In business, the phrase “time is money” makes everyone feel like they must account for every minute of their day. This can create busyness and unnecessary activity that doesn’t add up to much of a return on investment.
While it’s important to be mindful about how you use your time, downtime is that secret to success that can make us work smarter, not harder.
Research tells us employees who do not use their vacation time tend to be more stressed. Stress can cause a myriad of issues, ranging from illness to mental fatigue that leads to poor interactions and ineffective decision-making. While vacations and downtime can seem like a luxury, scientific evidence suggests that employees lead healthier, more productive lives by taking time off. Another workplace study showed that those employees who took fewer than 10 of their vacation days per year had a 35% likelihood of receiving a raise or bonus in a three-year period; whereas those who took more than 10 of their vacation days had a 65% chance of receiving a raise or bonus. Yet, research suggests that more than 55% of Americans left vacation days unused. While this may seem like a badge of honor, not utilizing vacation days can be a deterrent to productivity, as well as your paycheck.
Scientific evidence also indicates that employees sleep better and have better moods and improved cognitive thinking for up to one month after their return from vacation. When we are on vacation, we tend to slow down and breathe more deeply into our bodies. This allows us to increase our gut intelligence (GQ), the ability to synthesize the unconscious mind with the conscious mind so that we are dealing with issues we otherwise ignore. Our GQ increases on vacation because slowing down and breathing more deeply allows us to bring the neurotransmitters, hormones, and neurons up the vagus nerve for processing in the upper lobes of the brain. This increases our ability to have greater executive functioning, insight, intuition, and ultimately a vision that we are ready to execute.
But we don’t have to wait for vacation to create this renewed experience. We can take “mini” vacations in the form or downtime and unscheduled time. When you do, you will be more able to listen to your inner voice that is telling you to be mindful of someone or something needing your attention. If you don’t pay attention to this intuitive prompting, you will hear it in the middle of the night when it wakes you up to try to get your attention. That is a sure sign you need unscheduled downtime.
When your lifestyle includes running from meeting to meeting, striving and driving, and multi-tasking most of the time, you are living in the beta brainwave that will keep you feeling stressed. Stress creates a blockage to increased gut intelligence because it shuts down the corpus callosum in your brain that doesn’t allow you to get out of the reaction center, namely the amygdala. This results in agitation towards others, feeling burnt out, and having foggy thinking. When you are stressed, you are unable to tap into the brilliance you otherwise would be able to access if you were well rested.
So, when you are feeling guilty about taking time off, remind yourself that unscheduled downtime is productive. By practicing these three disciplines, you will discover that you have ample time to have unscheduled downtime:
Discipline #1: Set boundaries
Boundaries help us decide what is enough. This may mean enough time, energy, commitment, money, or support to give to someone or to your work. When you know your boundaries, you will suddenly be more confident in having your yes be your yes, and your no be your no.
Discipline #2: Let go of perfectionism
When you let go of what “they” think, you can then focus on, “How might I create what I believe is brilliant?” Unscheduled downtime helps you with this detachment from perfectionism and will clarify what you need to succeed.
Discipline #3: Create a flexible, hybrid work model
The good news is that many companies now understand the importance of a hybrid work model. A balance between work at home and work at the office can give you just enough freedom to create connection with others, and connection with our self.
Challenge: What do you need to do to create some unscheduled downtime in your life?
