Sometimes, the most effective use of your time is to NOT use it productively. One my most loved movies is called Mystery Men. It’s a superhero movie – kind of. They all have powers but a bit different. There is the Invisible Boy, who has the power to be invisible, but only if no one is looking. As soon as someone looks at him, he becomes visible again. Another hero is The Sphynx. His power is to be ‘terribly mysterious’ and he says things like “if you cannot learn to master your rage then your rage will become your master” and such like. I credit him with the inspiration behind today’s heading. Time Efficiency: Plan your breaks or break your plans.
The Importance of taking a break to effective use of time
The aim of this mini-series is to think through as many different ways of being efficient with our time as we can.
I’ve written before about the importance of taking breaks and I encourage you check out my past posts on this subject. The conclusion drawn in all of my thinking on this, is that human beings are not machines. We cannot function at maximum efficiency for extended periods of time. We just cannot do it.
So, if we plan to, we will fail.
Therefore, taking short breaks is essential to using our time effectively.
The impact of not taking a break.
Fatigue has so many potential costs and impacts on us it would be impossible to list them all. I will focus on three from my own experience and wider reading.
- Fatigue makes us more prone to mistakes and errors. This is inefficient. I have lost count of the number of times that mental fatigue has led to mistakes meaning that work needs to corrected or redone. Sometimes this is at the level of miscalculating something early on in a financial report that makes the rest of my work invalid. I often make more typos in my writing when I am tired and so typing things just takes longer.
- Fatigue often puts me in ‘just get it done quickly’ frame of mind. Beyond simply making mistakes, when I am tired, I have a stronger urge to finish my work so I can stop for the day. This creates a sense haste and means I rush things. In addition to making more mistakes, I also notice a significant drop in the quality of my work. Being tired makes me care more about getting it finished than doing a good job. You feel really ‘efficient’ as you are checking many things off the list, but that is a false perspective and you will pay for it.
- Fatigue generally makes it harder to think and so my overall effectiveness is less. I just get slow.
If you combine these things, I tend to find if I let myself get too tired then the work I produce takes longer but still feels rushed and of lower quality.
How to take a break
There is no formula here that will work for every single person. Each one of us is different and so our needs and what will have the most positive impact is going to be different for every one of us. I cannot therefore be prescriptive, just descriptive of what I find works well for me. Much of it will probably work well for you as well so do try it.
- I work sitting at a desk. I find therefore that any break that I hope to be effective, needs to involve moving around in some way. A 5-10 minute walk around the block is often good enough.
- Mentally, I often need to get out of my office and do something totally different.
- Sometimes I will spend 5-10 minutes reading an article or even a book.
When to take a break
These are just some of the things I do. In terms of frequency and length I operate on the following patterns:
- I consider a 35 minute break at lunch time to be minimum. Ideally this would be 45 minutes but often this doesn’t work. I find 30 minutes feels too short.
- Next most helpful for me is a 10-15 minute break around 3pm. This is tends to be when I am struggling most and getting up and getting out gives me a boost to be effective for the rest of the day.
- I will sometimes take a break mid morning, around 10:30am. This tends to happen if I’ve had a bad night’s sleep or if have a particularly demanding afternoon coming up.
One thing to note, I don’t have a rigid pattern. These things are servants not masters.
One of the downsides of our work culture where you trade time for money is it values every minute the same. This is fundamentally flawed in most jobs I have ever worked in. For example, if I take a break at 3pm, then my output from 3:15pm-4pm would be significantly higher than my output if I worked the full hour and didn’t take a break.
So, if the goal is to be effective with my time, then sometimes the breaks will be longer, as that is the way to have the most effective day. Sometimes, it will be most effective to have fewer breaks that are shorter.
Plan your breaks or break your plans
The biggest mistake we make is to not actually plan our breaks. By this I mean put them on our calendar or in our diary. Too often we either leave a blank space or we block off a morning for some type of work and just vaguely intend to take a break ‘somewhere in the middle of it’.
This doesn’t work.
As far as possible, I try to follow Carl Pullein’s rule – what goes on my calendar gets done. If I consider taking breaks to be an essential part of ensuring my time is used effectively, which I do, then it is critical that they get blocked off on the calendar.
So plan your breaks.
The impact of taking breaks on every area of life
It isn’t just about work. It isn’t just about ‘output’. A day where I get home tired and frustrated because I have felt sluggishness pulling me down and the stress that comes with rushing, is a day when I cannot serve my family well. It is a day where my evenings are more likely to be spent vegging out in front of the TV.
I tend to find if I have a proper break at lunch time, as a minimum, then my afternoon feels so much more effective and I get a lot more done, of much higher quality. It puts me in a better mood when I arrive home.
The impact of things like this tends to compound over time. Every day that you end in positive frame of mind, with energy in the tank still and having used time effectively is a boost to your over mental health and well-being. It sets you up for better days ahead. It improves your relationships at home and your outlook generally. And it continues to compound over time.
So, when I say plan your breaks or break your plans, I don’t just mean it will only impact you for today. I mean your bigger, further reaching plans get broken as well. All because you couldn’t spare 10 minutes to get out and stop.
Plan your breaks or break your plans, today, tomorrow and for years to come.
