Break Time

I fold. I’m out. I’m raising the white flag. I don’t want to play anymore. There are no winners.

This obsessive frenzy to do more, have more, be more, is backfiring. This frantic pace and busyness is not healthy. Nor productive. Nor enjoyable.

I am no longer impressed or wow’d by, or jealous of, those who do it all. Or have it all. Who strut their multitasking and juggling and exhaustion around as badges of pride. It just occurred to me that not once have I solved a problem or come up with a great idea while sitting at a desk pounding away and working hard. Nope. All my ideas come to me when I step away. All of my solutions to problems, big and small, work or life, come when I stop. When I’m walking, when I’m showering, when I’m fully engaged in something totally unrelated. When I have an intentional break.

Almost all original thinkers and brilliant scientists and artists and world leaders know this and do this, instinctively. They know the secret to getting more done is to incorporate rest and breaks into their lives. Purposeful breaks. A planned pause. Not waiting until they collapse or have a breakdown. Stopping their work. Doing something else. Going for a walk. Cooking. Climbing a mountain. Reading. Playing tennis. Playing the drums. Taking a sabbatical or vacation.

This is when they rejuvenate. Restore. Come up with new ideas. A chance to step away from the frenzied pace of the office and the projects and the non-stop demands. A chance to get a wider view, or fresh perspective. See connections they missed while looking too closely. Work other areas of their brains and bodies for a spell.

It’s so hard to justify though. It feels wrong. It feels lazy and irresponsible. Undeserved, or like cheating. With the pressures to be available and responsive twenty four hours a day and with partnership being contingent on billable hours and with the need to be visible and producing in order to feel of value to your workplace, it feels dangerous and reckless to consider slowing down or stopping.

It’s hard to say no to busy. It’s hard to take a break and go for a walk at lunch time when the rest of your colleagues stick around vying for the boss’s attention. It’s hard to feel okay about putting in four hours of “desk” work and then going for a walk or having a nap. It’s hard to feel like that’s enough.

If people know how little I sit at my desk I’d hang my head in shame. But by the same token I am embarrassed when people learn that I have to have a pen and paper with me 24 hours a day. It is in those 20 other hours that the ideas come and the planning and clarity are crystalized. I’m stuck psychologically between my fear of being viewed as lazy, spoiled, and self-indulgent and being labelled a workaholic. I am embarrassed by my lack of “visual” work and then ashamed when I’m seen whipping out a notebook or grabbing my phone to capture a fleeting idea or thought or solution in the middle of sacred family time or when I’m supposed to be “relaxing”. I’m just doing what I’m doing and the ideas hit when they hit. I can’t control that and my job is just to take them down when they arrive.

My desk time is about timelines and deadlines and the actual writing. That’s relatively easy. That’s the doing. But the “coming up with” – which to me is the main work – never happens when I’m “working”.

I don’t know why I still care so much about what people think. Or why I even think anyone is paying attention to little old me and how I spend my time. I just feel like so much of success is wrapped up in the illusion of busy-work and time cards and widgets produced and I feel like I’m falling short. My ideas come when they come and are not constrained by the hands of the clock or contingent on sitting at a desk.

I just know I love what I’m doing and from time to time I actually even surprise myself and put some kind of finished product out into the world, and in the meantime I have a million and one projects sorting themselves out in my head…okay, gotta go…my daily walk is waiting for me….