (unless you really enjoy it and/or it’s a habit) and make the decisions needed to perform it.
• Have a basic and easy-to-follow training plan. An example would be something like this program that can easily slide into your daily routine and you don’t have to think much about it: Short On Time And Training Feels Overwhelming? Here’s A Program For You
• Work towards making it a habit and a frictionless process (that doesn’t require decisions and conscious effort). To do this, give it a time and place, remove common obstacles (like not having any weights, having to drive very far away to get to a gym, not knowing what to do etc.), have social support that helps keep you accountable (could be a coach or a training partner) and know that it’s going to get easier over time (it’ll become a habit).
• There are some other potential reasons for struggling with adherence, something here may help: Why Can’t I Stick to a Health and Fitness Behaviour?
Work stress, life stress, physical stress – they all fill up your ‘stress bucket’. When all of these stressors become too much for you to handle, you’re more susceptible to injuries, illnesses, psychological struggles and so on.
This is where being able to train at different intensities and work on different training qualities depending on the other stressors you’re subjected to is important.
If every time you train it’s at a maximum intensity and you don’t know how to access another gear, then when stressors are high, your exercise routine may instead contribute to greater feelings of fatigue/low energy and detract from your productivity instead of improving it.
At the same time, if you only ever train at a low intensity, you may be missing out on a lot of the benefits associated with moderate to higher intensities.
Do your best at being aware of how much stress you’re experiencing and how your body is feeling and varying your training accordingly:
• For example, If your workload has been high, there are family dramas and you’re getting less sleep, you may need to have a ‘low-moderate’ intensity session where you use less weight or don’t complete as much work.
• If you’re feeling great and life/work stress is low, this would be the time to have a higher intensity session where you lift heavier weights and get more work done.
• Another way of organising it could be to train a different physical quality. For example, when stressors are high and you’re not feeling great, you could engage in a light aerobic session for 30 minutes or perform a strength training session where you’re using much lighter weights and just getting lots of blood flow through the body. If stressors are low, you could work on a physical quality that is more taxing (like building muscle [performing lots of sets with heavyish weight] or lifting very heavy weights).
Engaging in a consistent exercise routine is a potent tool for increasing your productivity and being able to work on what’s important to you. You get an improvement in your energy/fatigue levels, you perform work of better quality and physical comfort, you experience less illness and sickness and you begin to focus on other related health behaviours that further boost your productivity. To ensure you’re gaining these benefits, having strategies to establish adherence and incorporating different training intensities/physical qualities is going to be the best way to train.
1) Wender, Carly L A et al. “The Effect of Chronic Exercise on Energy and Fatigue States: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Trials.” Frontiers in psychology vol. 13 907637. 3 Jun. 2022, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.907637
2) Kari, Jaana T et al. “The Individual-Level Productivity Costs of Physical Inactivity.” Medicine and science in sports and exercise vol. 55,2 (2023): 255-263. doi:10.1249/MSS.0000000000003037
3) Sjøgaard, Gisela et al. “Exercise is more than medicine: The working age population's well-being and productivity.” Journal of sport and health science vol. 5,2 (2016): 159-165. doi:10.1016/j.jshs.2016.04.004
4) Nieman, David C, and Laurel M Wentz. “The compelling link between physical activity and the body's defense system.” Journal of sport and health science vol. 8,3 (2019): 201-217. doi:10.1016/j.jshs.2018.09.009
5) Pignatiello, Grant A et al. “Decision fatigue: A conceptual analysis.” Journal of health psychology vol. 25,1 (2020): 123-135. doi:10.1177/1359105318763510
Food choices that can drive your fitness and health outcomes beyond their calorie, fat, carbohydrate and protein content.
Read article >
How including both aerobic training and strength training improves different areas of your health and fitness (and how to go about it).
Read article >
Why everyone should consider supplementing with 'Creatine'.
Read article >
.svg)
