Because downtime makes you more productive.
In 9th grade biology class, I learned about a really cool feature in the body: peristalsis. It’s a series of squeeze-and-release muscle contractions in the digestive system that the esophagus uses to move chewed food from the throat down into the stomach. As it turns out, that contract/release motion is a pattern throughout the body — it’s also the way your heart pumps blood through arteries and veins.
Contract.
Release.
So why do we have such a hard time replicating that natural phenomenon — specifically the “release” moment — in our daily, conscious lives? We’re definitely great at the contraction part, like putting all sorts of concerted energy into our work or home lives. But so many of us aren’t very good at doing nothing. And that “release” — in the form of taking breaks, deep breathing, and restorative time — is just as important as effort. As counterintuitive as it may sound, our work environments would benefit from more workers taking a well-deserved pause.
We’re living in times primed to embrace a shift toward the anti-hustle. Constant distractions from email; endless invitations to be entertained on social media; beeps from an incoming text message; vibrations when a voicemail has been deposited…they all take their toll. And statistics prove that we’re at record levels of burnout: As the latest Gallup workplace report states, “44 percent of employees experienced a lot of daily stress the previous day and…working women in the USA and Canada were among the most stressed employees globally.”
Recent research from Lyra Health shows that burnout leads to increased turnover — in fact, 2021 research from Monster.com indicated that 95 percent of workers were thinking of quitting their jobs and cited burnout as their #1 reason. According to research from Deloitte, “Nearly half of millennials say they have left a job specifically because they felt burned out.”
Increased turnover leads to what management experts call “knowledge transfer”: The idea that when you leave your job, you take along with you all sorts of vital information with you. (Which could range from the best way to fast track a contract to troubleshooting that pesky photocopier.) That leakage is pretty expensive, and hard for companies to recoup in the long run — it can cost 33 percent of an employee’s annual salary to replace them, says 2017 research from Employee Benefit News. In a more abstract sense, relationships, camaraderie, and company reputations can also take a hit when employees leave. So what I’m proposing is that leaders stem that exit by encouraging employees to take time to do…nothing.
Why is it important to make an effort to do nothing? When you do nothing on purpose, you’re more aware of your connection to the little things, the micro-scaffolding of life: your breathing; the sunlight in the room; the smell of grass; the humming of pipes in the house; feeling your own heartbeat — not by placing your fingers on your wrist, but just by sitting still and listening to the pulse through your body. In Microjoys: Finding Hope Especially When Life Is Not Okay Cyndie Spiegel talks about “idleness as a type of microjoy” because it brings us back to the present. From this perspective, doing nothing is essential for our well-being. It recenters our nervous system and reduces the cognitive load in our frontal neo-cortex.
Yes, those who run workplaces might shudder at the idea of easing up on employees. Some assume that incentivizing them to do nothing is a costly distraction from the “real work.” But ultimately, we must rewire our habits in order to produce better-quality work. And our employers will have the opportunity to dream up new metrics of productivity.
What type of pause am I talking about? As Tricia Hersey, the co-founder of Nap Ministry has written, “Rest is anything that connects your mind and body.” But in our modern times, rest doesn’t just happen: It must be intentionally created. Here are three ways you can prompt yourself to take a deep breath and reset:
1. Schedule daydream breaks. A daydream is permission to allow your mind to wander. I schedule in a minimum of one 5-minute daydream break a day. My prompt could be watching a cloud float by, or gazing at an ant crawling on a sidewalk.
2. Embrace “invisible work.” It’s my theory that our most productive selves aren’t when we are on Zoom or churning through email. Those emerge when we design space and time for the invisible work that sparks creativity but can’t be seen: Going for a walk, engaging in a meaningful conversation or resting. It’s what computer science professor and productivity expert Cal Newport calls “deep work.”
3. Invest in personal micro-retreats. This doesn’t have to be a pricey weeklong stay at an extravagant locale. Schedule a 24-hour retreat at a hotel in your home-city every 3 months then relish ordering room service and reading a book of fiction in bed. A micro-retreat could even consist of monthly “noticing retreats,” where you visit a neighborhood you don’t normally frequent and take a leisurely walk- noticing what’s new and different about this adjacent community.
These tips aren’t just about making you a more productive employee: They’re about making you a happier, more-present person in every facet of your life. So I invite you to, whenever you can, slow down your internal clock, know when to quit, and embrace being OK with missing out. Tap into the richness and value you can generate — when you do nothing.
