How to Take Real Breaks From Work
“Like time, energy is finite; but unlike time, it is renewable.” — Tony Schwartz
Energy is what we need to work efficiently — in other words, to be productive. This is why energy is a treasured resource that we have to manage.
We live in a world dominated by work. Having breaks is seen as lazy. Employees who work from dawn to dusk without even taking a lunch break are seen as the most deserving. But what if they were not the most effective ones? What if the best way to get more done in a day was to spend more time doing less?
That’s what Energy Project CEO Tony Schwartz wrote in the New York Times:
“The importance of restoration is rooted in our physiology. Human beings aren’t designed to expend energy continuously. Rather, we’re meant to pulse between spending and recovering energy.”
The Basic-Rest Activity Cycle — or BRAC, is the name given to the human sleeping pattern. Discovered in the 1950s by the researchers William Dement and Nathaniel Kleitman, this pattern shows that the human body sleeps in cycles of 90…
