Hey - It’s Michael.
Spent a lovely weekend with a dear friend in Valencia - full of love & energy. Enjoy the newsletter.
The Situation
You worked for quite some time and your body & mind is tired. No, exhausted. You can’t concentrate. Everything seems to take forever. No energy, no motivation.
You take your phone. Or scroll the internet. Or scroll some app. It gets worse.
You start to work again but have even less attention span than before.
Finally, when you stop working, you’re still so deep in work that you don’t notice how exhausted you are or you succeed to disengage and notice just how tiring the working day was.
The System
Principle:
Take healthy breaks.
It sounds simple, yet might be one of the hardest things to do in fast-paced 21st century.
The key to a healthy break is choosing an activity, that lets your mind rest - and is less engaging & less taxing than your work.
A few examples from sports: a sprinter sprints, then takes a relaxed walk. Football players tackle, pass, run & shoot, then get back into formation and jog to recover when the ball is somewhere else. A tennis player takes deep breaths and mentally prepares for the next point.
It’s obvious that no athlete does 100% performance for the whole duration of the game. There’s always the skillful dance of performance & recovery.
For knowledge work, it’s the same game.
In Practice
The key is to choose your breaks before you get tired - because when you’re tired you are most likely to take poor choices of fast, cheap energy: scrolling on your phone, searching the internet, eating unhealthy sweets.
For breaks in knowledge work you can follow those 2 simple rules:
do something that let’s your mind actually rest
replenish its energy via healthy input
If you use screens, you keep your mind engaged - which is the opposite of rest!
Stop Rule:
Stop using any screen in breaks.
Here are a few ideas to let your mind rest in short breaks (5-15 min):
close your laptop, store your phone and
walk around the block
do a bunch of pushups, situps and any other simple bodyweight exercise you can think of
stretch
juggle
lie down and look at the ceiling (or close your eyes)
eat some healthy snack (fruit,..) and have water
do your laundry
If this sounds incredibly boring, that’s a good sign. The point is: by making breaks so boring, yet healthy, you restore well needed energy to go again for your next stretch of work.
Social interaction is of course a great way to restore energy. However, only for bigger breaks (20min +) during lunch time for example as it can be more difficult to get back into work when the social interaction is engaging and fun (which they usually are).
A Quote To Ponder On:
“Men’s minds ought to have relaxation: they rise up better and more vigorous after rest.” - Seneca
A Question To Reflect On:
Where do I fail to give my body & mind its well deserved rest?
See you next week - Michael