Don’t Always Run At Full Steam
Unless you want to break your engine
I was waking up at 7 am every day and working pretty much non stop till 11:45 pm for more than 60 days in a row, no breaks whatsoever.
Eventually, I realized that my productivity was declining and I wasn’t enjoying my routine later on, though initially, it was fun.
That caused me to seriously reflect on what the hell had gone wrong?
In today’s hyper success-oriented world, working hard and long hours is expected behavior. So you go ahead and give your best efforts for as long as you can and guess what, no one appreciates it.
Man is not a machine, let’s assume for the sake of argument that he is one. What is common between a racecar, a train engine, and a jet plane?
They all take breaks.
Usain Bolt is the fastest man in the world. Yet, he runs 100m, not 1000000m. Nobody can sustain herculean efforts without frequent rest.
The point is,
Disciplined people stick to their routines, but they have the discipline to know when to take a break and rejuvenate themselves.
I’m Not Tired
This is one of the common replies when people are told to take rest. Well, you may not be tired but your work most certainly says so. Working 1 hr and churning out work worthy of a 10/10 is better than slogging for 4 hours and producing 2/10 work every hour.
You can’t just be effective, you need to be efficient as well.
What does efficiency exactly mean?
Achieving maximum output with minimum input. Making the best out of the resources you have. If you don’t rest and rejuvenate yourself, you won’t have resources.
Laziness Vs Taking Breaks
Now, just to be clear.
At no point am I advocating being lazy and taking breaks when you don’t need to or taking one just for the heck of it.
That is a waste of time and resources.
What I am suggesting instead is listening to the subtle cues that your body will give you. It won’t shout at you, it will merely whisper it’s pleas. It is your responsibility to attune yourself with your body’s wavelength and listen to it.
To be fair, we have our ways of hacking the body’s limits. Willpower, coffee, stimulants and a whole plethora of other options.
But they are meant to power you on certain necessary occasions only. Using them every day will only do more harm than good. Let’s face it, having coffee every day makes you get used to it to the point where you can sleep without batting an eyelid after an espresso.
The exact opposite of how it should be.
How Doing Less Makes You Achieve More?
Quality matters not quantity.
A top lawyer charges fees by the hour, 500$ no less, hence no one utilizes him for more time than required. They have respect for his value and time. Your brain is pretty much the same.
It is meant to do high quality, world-class work.
But for some time, not all the time.
When you give yourself a deadline or a timeline to do a particular task, then your brain aligns itself with this deadline and works towards accomplishing the task provided you have sufficient interest in finishing the task.
By doing so, you are able to do more in the same amount of time, yet get time to break and rest as well.
Intermittent Resting
I know, we have all heard of intermittent fasting. Intermittent resting is nothing like that.
It is simply working for a specified time period then taking breaks for a specified time period.
The Pomodoro method is a classic example of this.
It usually consists of 4 sets of 25-minute work followed by 5-minute breaks. Every 2 hours of work, you get to take a 30-minute break.
Feel free to play around with the timings and adjust them to suit you more.
How Long Should My Breaks Be?
Only you can know that. Some people will do just fine with a 15 min nap, some 30 and some up to 1 hour.
More than the duration, taking the naps is important.
In conclusion, we all know rest is important yet we all hear “If you want to be successful don’t sleep.” While it is inspiring, it is also life-threatening advice. So if you are putting in the work, put in the rest as well and see yourself enjoying work, rest and life even more.
Remember you can’t build the Rome of your dreams in a day. So bugger off and have some rest, will ya!
