We all know what it is like to feel tired. After a long period of hard work, you just want to rest and take a break, but what if something important comes up and must be done? What if there are simultaneous projects that need your attention?

There are many situations where having high workplace stamina helps you to tackle and overcome these challenging situations. But what is workplace stamina?

What is workplace stamina?

Workplace stamina is the ability to work for long periods of time in a sustainable manner.

Workplace stamina revolves around 2 key areas: your productivity and your consistency.

Having a high productivity level means that you can get more done in a shorter amount of time or effort and that leads you to be able to do more with the same amount of effort. Consistency plays a big role in how effective your productivity is. If a person can work with medium productivity and high consistency, another person with lower consistency will not achieve the same amount of work done, since work done is proportional to time spent doing it.

But how does one increase productivity and consistency to reach high workplace stamina?

Tip 1: Take short and effective breaks

This is known as the Pomodoro technique, which states that having short breaks in between intense periods of work is far more effective than working continuously for long periods without breaks. Without appropriate breaks, you will risk burning out and lowering your productivity, which will have the opposite intended effect when you work extremely long hours.


However, there needs to be a balance between the frequency and duration of your breaks. Taking highly long breaks often leads to a person being rusty when they get back to work again because they have been away from work for too long. Switching off your ability to work requires energy to start back up again. Thus, taking shorter breaks and being switched on means you can consistently work at a high capacity.

Tip 2: Build your stamina incrementally 

Stamina is something which is built over a long period of time and requires investment from you to increase it. Looking at it over a 5 year period, there are certain things that you can do to increase it. Build incrementally by ensuring that you do a little more work in each iteration. For example, for university students, you can split your iterations by semesters and increase your workload by taking a part time role or start a side project, on top of your existing university work.


It is important that you do it incrementally, rather than flying straight sky and take on more than you can chew. This strategy is set yourself up for success, not failure.

Choosing what to take on is also important. Mindlessly choosing to take on more work that has no synergy with your goal is wasted effort and should be avoid. The additional work done should serve the purpose of incrementally increasing your stamina and reaching your goals. Getting double value out of your time is better than getting single value.

Tip 3: Do it consistently everyday 

All the above tips can only work if you do it consistently everyday. When you put in effort everyday, it is equivalent to getting a 1% return, compounded over a long period of time. This leads to an exponential increase in your work stamina when you look back to when you started.


One should keep in mind that there will be days where it feels like your stamina growth is plateauing and this is completely normal. When this happens, you should keep going and keep working through this flat stage. Often times, an unexpected and high intensity event will be the impetus to get over this plateau.

Conclusion

Work stamina is something that everyone already and can always improve on. Having high stamina means that even under high stress situations, you can still get through it because it is not anything new to you. High stamina becomes your trump card, which you can use at anytime and overcome any obstable.

I'd highly recommend reading a blog by @RCBEST on My Principle #3: Passion. It goes into detail on the mentality required to push through those tough times to achieve your goal, where in this case, it is increasing one's stamina.