Energy holding work environment
Here is a Guest Blog
from Ritva Karlström, Amarill AB, Sweden.
See also www.amarill.se
After summer holiday people, including myself, are not only back in business. We are also back in our work environment and all that goes with it – mail conversations, phone calls, meetings etc.
Although not everybody spends his or her holiday intentionally physically active, many of us get a greater variety of movement that is different from the usual pattern of movement at work. Many also get a greater amount of physical activity, be it from walking, gardening, painting, swimming, or from just allowing the cooking to take its time.
This increased amount and different pattern of movement plays an important role in reducing stress and helps us replenish both our physical and mental energies. Different patterns of movement in a different environment trigger new paths of thought. Our actions and reactions are not merely products of thought processes. Just as certain smells trigger certain thoughts or memories, so do different muscle activities trigger different thoughts and memories. This gives us a chance not only to rest our bodies and minds from work, but also opens up for some creative (different) thinking too. Maybe you too, among many others, have experienced considering a new life style, job or business idea after a couple of weeks of holiday?
But the opposite applies too. Going back to our usual work environment and usual pattern of movement, not only reactivates productive but also unproductive and stressful work and thoght patterns.
In a perfect world, we would come back from a restorative holiday and be able to hold this energy and creativity until the next holiday. Rarely this happens. We are often stuck in stuck environments and work solutions.
There are things though, that we can do to help us hold our energy and creativity. With work environments and work tools designed for flexibility and variety, thus of high usability, we can work with instead of against the variation that our bodies are designed for. Instead of only adjusting ourselves to IT solutions , we can tune in on what makes function and be creative and work to adjust IT solutions to these needs. With restorative spaces at work, designed for replenishing breaks, we can increase the continous restoration of energy in our daily work life - giving us the benefit of a better quality of life as well as an increased energy of our work throughout the year.
