As sleep becomes a distant memory in the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, missing a workout seems justifiable. After all, using your extra productive time to finish up an urgent task seems like the logical thing to do. Draining your energy by exercising defeats the purpose, right?
As exercise has countless proven benefits, there is no better time to reap those benefits than during crunch time. Sure, sometimes it may feel like you don’t have enough energy or there aren’t enough hours in the day to finish tasks, but the body happens to be smart enough to work at maximum efficiency when needed, without caffeine.
Aside from the fact that exercising makes you happy and the cheerier you are, the more productive you become, there are other ways in which your productivity is increased. Due to the cells in the body that contain mitochondria and enable you to produce energy, even the slightest exercise has the potential to create energy in your body, rather than deplete it. The more you exercise, the more mitochondria is produced to provide your body with an energy source known as adenosine triphosphate.
That energy, which is obtained from exercise in the form of oxygen and nutrients, has plenty of benefits for the body and brain. A quick walk will improve the speed of processing information, increase alertness, heighten decision making capabilities, and ultimately allow you to benefit from a surge of productivity.
A recent study from the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine involved two workplaces in dental care, where one workplace allotted 2.5 hours per week to exercise, while the other group maintained their usual 40 hour work week with no exercise.
The results showed that the groups were able to maintain or increase their productivity. The group that added exercise to their week felt more productive than on the days they didn’t exercise. The employees also observed that they got more done at work, had a greater work capacity, and were sick less often.
Perhaps devoting less than 10 per cent of your day to getting your heart rate up won’t seem so impractical next time. Those 20 minutes of exercise, in exchange for forty minutes of fuel to make you twice as efficient seems like a pretty fair trade off, which we can all aim towards!
Tatiana Prisiajny, Features Editor
Featured image courtesy of Tatiana Prisiajny, Features Editor
