Lew's Thoughts
How to Break
March 28th, 2020
We all get to a point where we need to take a step back and ‘have a break’ as Kit Kat tells you to do. Whether it’s a quick 10 minutes to go make a coffee, or a relaxing Sunday, scrolling through food delivery options and sat watching the new season of Sex Education all day. Either way, everyone breaks, but most of us aren’t actually very good at it, so here’s some tips on how to break.
If you’re going to break, fucking break! Time spent thinking about what you’re not/should be doing; thinking about the shopping you need to do, the project you haven’t started, the emails you haven’t sent, or anything else you’ve not done yet is not a worthwhile break. It’s a natural thing, when resting, to think about all the things that you’re not doing that needs to be done, but thankfully there’s a very easy trick to help you relax, and stop your brain wandering down the hall of tasks that need to be done on your break.
Write stuff down. Make lists, trust those lists, and trust yourself to use those lists. This can be in a notebook, on a whiteboard in your office, on google docs, whatever works best for you. I personally prefer to keep long term lists on Google Keep, and keep short term to do lists for everyday things on a notepad. Whatever your system, it needs to be well organised and reliable so that you can use it efficiently and trust it. Then when everything is out of your head and on paper, you can accept that you’re not doing what you could be doing. This technique will help keep things out of your head, not only when you break, but also in general life, helping you live a less stressful life. I have found this really helps when meditating too. For more information and tips on this you should read the amazing book Getting Things Done by David Allen.
Sometimes the reason you need a break isn’t because you’re tired, your brain just needs a different task to focus on for a minute. In that case, why not focus your energy on a simple chore from your to do list. For example, say I’m writing an article for my blog and can feel my brain start to wonder and lose focus. This doesn’t necessarily mean I’m getting tired, I just need to focus on something else for a few minutes, so maybe I could send a quick email or two, then when I get back to writing, my mind feels fresh to the task and I have my concentration back, yet in my ‘break’ I was still doing something productive. This idea is mentioned in Waqas Ahmed’s book ‘The Polymath,’ saying:
“When asked if or when he actually takes a break from his endless list of projects, Tim Ferris responded by saying, ‘I recover best when I switch my focus; so instead of doing nothing I’ll focus on something completely unrelated to what I had been focused on’. It is the same concept behind a circuit training workout - the full hour, rest-free, full-body exercise session which is devised in a way that allows different body parts to rest a short while, while other parts are working. ‘A change is as good as a rest’, so the saying goes.”
As a final little point that might not apply to you but is worth mentioning, you’ve got to be working hard in order to need a real break. I realised this in 1st year of uni on my christmas break in a conversation with my brother. He was asking the usual questions you ask a 19 year old student; “How you doing? How’s uni going?” And I was giving pretty standard answers back; “Yeah, it’s all good, I’m taking a couple week break over christmas now which is nice.'' His response to this made me think a lot. He basically made me question if I really needed/deserved a 2 week break from studying in my 1st year of uni. Honestly, no. I hadn’t worked long or hard enough in the previous few months to justify a 2 week break, considering everyone else in the room had worked just as hard, if not harder, and were going back into work the next day. Now when I know I deserve a real break, it means so much more and is a lot more satisfying. This realisation gave me a little kick in the arse to work harder, so thanks for being brutally honest with me Neil.
These techniques help me live a less stressful life and help me keep my motivation, concentration and focus high, and I hope it will do the same for you. To talk more about these techniques or tell me about your experience with them, please give me a message on Instagram or Twitter (link at the bottom of the page).