You have an important report due at the end of the day and have blocked out the entire day to focus on it. Your morning routine was relaxing; the journey to work went without a hitch.  After reading through your emails and having a chat with your colleagues, you feel ready to make a start. Suddenly, out of nowhere, your boss asks you if you have time to help with another urgent task due by lunchtime, which has come in unexpectedly.  Do you say ‘no’? Or do you offer up your time, knowing you will be hard pushed to get your report done in an afternoon? 

Setting boundaries, particularly saying ‘no’ to your boss, can be a difficult thing to do. We are empathetic creatures, and our survival as a species has depended on helping each other. We are biologically wired to work together in order to achieve more than we could individually. This means traits such as selflessness and compassion are valued highly in our society, and focusing on our own needs can feel unnatural or have a stigma attached to it. 

In a work context, setting boundaries is essentially making sure you can negotiate for yourself and ensuring you have plenty of energy to get on with your daily tasks. Although this might sound obvious, when you are juggling the competing demands of customers, team members or clients, as well as your own needs, it can become difficult to find time for everything. It is important to give both yourself and those around you the appropriate amount of attention, and even more important to ensure you feel energised yourself first. 

Although occasionally taking on more work than you can manage won’t do a lot of harm in the short-term, over time this will increase your stress levels and take its toll on your body.  Whereas a little stress is necessary for getting things done, excessive stress can lead to poor physical health, difficulty relating to colleagues and underperformance.  Striking a balance is crucial, and carefully setting boundaries is one way to work towards this. 

In recent years, there has been a huge shift in work culture, with ‘work-life balance’ becoming the phrase of the moment. Although it initially appeared to be a trend bad managers could pay lip service to, millennials are now demanding opportunities for balance from their roles, and employers have had to step up.  Many companies now go beyond empty reminders that employees need to take care of themselves, and offer structures to facilitate self-care and mental health.  

There has never been a better time for taking care of yourself in the workplace, and setting boundaries more frequently is an effective way to begin. 

If you have difficulty setting boundaries with your colleagues, particularly around your available time, these are our top tips to help you navigate each situation and communicate with others appropriately.

Time management: Blocking out your time carefully can be hugely helpful for setting clear boundaries for yourself and with others.  You might prefer to organise your time weekly or daily, but whichever approach you choose, having a visual of the amount of time you have available can be helpful. If somebody asks you for help with a project, you can quickly say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ based on how much time you can allocate. 

Communication: Letting your team members know how you are feeling or whether you need support is crucial.  If you are stressed or feel like you have reached your limit, communicating this well and offering an alternative path forward can help to take the pressure off. If you need to reset, make your colleagues aware of this.  If you are a leader and have a tendency to take on work that others could be doing, don’t be afraid to delegate, especially if you are under the pump trying to complete a task that requires your level of skill and experience. 

Regularly checking in: Mindfulness is now a widely respected and hugely popular tool for managing stress at work. While there are many apps out there to guide you through practice, this approach isn’t for everybody. Mindfulness can simply be tuning in to where you are and how you are feeling in a given moment.  Our thoughts are constantly on the go, and regular practice, however you choose to do it, can be beneficial for keeping our active brains in check. If you feel like your thoughts are racing, take a break and go for a walk.  Focus on your breathing while you do this for extra benefits.  Finding a moment of calm during the day can be rejuvenating.

Focus on the task at hand: On the Go1 Blog, we recently discussed the best ways to maintain your focus at work. Your ability to concentrate can be an indication of whether you have taken on too much, or set yourself too much to do that day. If your mind is darting around to the other activities you need to complete, it might help to review your scheduled activities and make adjustments. Over-committing yourself can be a huge source of stress and it is important to be realistic about what you can achieve. 

Be wary of traditional ‘to-do lists’: Recording everything you need to do in a long, never-ending list may offer you temporary relief from racing thoughts, but it could leave you open to feeling unsatisfied and frustrated with your work when you are unable to check off every item you have recorded. You also run the risk of accepting more work without considering the amount of time you can spare.  

Remember, setting boundaries is a constant balancing act, not something anybody can perfect. It can also feel as though you are letting others down by saying ‘no’, but ultimately they will be more grateful if the quality of your work isn’t impacted by lack of time or stress. By making it a priority in your life to set limits, you can realise when you need to reset or look after yourself. If you can do this, you will be well on the way to feeling healthier and happier in your work and daily life. 

False

Why setting boundaries at work is essential for mental wellbeing

Stress: it’s all about how you deal with pressure

Why do some people thrive under pressure, while others fold? 

What’s different is how different people manage stress, and meditation is an effective tool to help everyone manage stress. 

Stress causes a range of problems from minor discomfort, to poor work performance and in the worst cases, serious health issues. The temptation is to avoid stress, but we can’t get away from stress because it’s a fact of life. But what we can do is that we can get better at dealing with the negative effects of stress. Meditation is a proven method to quickly move our bodies from an unhealthy flight or fight response, into a rest and repair mode. And in the longer-term, meditation builds resiliency to stress for better mental health.

Log in to your Go1 portal to see this example of a stress release meditation. 

What's your stress score? Find out over here.

Because work is a significant source of stress, this article covers what you need to know about stress in the workplace for you personally and also for business owners and managers.

People hear the word stress and think it’s a bad thing. The thing is that stress is just pressure. When we stress ourselves, we grow in response. That’s how exercise works, that’s how we grow personally, this is called eustress or healthy stress. The problem is when we suffer unhealthy forms of stress or don’t have effective methods to deal with everyday stress. That’s when stress turns into distress and has disastrous effects of our health, productivity and work

Distress is bad for your mental and physical health

When we are suffering from stress, our bodies produce stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. This is an automatic reaction that happens in our autonomic nervous system. We can’t control this part of the nervous system. These stress hormones are bad for your health because these hormones increase blood pressure, increase blood sugar, suppress your immune system and stop digestion.

Negative mental health effects of stress include depression, anxiety and irritability. And the negative physical health effects include heart disease, fatigue, indigestion, insomnia and more. 

As you can see suffering from stress causes a lot of health problems. While we can’t directly control our autonomic nervous system, meditation works like a bridge by calming our nervous system which then turns off the unhealthy parts of our stress response. This is why managing your stress with meditation will help you to a healthier, happier life.

Most of the time a little pressure helps us to perform better. But pressure can also make us worse at our jobs. Clearly, when stress makes our mental and physical health worse that’s going to reduce our productivity, but stress also makes us perform worse in other ways too. We all have a limit when it comes to our capacity to work while under stress, but before we reach that tipping point, these are the sort of things that start to slide:

Poor decision making: When we are stressed, our decisions are rushed, driven by irrational emotions and lack planning & rational thought,

Lack of Focus: When there’s too much going on, we don’t know where to focus. We can get pulled from one task to another and we don’t prioritize work effectively. Struggling to focus is one of the symptoms of bad stress

Taking a few minutes to do meditation can stop you from making silly mistakes and can increase your focus. To find out how to use meditation to increase focus, see this short video.

If you’re a business owner or a manager of a team then you need to be aware of the impact of stress on results and what to do about it. Employee productivity is a careful balancing act of being demanding and supportive at the same time. Great leaders know how to inspire their teams to give their best, but unmanaged workplace stress is bad for business. Clearly, if individual productivity falls then this is going to be worse for your results but here are some other ways that stress costs you in business:

Stress leave: 25% of workers take time off each year for stress related reasons ( based on a survey of 5000 workers(1)). And stress-related workers compensation claims are growing

Stress leads to disengaged, low performing, employees

Stress leads to higher employee turnover 

But on a philosophical level, good business comes from creating a workplace where people want to work. Creating an environment where people are challenged and can grow is a good thing, but make sure you balance that out with employee wellbeing.

Now the tricky thing is that your employees are all different and one employee can thrive under pressure while another could have a totally opposite reaction. That’s one of the reasons I recommend that bosses have a weekly one on one meeting with their employees. Weekly one on one meetings will build up familiarity with your employees. You’ll know when you can push for better results and when you need to give your employee more support.

Questions to ask your employees in One on One meetings include: 

Always start with “How was your week?” It’s an open question, over time you’ll build a sense of when your employee has had a tough week, even if they don’t explicitly say something.

“Is there anything coming up (work or personal) that I need to know about?”

Give your employees the knowledge and skills they need to manage their own stress. Ask them to take the Stress Assessment so they know what signs to look for. Use the Go1 course assignment feature to assign them Desk Meditation for Stress Management before they end up calling in sick.

"It's important to differentiate between good stress and negative stress. Good stress is motivating. But as an employee's stress level increases, it reaches a tipping point where it starts to be detrimental and has a negative impact on an employee’s work. That tipping point will vary person to person based on personality attributes, such as the ability to cope with pressure, as well as job factors and aspects of the work environment,” Craig Bosworth, Medibank Private Industry Affairs Manager

If you are feeling fatigued, struggling to focus, feeling overwhelmed, experiencing indigestion these could just be your body’s natural response to the stresses of everyday life. And if you’ve experienced a setback such as personal trauma, conflict or career challenges you can be sure that distress is going to be weighing heavily on your personal health and workplace effectiveness.

To get back to being your normal, happy, healthy self you have to manage stress in your life. This may include seeking professional help. But an effective, easily accessible method is to establish a regular meditation practice to manage stress and improve your focus. Take the 30-Day Meditation Challenge to see what meditation can do for you.

PS: This does not constitute medical advice. Stress can cause significant health issues. If you feel like you may be suffering from stress, please seek professional medical assistance. This article contains information from the Go1 Online Course Desk Meditations. Find out how to establish a convenient meditation habit right at your desk. 

1. Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) survey as cited at – Workplace Stress (2008)

Keith Tatley CA(SA) founded Manager Foundation and Karm.Academy to help people with the soft skills they don’t teach you in school. This includes skills such as Effective One on One Meetings, Performance Communications and Delegation. If you would like to start your journey to become a better boss, then find out your BOSS Superpower now.

Stress management: how to use meditation to manage stress

In this month's webinar, Go1 gave you a sneak peak of some platform features we are working on right now and we were also joined by Craig Jensen (CEO of LearnNowOnline) talking all things IT training.

GO1 Webinar catch-up: May

[00:00 - 15:00] Go1 Content News, this month we had a chat to Craig Jensen (President & CEO of LearnNowOnline) about IT Training. 

Craig discussed the value of IT training for a workplace and how LNO supports learners from beginner all the way to advanced with their IT training. Craig recommends if you are going to have a look at any of LNO's courses these are the ones to checkout:

Cyber Security Awareness : Valuable for every office-worker, as it helps them to be able to identify risks online and how to be careful online. 

Microsoft Office Suite Courses: These are important courses to help all staff become more efficient with the Microsoft products. 

You can read more about LearnNowOnline here.

[15:00 - 27:00] Go1 Platform News, we gave you a sneak peek of whats to come to the Go1 platform in June!

Personalised recommendations for learners

This feature is designed to support better user engagement with their training programs. We have supercharged the current data model to provide enhanced topic-based content recommendations. 

Part of this feature will also include fortnightly emails sent to Learners on every portal. This is the first time Learners will also be able to receive emails, which will help to re-engage and remind them of their training. These emails will feature content relevant to the Learner's chosen topics but only include content available on the portal.  

Admins will have control at a portal level to turn off the fortnightly emails for Learners. 

This feature will be rolled out in June. 

We gave our viewers a sneak peak of the new Insights tab on the webinar. 

The Insights table is designed to support your content discovery. The page features key user statistics, which you can click-through to view specific reports for. 

Excitingly it also offers Admins a view of their employee engagement (as a %) with content topics that are popular in your portal industry. You can compare your portal engagement with that of the industry average. The tab also highlights specific courses most popular for other Go1 customers, who are in your industry and region. 

This Insights page is helpful for customers who use portal custom selection, as it makes it easy to view popular content and add the recommended courses direct into your selection. 

The insights depend on you having your portal information up-to-date; location and industry. For location you only have the option to submit one location - we suggest your use your business headquarters location. 

The feature also includes a monthly email to wrap-up your portal insights - which will be helpful if you want to keep a record of your portal data.   

New Explore dashboard, a better gateway to content

We walked you through the new Explore Dashboard in our previous webinar. It was in early access but now is ready for a final release to all portals. We anticipate to release it the week of the 10th of June.

When you select Explore you will arrive at a page with 5 content blocks displaying:

Top content based on what others are learning in your industry and region by topics. You can select to View More for each blocks - where you will see a list of content matched to that topic in order of popularity.  

New content in your collection/portal (great way to see new content providers now on the portal). 

Admins can define the topics (and hence the content) you see on this dashboard. To do that, head to Portal Settings > Recommendations to choose your topics of interest. 

Important: This dashboard will be available to customers who have all Premium subscribed content on their portal or users of custom selection with more than 100 items selected. If you don't meet this criteria you will continue seeing the search results page. 

Comments or feedback? Email us at product@go1.com

Missed the webinar? You can watch the recording here!

When we hurt ourselves in the office, we find our friendly First Aid Officer who has a helpful kit full of band-aids, wraps, ointments, and remedies. But what about the pain caused by anxiety? Unfortunately, no such kit has previously existed — until now.

For the final workplace wellbeing course for the month of May, we've chosen to review a ViaUp course called Stress, Anxiousness and Anxiety. 

This course is highly recommended, firstly, because it takes an engaging approach to training staff on what is often a complex and misunderstood issue: Mental Health.  

This course empowers an organisation to be able to identify and address the causes and symptoms of anxiety by providing the tools they need to make meaningful and positive progress. After completing this course you will have a much clearer understanding of anxiety and how you can support your own mental health, plus useful strategies to support colleagues who may be suffering.

This course is also recommended, because ViaUp content is delivered via rich and interactive video format. Immediately upon enrolling in a course, you experience interactive learning of a quality unlike most other animated e-learning videos.  

The course is approximately 30 minutes, and breaks down the ViaUp Mental Health First Aid Kit into 6 different parts:

A Dose of Understanding: The beginning of the course looks at the symptoms of anxiety and offers a self assessment to review your own mental health.

Self-Care Manual: This part of the course contains a useful toolkit for you to manage your anxiety.  

Empathy Boost- Through Their Eyes: This section looks at how to support someone with their mental health. 

Talk The Talk: Walk through real conversations to determine how best to talk to your co-workers who you think might need help with their mental health. 

Support For Life: The course concludes by providing different resources to support anxiety conditions. 

The ViaUp Mental Health First Aid Kit is designed to benefit businesses and organisations of any size.

Each ViaUp courses is created in collaboration with relevant leading subject matter experts, to ensure the learning material is accurate and at the forefront of discussions on the subject. This course has been created based on Beyond Blue material (Australian independent non-profit organisation). 

ViaUp is an Australian eLearning creator who specialises in crafting engaging learning experiences through their eLearning content. They bring their content to life, to create corporate learning that resonates.  

You can now find this ViaUp course, plus more in Go1 Premium and it is accessible in all regions, with the content created for an Australian market.

Want more details about employee wellbeing?

Getting started with your Mental Health First Aid Kit

Course of the week: Stress, Anxiousness and Anxiety

Learning more about your personality can be a huge advantage at work, both for your own benefit and for your colleagues. At some point, most of us have been asked to complete the hugely popular Myers-Briggs indicator tests, but implementing changes afterwards isn’t always easy. 

A key part of the testing process is knowing where you are placed on the introversion-extroversion spectrum.  Understanding this aspect of your personality can help you to make simple changes to your working day, and ensure that you are getting the most out of your environment.

Celebrated psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, Carl Jung, introduced the terms introversion and extroversion to the scientific community in the early 20th century, but their meaning has been simplified over time. Those classified as extroverts are thought to be more outgoing, talkative and energetic, whereas those who are introverted are more solitary and reserved in nature. 

A main difference between the two groups is that they are re-energised and motivated in different ways. Current research indicates that the reason for this could be linked to the way individuals process rewards. Those who are more extroverted respond more strongly when a risk pays off, which means they are driven to engage in adventurous behaviour, such as making themselves the center of discussion in a large group.

In the general population, extroverts are estimated to make up 50-74% of people, and dominate social situations.  This puts the responsibility with leaders to ensure introverts are also given the opportunity to thrive. From working environment to meeting set up, carefully considering personality types is crucial to getting the most out of yourself or your team. 

Supporting different personality types in the workplace

In her book, Quiet, author and proud introvert, Susan Cain, discusses the fact that so much potential for collaboration is being lost in the modern workplace, which is organised in favour of those who are more extroverted. She argues that this imbalance extends back to the school classroom, which is open-plan and involves a significant amount of group work and class discussion. Introverts generally prefer to be alone more often and spend a lot of time thinking.  So, what can employees and managers do to make working environments more suitable for a wider range of people and harness new ideas?

Use of space: Think about how your workspace is set up. Do you work mostly from home, or are you in a busy, open-plan office? If you are more introverted, think about ways you can find time for quiet during your working day. Perhaps there are meeting rooms you can book, which will allow you two hours of uninterrupted time to focus.  Of course, depending on the kind of work you do, this isn’t always possible, but look for opportunities throughout the day.  If you are more extroverted, you could organise more collaborative work sessions to boost energy and creativity.     

Communicate your needs: Once you have an idea of where you lie on the introversion-extroversion spectrum, it is important to communicate what you need to those you work with.  If you are in an open-plan office, it might be the norm for others around you to interrupt for a quick chat.  If you need to focus on the task you are doing, it is important to set boundaries and organise an alternative time to talk about a project.  If you set boundaries, your colleagues should respect this, and will most likely appreciate some quiet time to themselves when they need it! 

Respect your colleagues’ time and space: It is important to remember that this works both ways.  If you need to ask a colleague or manager a question, be mindful and ask them when they have time to talk.  Try to be specific and action-oriented when you are asking for a colleague’s time; they will appreciate your efficiency. 

Thinking time: Introverts often work best when given time to think and respond to a question.  Engaging an introvert in quick decision making can be anxiety inducing, and won’t result in the best outcome.  This doesn’t mean that introverts are unable to manage thinking in this way (just as extraverts are able to sit quietly and think through responses). It means they will function best and more naturally when given the time to process their answers. If you are more introverted, you can use this knowledge to your advantage, and where possible ask for more time to respond if you need it.

Meeting set up: Meetings are an important time for your team to come together and work through issues that need to be tackled. However, they are notoriously unproductive, with as many 92% of people multitasking whilst attending a regular team catch-up. This is particularly true for introverts, who are less likely to speak up in front of a large group of people. As a leader, being aware of this is particularly important when communicating in groups. Is every person present at the meeting given the opportunity to speak or put forward their ideas? How is this organised? Is it absolutely necessary to have a meeting? These questions will help you to guide the different members of your team and bring them together. 

Option to work remotely: The option to work remotely can also be a great way to keep the more introverted members on your team happier.  If it is possible in your workplace, think about offering it, while ensuring that your employees remain engaged and productive.  You will soon know if a team member isn’t pulling their weight if their assigned tasks don’t get done! 

Respect your employees’ time and space: Although sometimes as a leader it is necessary to interrupt your employees to ensure everything is running smoothly, if you can respect their time where possible this will go a long way, particularly for those on the more introverted end of spectrum.  Catching people off guard to discuss an issue, particularly if it is sensitive, is unlikely to produce the best outcome. Set up meeting times with your employees where possible and they will thank you for it. 

Introverted or extroverted? How to make the best of your working day

As of July 1st 2019, the New Aged Care Quality Standards will be in place. The Aged Care Quality Standards will apply to all aged care services including residential care, home care, flexible care and services under the Commonwealth Home Support Program. 

With eight new standards, a stronger consumer focus and clearly articulated care and service expectations, now is the time to familiarise and educate yourself with the new standards. To help you prepare and meet the new standards, Go1 has partnered with Australian training provider Aged Care Learning Solutions to bring you all the online training courses you need to be ACQS compliant. 

Subscribe to Go1 Premium and you’ll get instant access to high-quality training content from Aged Care Learning Solutions, including a series of new learning resources which reflect on each individual standard from the point of view of the consumer. 

You’ll also have unlimited access to a range of training materials from other top content providers, offering courses on topics such as nursing, infectious diseases, and mental health, plus soft skill training including leadership, communication, and more. As a one-stop training shop, Go1 Premium provides you with everything you need to help employees to improve their skills and provide quality care to residents. 

If you're interested in finding out more, come chat with us in person at the following events:

Governance in Aged Care: 29th-30th May, Sydney

Strengthening the Aged Care Workforce: 4th-5th June, Sydney

Aged Care Tech Forum: 18th-20th June, Melbourne

Quality in Aged Care: 27th-28th August, Sydney

Remember, all Australian aged care providers will be monitored and assessed against the new standards from July 1st 2019.

Are you ready for the New Aged Care Quality Standards?

Employee stress negatively affects employee wellbeing. Barriers that stop employees working to the best of their ability can lead to stress and will impact productivity and staff mental health. 

In line with this month's topic of workplace wellbeing, we've chosen to review the course 10 Minutes Managing Stress created by Learning Planet. 

When employees are happy and healthy, they’re engaged. Engaged employees are almost always more productive and profitable. Stressed employees, on the other hand, can become burnt-out and put their mental health at risk.  


The problems of not addressing employee stress: 

Creates a negative work culture where people aren’t encouraged or supported

Uncertainty around job role and responsibility

Stress can be due to heavy workload, unrealistic deadlines

People with mental health conditions aren’t supported

Stress and resilience skills in the workplace can give your employees the ability to cope with and rise to the inevitable challenges, problems and setbacks you meet in the course of your life and come back stronger from them. Pressures and stressors will continue to increase with greater time management demands and workloads. 

Learning Planet, via Go1, has information readily available in 1 minute and 10 minute videos to offer your employees effective stress management techniques. Why not act now and help your staff adapt to stress, while also improving your workplace culture of wellbeing?

Learning Planet has two courses that give a holistic view of stress in the workplace and how to manage it:

Taking just 10 minutes out of your day to do the courses will teach you strategies on how to manage stress with fun and interactive microlearning modules! Both courses look at various aspects of stress, including the body's stress response, good and bad stressors, ways to manage stress, and the flight or fight response. 

Each course starts with an engaging video and then finishes with a workbook to help employee's complete their learning experience.

Learning Planet is a microlearning video provider from New Zealand who has partnered with Go1 to offer a suite of their soft skills and personal development courses.

Learning Planet offer two types of videos for all of their training topics: 10 minute videos to teach new skills or concepts, and 1 minute ‘skill refresher’ videos that can be used to reinforce existing skills. They combine video, PDF, and workbooks to provide learners with clear, succinct training to help meet their learning needs.

We have 19 of Learning Planet’s microlearning interactives available in Premium

Learning Planet's course can help employees learn how to be more mindful of stress - and manage it, when it strikes!

Course of the week: 10 Minutes Managing Stress

In 2019, the digital age is very much upon us, and the workplace is unrecognisable when compared with 20 years ago. From open plan co-working spaces, to being able to work from anywhere in the world, communication, expectations and the nature of work are rapidly changing. 

In this shifting landscape, the ability to hold your attention on a task is becoming ever more challenging. Being able to multitask was previously worn as a badge of honour, yet research tells us that the brain, unlike a computer, is incapable of running too many complex tasks at once. Mental overload at work can seriously affect productivity, wellbeing and safety (1). 

While social media connects us to friends and family across the world, instant messaging is making it increasingly difficult to complete everyday tasks and to remain focused (2). US author and blogger, Mark Manson, explains that we now live in an ‘attention economy’ (3). With endless knowledge now available at the click of a button, our attention is of high value to advertisers, companies and organisations. 

In this environment, it isn’t surprising that we struggle to hold our attention on certain activities. Becoming completely immersed in the task at hand, or finding your ‘flow’ is proven to increase contentment at work and improve the quality of work produced (4). This state becomes ever more difficult to attain with so many distractions competing for our attention. 

So, what can you do to improve your focus on tasks? 

Setting up routines you can stick to is a good way to begin. 26th president of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt, is said to have worked at the same time, in the same place every day, and would work ignoring all other distractions that came his way. It was impossible to distract him. Although he would only spend a quarter of the average day working, he completed all of the tasks he needed to by using his time effectively.

In his 2016 book, Deep Work: Rules For Focused Success in a Distracted World, Georgetown professor and author, Cal Newport, explores Roosevelt’s ‘deep work’ ethic.  He defines deep work as:

“Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.” (5)

Granted, Roosevelt lived in a world where fewer distractions were competing for his attention, but with discipline it is possible to be more attentive. The key is to identify your main distractors and to be aware of them.  These might be thoughts, notifications or particular people! If you sit back and think, you will know straight away what distracts you. Finding a way to block out and manage these temptations is the is the more difficult step, but the rewards will speak for themselves. 

Go1 top tips for maintaining focus at work

Prioritise: Write a to-do list, but only for the day ahead.  An endless to-do list without any consideration for the time you have will not be effective.  If you can write out what you need to do that day, along with your top three priorities, you will have a greater sense of accomplishment when you reach the end of your list. Using a traditional to-do list can easily lead to procrastination and make you feel as though there is a huge, unmanageable mountain of work to do. 

Stick to daily routines: doing tasks and activities at the same time each day can help you to stay focused and make your day flow more smoothly.  When your brain knows what to expect, and when to expect it, it can focus on other processes, such as creativity and deep thinking. 

Manage expectations: Other people, no matter how well-intentioned, are a huge source of distraction, particularly in the workplace. If you are working to a deadline or really need to get started on a task, you need to be sure that your team members are aware of this.  Let them know when you are available for meetings and schedule them in, or arrange a time to catch up with them over coffee. You need to be responsible for communicating your needs to others and making yourself available to them only partially. This might also mean booking yourself into a private room if it is available, or taking yourself off to a quieter area, depending on your office layout.

Manage notifications: research shows that every time your phone goes off, you are distracted by it and taken away from the task you are focusing on. 6 Set aside specific times during the day to respond to emails and messages if possible. 

Meditate: the brain is plastic, meaning that at any point in life we can teach it new things or learn healthier habits.  Focus is a skill that we all have the capacity to develop, and meditation is a fantastic way to practice it. Meditation involves training the mind to focus on the breath, and this focus can translate to your daily life long after you stop practising (7). You will also be able to catch yourself when you are thinking about how cute your dog is or what you ate for breakfast, instead of writing up the report due at the end of the day. 

Rubinstein, J. S., Meyer, D. E. & Evans, J. E. (2001). Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27, 763-797.

Vitak, J., Crouse, J., & LaRose, R. (2011). Personal Internet use at work: Understanding cyberslacking. Computers in Human Behavior, 27(5), 1751–1759. 

Davenport, T. H., & Beck, J. C. (2001). The attention economy: Understanding the new currency of business. Harvard Business Press.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2013). Flow: The psychology of happiness. Random House.

Newport, C. (2016). Deep work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world. Hachette UK.

Iqbal, S. T., & Horvitz, E. (2010, February). Notifications and awareness: a field study of alert usage and preferences. In Proceedings of the 2010 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work (pp. 27-30). ACM.

Wax, R. (2013). Sane new world: taming the mind. Hodder & Stoughton.

How to maintain your focus in the ‘attention economy’ 

Share your ideas and opinions with Go1's Research Group. 

Go1 is building a Research Group, where we can connect with you and learn from your experiences with the product. 

If you want to talk about all things Go1 then join the Go1 Research Group today!

As Go1 grows and our product matures, we want to continue to keep creating great experiences for Go1 users globally. This Group is a place for Go1 users (Admins and Learners) and non-Go1 users alike, to tell us what they think of Go1 and more generally of the Learning and Development industry today. 

To become part of the Go1 Research Group, start by filling out this short questionnaire. We are using the questionnaire to collect information from you that will help us match you to the right research studies!

If you are a match to one of our research studies, you will receive an email invitation to participate. Research studies include interviews, usability tests, surveys and more. 

Every study is different! We’ll give you all the details you need, so you can decide if you want to join. We might ask you to be part of discussions during planning the stages of new features, trialling beta interactions or taking a usability test run by our research team.

By being part of the Research Group, you will have the chance to connect one-on-one with the Go1 Research Team and watch our product grow. You'll also get the inside scoop on what we are working on and some research studies will offer incentives! You'll find out more via the study invitations. 

Have any questions? Send a message to research@go1.com 

We'd love it if you could join us on this journey! Start by taking the questionnaire!

We want every bit of your feedback so we can keep creating great experiences for Go1 users globally!

In this month's webinar, our Go1 Product Managers will unveil to you recently released platform features, and our Guest Content expert Craig Jensen, will join us to give his insights on Information Technology (IT) training. 

Webinar date and time: Friday May 31st, at 9am AEST

The New feature spotlight hosted by Go1 Product Managers:

Be introduced to the Learner recommendations feature 

Deep dive on new capabilities for editing user emails

Get insights from the expert on Information Technology (IT) training: 

With thousands of courses in your Go1 subscription and many providers to choose from, we want to make it easy for you to train your team with the right courses on the right topics. The May webinar will feature the first insights session, where we are joined by one of Go1's Content Experts to talk about a content topic that we think should be part of your workplace training.   

Craig Jensen from LearnNowOnline (a Go1 Global Premium partner) will join us as an expert on the topic of IT training. He will briefly chat about the importance of IT certification to help your employees remain certified and develop them for the future. You can read more about LearnNowOnline here. 

* Our webinars are recorded - by registering you will get sent the video recording if you can't attend on the day!

Join Go1's monthly webinar to learn how to unlock the most out of your Go1 platform and content subscription!

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