PTO isn’t just one of those nice benefits we get on paper. It’s a necessity we need to utilize. It helps us recharge, manage stress, and mitigate the risk of burnout. (More on that here Who Has Time for Vacation, and here Really Take Time Off.)
Even if you’ve gotten the hint and use the time allocated to you throughout the year, there are going to be times when you need to decompress, refocus, and recharge without taking a full week (or day!) to do it. Here’s the good news, you can grab moments in your regular workday to do this without missing a beat of productivity. In fact, making this space may even boost your productivity and job satisfaction!
For the accountant, it’s tax season. For the student and educator, it’s the run up to finals. For the marketing team, it’s the weeks before a new, exciting product launch. For sales, it’s the days before the biggest pitch of your career. It’s a season of intense busyness in a high-stakes environment. You aren’t slowing down because you feel like you don’t have the time to catch your breath. You rationalize that it’s okay because this too shall pass. This is temporary. You can gut this out for another couple of weeks. It’ll be over then and the rewards will be great. Right? Maybe not.
The reality is the “go-go-go” method of work can leave us tired and stressed and being tired and stressed can make it harder to focus, easier to miss small errors, and more difficult to maintain productivity. In other words, the exact opposite of what you need during a high-stakes season.
We tend to associate downtime with a day off. Outside of some pretty specific special circumstances, we’re probably not going to schedule a day or more off during the sort of seasons mentioned above. That doesn’t mean we can’t recharge.
We’re talking about making space in the course of your regular work day to hit the pause button and catch our breath so we can continue moving forward with focus, intention, and high productivity. This is about recognizing that working harder is not the same as working well. Running long hours straight is going to move you no closer to the goal post than making space to exhale once in a while.
Just because there are deadlines looming doesn’t mean you don’t have time to take a break during the workday. Walk a lap around the parking lot. Go out and buy that cup of coffee so you get away from the desk. Eat your lunch at the local park or window shop at the local mall. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as what you do allows you to pause the go-go-go pace of your work and switch gears for a moment.
Whether you close the door to your office or get up and move to a new space, pick up your phone and call your mother (or your partner or your best friend or anyone else you feel like catching up with). A quick 15-minute chat about something other than work can refill your tank.
Go ahead and grab a few minutes with your co-workers dissecting the latest episode of The Pitt or debating the merits of the NY Yankees use of the new torpedo bats. This isn’t about derailing your day. It’s about hitting pause and letting yourself reset so you can continue after with renewed focus and concentration.
That article on the impact of AI on your field or the Smithsonian article on captivating libraries – take a few minutes to switch your focus off your to-do list and onto a topic that interests you. Read something. Listen to your favorite podcast while you wait for your next cup of tea to steep. Queue up a new playlist of the sort of music that gets your heart beating faster. Take a minute to enjoy the beat before you dig back into the project sitting in front of you.
Even in your busy seasons where most of your responsibilities are focused on a particular set of tasks or a project, there are elements on your to-do list that are outside the scope of whatever it is that has the bulk of your attention (and stress). They are more routine tasks that you could do without thinking twice about the process. Take a break from the stuff that requires your focus and check off a few rote tasks. Being able to walk through tasks that don’t take the same level of concentration or sense of urgency is the shift in gears you may need to reset a bit and recharge.
During these busy stretches, goals and boundaries are crucial. What is it you’re aiming to accomplish? Why? What does success look like? What milestones and outcomes are you looking for? Keep coming back to these. It’s easy to veer off course when we’re pressing hard to the finish line. It’s easy to generate more work with greater urgency when we’re in a season of intense deadlines and big projects.
More urgent work, however, is not the same as useful task completion that lends itself to reaching our goals. Keep coming back to, “What are we trying to accomplish? Why? How do we measure our progress?” And then set boundaries. Don’t check your email right before bed – there’s little you can fix at 11pm that you can’t deal with when you get in the office the next morning instead. Reading that missive at night is just going to mess with your sleep and make you less able to focus and process challenges in the daylight hours. Don’t field text and calls while you sit in the bleachers at your kid’s baseball game. Don’t fire up the laptop and get a few more hours worth of work on the report you and your team are crafting. Create space to disengage and focus on home and downtime. Recharge. Reset. Refocus.
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