At home, we listen to health professionals who tell us how important 7 hours of sleep is for our health. At the gym, we abide by the latest in exercise physiology, which tells us that interval training, or taking short rests in between intense bursts of activity, is highly effective. At work, we know that the five-hour workday is widely hailed as a better way to manage energy at work.
But unfortunately, most of us work at least 8 hours a day, often straight through lunch.
When it comes to work, we respond to rising demands in the workplace by putting in longer hours. We wear badges of exhaustion with pride, only to come home with little left to give to our loved ones, leaving us feeling guilty and unsatisfied.
This cultural habit of chronic overworking is detrimental to our health because we are asking our bodies to run counter to our physiology, which is grounded in ultradian rhythms, the 90- to 120-minute cycles during which our bodies slowly move from a high-energy state into a physiological trough where our bodies demand recovery.
Without intermittent breaks for renewal, we blatantly disregard what science tells us about how our bodies function, in rhythms of peaks and valleys, which compromises not only our health, but also the quality of our work. Our companies suffer, too: when we are overspent mentally, physically, and emotionally, we are less engaged, more distracted, and more likely to leave our jobs or spend more on health care costs.
Cycles of Productivity
A recent study by the Draugiem Group used a computer application to track employee work habits. Specifically, the app tracked the habits of the most productive people and pinpointed the working flow that leads to the ability to get the most done.
Turns out, what the most productive 10% of users share is their discipline to take effective breaks. In particular, the most productive people worked for 52 minutes at a time, followed by a 17-minute break (similar to the Pomodoro Technique). This 52 on 17 off rule refreshes our attention span and invigorates our bodies. As much as we want to be on 100% of the time, it’s just not humanly possible.
The key is not to work harder, but to work smarter—by fueling your day with intentional time to recharge.
How to best recover
Ziksana is driven to spread the word that when we take time to play, we are more productive at work. Science tells us that play does wonders for our brains. Play motivates, enables emotional intelligence, improves our decision-making ability, and catalyzes learning. The science of play is the foundation of our work.
Knowing how you and the people you work with are wired—and the environment each needs to best renew—is crucial to managing energy at work to achieve top performance.
The first step is to begin to value time to recharge and use scheduled time in between productivity bursts to take the most effective break for you. The next step is to find out how you best play, and then to commit to taking breaks in the types of ways you identified on a regular basis.
When it comes to recharging, what kind of play works best for you? Do you prefer to be quiet and be left to your own devices? To socialize with others about the latest episode of a TV show? To move your body and exercise?
It’s time we think twice about working at all hours of the day and night. It’s time to listen to our bodies and what the research is telling us. We need to spend time to renew, to manage energy levels at work, and to work smarter to be more productive.
By using capsules of time designated for specific tasks, we can manage energy at work to stay focused for brief sprints and then spend intentional time recovering directly after.
However you choose to sync up to a schedule with dedicated time built-in for rejuvenation is fine—whether through Google Calendar, your phone timer, or your coworker’s designated morning snack break—as long as you have the time management skills and discipline to stick by the commitment you make to take a “play-break” when you need to refuel your energy.
Watch this video to learn about the different types of play and why it’s valuable to incorporate them into the workplace!
