The Lost Art Of Doing Nothing
Happy New Month Team and welcome to a new quarter
Some of you may be wondering why there wasn't an entry last week. I went on a break which I only just came back from. I should have announced that I was taking this break before I went away so I apologise for that. It sort of hit me by surprise because I had lost track of time preparing for ‘end of quarter’ board meetings.
When I was setting my goals at the start of the year, I built in a one week break which I would take every 3 months! Whether I needed it or not, I committed to taking it. This last break I had was so needed and I came back with amazing clarity and focus. Now before we go into this entry, it’s not lost on me that a 1-week break is something of a luxury. A lot of us are working hard right now, working multiple jobs even, trying to provide for loved ones. If this is you, well done. Keep going. You are doing something that matters. Still, this entry should be helpful.
Ask any doctor and they will tell you rest is essential for physical health. When the body is deprived of sleep, it is unable to rebuild and recharge itself adequately. Your body requires rest.
Ask any athlete and they will tell you rest is essential for physical training. Rest is needed for muscles to repair themselves and prevent injury. This is true whether you run marathons, pitch baseballs, or climb rocks. Your muscles require rest.
Ask many of yesterday’s philosophers and they will tell you rest is essential for the mind. Leonardo da Vinci said, “Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer.” And Ovid, the Roman poet, said, “Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.” Your mind requires rest.
Ask most religious leaders and they will tell you rest is essential for the soul. Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baha’i, and Wiccan (among others) teach the importance of setting aside a period of time for rest. Your soul requires rest.
Ask many business leaders and they will tell you that rest is essential for productivity. Forbes magazine recently wrote, “You can only work so hard and do so much in a day. Everybody needs to rest and recharge.” Your productivity requires rest.
Physicians, athletes, philosophers, poets, religious leaders, and corporate leaders all tell us the same thing: take time to rest. It is absolutely essential for a balanced, healthy life.
Yet, when you ask people in today’s frenzied culture if they intentionally set aside time for rest, most will tell you they are too busy. Even fewer would say they set aside any concentrated time (12-24 hours) for rest. There are just too many things to get done, too many demands, too many responsibilities, too many bills, and too much urgency. Nobody can afford to waste time resting in today’s results-oriented world. When you add to this Lockdown, oddly, a lot of us have become even busier during this pandemic
Why don’t we rest
With so many of us working long hours to keep up with an ever-growing workload, and this global pandemic erasing the line between work and play.
Many of us have been unable to take a vacation in over a year and instead battle stress, illness, and the constant pressure to find time for all our commitments outside work.
But rest isn’t something to take lightly. It’s an essential part of doing your best work, being more productive at work, and is something more of us need to prioritize.
British people are among the worst offenders when it comes to not resting enough. According to the Institute for Work and Families, fewer than half U.K. employees take all their vacation days.
And Project: Time Off, an initiative from the U.S. Travel Association, found Americans now take less vacation time than at any point in the past 40 years. And in 2014 Glassdoor reported that 61% of employees work during vacation.
We tend to think of vacation as an indulgence that we can’t afford. I'm guilty of thinking this for years. I can't afford a break and so I dont need to take one. However, as this digital entry will show you, it’s actually a necessary part of doing your best work.
Gary Oster, Managing Director of Project: Time Off, says “Many people don’t take time off because they think that it will negatively impact their manager’s perception of them. But, that isn’t the case at all.”
Employees also tend to worry about their work piling up while they’re gone, or being seen as replaceable. It’s also common for employees to believe only they can do their jobs, which takes away any option for vacation. Even as an entrepreneur, I would worry about this frequently. If I take a break, won't I just have more to do when I come back?
What's the point?
“I don’t need to take time off”
I know many of you may have read this far reluctantly. You may be thinking 'I just don’t need the rest the lad is talking about’ or maybe you’re thinking what a younger brother of mine told me once. When I asked him when he was going to rest, he replied 'i normally crash and then I just know to rest'. I nodded passively, however, i couldn’t help but think, that’s a pretty bad way to live. Why wait till you crash, when you can avoid it? Also being forced to take time off is different to taking a short break, a breather, to recuperate.
Short term vs long term thinking
Beyond worrying about our workload, employees tend to be bad at recognizing the need for rest. This is partly because of our tendency, as humans, to focus on the short-term and our present selves over long-term benefits and what our future selves would want us to do now.
Though resting now by taking a vacation might be best for us in the long-term, we find it nigh-on impossible to ignore the short-term workload that’s piling up in front of us in order to take that break.
Katy Milkman, a behavioural scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, says that a short-term high workload can also make it harder to make the right call for your future self. The more overworked and tired we are in the moment, she says, the more impulsive our choices will be—leading us to decide we just can’t afford a vacation.
Another reason we have so much trouble taking vacations is that it’s the cultural norm to work long hours and not take breaks. We all want to fit in at work, so if everyone else is working overtime and not taking vacations, we’re going to do that too.
Why rest is so important
A famous study known as the Framingham Heart Study followed roughly 12,000 men between the ages of 35 and 57, who were at risk of heart disease, for nine years. Using the data from this study, researcher Karen Matthews of the University of Pittsburgh Body-Mind Center found that the more frequently these men took vacations, the longer they lived. And these results remained true even after controlling for variables that are known to correlate to a longer lifespan, such as higher income and education.
When the Framingham data was explored by researchers at the State University of New York at Oswego, they found that men who took a vacation every year reduced their overall risk of death by about 20%, and specifically their risk of death from heart disease by up to 30%.
In another study of nearly 1,400 people, leisure time, including vacation, was found to encourage a more positive mindset and decrease levels of clinical depression. Research has also found women who don’t take time off are more likely to suffer from depression and, according to one study, 50% more likely to have a heart attack.
But beyond our health, there are other reasons rest is critical. From a business perspective, rest reduces the amount of sick days employees need. And with absenteeism costing over $3,000 per employee every year according to some estimates, it’s certainly something worth reducing.
Research also shows workplace performance improves after a period of rest and recovery, even among people who enjoy their work. And if you’re in a creative job, you’re going to need some rest in order to do your best work. A study from the University of York and the University of Florida found more than 40% of our creative ideas come during breaks and downtime, when our minds are free to wander.
Finally, you may actually be better off at work if you take more vacations. According to Project: Time Off, people who take all their vacation time are 6.5% more likely to get a promotion or raise than people who leave 11 or more paid vacation days leftover. While this is only a correlation, it’s worth taking note of. Especially if you’re a salaried employee with vacation time included—in that case, not taking your vacation time is much the same as volunteering for a pay cut.
But we would be wise to reclaim the practice of resting one day each week. Consider the benefits of concentrated rest for your body, mind, and soul:
Healthier body. We each get one life and one body to live it in. Therefore, we eat healthily, we exercise, and we watch our bad habits. But then we allow our schedules to fill up from morning to evening. Rest is as essential to our physical health as the water we drink and the air we breathe.
Less stress. Stress is the perception that the situations we are facing are greater than the resources we have to deal with them—resources such as time, energy, ability, and help from others. Concentrated rest confronts stress in two ways. First, it reduces the demands of the situation. We have no demands on us as long as we have the ability to mentally let go of unfinished tasks. Secondly, rest reduces stress by increasing our resources, particularly energy.
Deeper relationships. A day set aside each week for rest allows relationships with people to deepen and be strengthened. When we aren’t rushing off to work or soccer practice, we are able to enjoy each other’s company and a healthy conversation. And long talks prove to be far more effective in building community than short ones on the ride to the mall.
Opportunity for reflection. Sometimes it is hard to see the forest through the trees. It is even more difficult to see the forest when we are running through the trees. Concentrated rest allows us to take a step back, to evaluate our lives, to identify our values, and determine if our life is being lived for them.
Balance. Taking one day of your week and dedicating it to rest will force you to have an identity outside of your occupation. It will foster relationships outside of your fellow employees. It will foster activities and hobbies outside work. It will give life and identity outside of your Monday-Friday occupation. Rather than defining your life by what you do, you can begin to define it by who you are.
Take Time Off
So what’s the takeaway? Well, whatever you want. However, remember this, everyone needs time off. Even if things are going well right now, build in some ring-fenced time for rest. Build a rain shelter before it starts raining
Rabbi Elijah of Vilna once said, “What we create becomes meaningful to us only once we stop creating it and start to think about why we did so.” The implication is clear. We could live lives that produce countless widgets, but we won’t start truly living until we stop producing and start enjoying.
Announcements
1) New Podcast with Femi Sorry
For Lets Talk Common Sense this week, I sat down with political commentator Femi Oluwole to talk about the governments new #RaceReport. Discussing racism can be tiring but I think this is a helpful discussion