Let’s face it. In Western society, the option to switch off is usually … not an option. In a culture that places productivity ahead of all other considerations, and making money is right up there with oxygen, downtime and switching off are just not popular concepts. We rush from one activity to the next, the cacophony of demands growing ever louder and more frantic as we push our mentally and sometimes physically exhausted selves to the limit in order to reach our most productive potential. Our culture demands it of us.
People who don’t subscribe to this point of view are regarded with scepticism and even a little pity as we pride ourselves on our “success” – often measured by what we own. Sometimes we wistfully long for a less frenetic life – for a few seconds, until we are caught up in the next whirlwind of activity. And on and on we go, becoming more worn out and less productive as our brains experience daily overload, unable to deal with the sheer quantity of data we are expected to digest.
Is there a better way? Are we doomed to go on struggling to survive the daily avalanche until our tired, overworked brains and bodies finally succumb to some preventable illness? What do the experts say? Is it important to switch off? Or can we continue to function like machines with no apparent ill effects?
Help! My Brain Is Full!
Cerebral congestion – or in simpler terms, your brain being too full to take in any more information – is real, according to Ferris Jabr, contributing writer for the Scientific American. And its effects can have a profound influence on memory, learning, mental health, and other cognitive functions. In actual fact, the harder we push ourselves to achieve, perform and produce, the harder our brains struggle to cope with the overload, and the less effective we really are.
“In a normal working day in modern America, there’s a sense of so much coming at you at once, so much to process that you just can’t deal with it all,” says Michael Taft, freelance writer and meditation teacher. Overwhelmed by modern life, Taft sold his home, put his belongings in storage, and took 90 days out of his year to switch off, meditating, spending time in nature, and avoiding all the trappings of modern life, including other people. He experienced something many of us never get to: His mind gradually sorted through a backlog of unprocessed data, and emptied itself of accumulated concerns. “When you go on a long retreat like that there’s a kind of base level of mental tension and busyness that totally evaporates,” he says. “I call that my ‘mind being not full.’”
While many of us have family and other commitments that make a 90 day retreat an impossible dream, most of us can see the value of downtime. A 2010 LexisNexis survey of 1,700 white-collar workers in the U.S., China, South Africa, the U.K. and Australia revealed that on average employees spend more than half their workdays receiving and managing information rather than using it to do their jobs; half of the surveyed workers also confessed that they were reaching a breaking point after which they would not be able to accommodate the deluge of data. For these people, being able to switch off is as necessary as food, water and sleep, yet it’s unlikely that it will even be recognized as a legitimate need, let alone given any priority.
Turn The Switch Off
In western culture, where the prevailing belief is that “busyness equals productivity”, much is yet to be learned about the beneficial impacts of downtime. In most workplaces, downtime is seen as idleness, laziness or just plain unnecessary. It is seen as a threat to productivity and is generally frowned upon or worse. People who seem to need it are often labelled as weak, unsuitable for the job, or lazy. But what does the research say?
“Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets,” essayist Tim Kreider wrote in The New York Times. “The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration—it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.”
Nanna Naps Are Good For You
Contrary to popular thinking, your brain is actually very busy during downtime. Research suggests that many important mental processes need downtime to take place – not just sleep, but relaxed time awake. This time replenishes the stores of creativity, productivity, and energy. Memories consolidate, and it frees us to learn from the past and plan for the future. Even our moral compasses require downtime for fine-tuning, and our sense of self sharpens when we relax.
During downtime, our brains turn our attention from outward activities to reflections on our inner selves. We might replay a conversation from earlier in the day – this helps us to unravel it and make sense of it. Sometimes we rehearse a speech in which we stand up to someone who has bullied us – not only do we feel better for our vicarious bully – busting, it helps us learn how to better handle a similar situation in the future. We mentally practice a comeback on someone who has wronged us and feel the satisfaction of imaginary justice.
Quiet time is when we ponder problems and allow the solutions to gradually surface. We flick through the lists of half finished projects and unsaid words, finding a slot for those things in our lives. We immerse ourselves in scenes from our childhood and explore different pathways for the future, and examine our moral decisions and how we have been treating others. Our sense of self builds as we allow time to tell ourselves our story – our first-person narrative of life the way it has happened to us.
Behind The Scenes
There are many of us who would have experienced the phenomenon of wrestling with a problem during the day, and sometime between sleep and waking, in that half-awake state between dreaming and alertness, the solution has surfaced through the layers of sleep. Likewise, answers to questions pop up in a moment of relaxation, often as an epiphany or startling revelation.
The reality is, your brain has already been at work behind the scenes, coming up with a solution for you. In my own experience, one strategy works best when learning a new piece of music. I put in some diligent piano practice, review it before sleep, then rest on it. Sometimes I leave it for a day or so. When I return to it, my brain has consolidated it in my memory far better than it would have had I practised incessantly.
Burnout Ahead!
The habits of exceptional sports people and artists are worth considering even for those of us in more mundane occupations. These super – producers work in intense bursts, punctuated by breaks – then rest and recuperate. They don’t plod through their work, hour after hour, day after day, with no breaks or rests. This would be counterproductive and they would achieve far less. They need that downtime to produce at their best. “Unless the daily levels of practice are restricted, such that subsequent rest and nighttime sleep allow the individuals to restore their equilibrium, individuals often encounter overtraining injuries and, eventually, incapacitating ‘burnout,” says psychologist K Anders Ericsson, of the University of Florida. So what about the rest of us? Is burnout a surprise to us?
Be More Productive…After You Swich Off
In one study, volunteers had one day off from work each week over a number of months. After five months, the volunteers reported greater job satisfaction. They also had a better vision for the future of the company and their own role in it. Greater satisfaction with their work-life balance and more pride in their accomplishments were added benefits. Tony Schwartz, a journalist and CEO of The Energy Project, has made a career out of teaching people to be more productive by changing the way they think about downtime.
Tony believes that people can learn to switch off. He says that we can rejuvenate our stores of mental and physical energy, but many of us don’t know how. His mission is to teach us how. He partners with many of the Fortune 500 companies to help them get the most out of their workforce. Google is one of his regular clients. He has also worked with others such as Ford and Apple. And among his top strategies is regular rest.
A Weekly Rest
Seventh Day Adventists are a unique people group in that they practice a weekly day of rest, the biblical Sabbath. During this time, they don’t work, instead using the time for physical rest and spiritual reflection. They also tend to be vegetarian, don’t smoke or drink alcohol, and have a strong faith and social network. These factors combined lead to a life expectancy that is an average of ten years longer than other Americans. The Adventist Health Study suggests that their weekly rest is an important factor in reducing stress and increasing life expectancy. Being able to completely switch off for one day every week is significantly beneficial for health and life expectancy.
Get Some Downtime
So what can you do if you belong to a workplace where napping under your desk is not an option? Marc Berman is a psychologist at the University of South Carolina, and a pioneer in the field of ecopsychology. He insists that time outdoors is not a luxury, it’s essential. The hustle and bustle of daily life drain our energy levels, but being outdoors restores it, allowing the stress to seep away and rejuvenation to quietly ease in.
Tips For Helping Your Brain to Switch Off
Tony Schwartz of The Energy Project has some suggestions:
- Take a power nap during the day (if you’re able to). Ten minutes seems to be the optimum length of time to achieve refreshment while avoiding post – sleep grogginess. Being able to switch off for ten minutes has exponential value.
- Make sure you get seven to eight hours’ sleep each night. Insufficient sleep can badly affect memory.
- Spend regular time outdoors. Allow the rhythms of nature to soak in, displacing stress and chaos, and providing you with calm focus.
- Take small breaks during the day. Allow your brain to put aside its task for a short time and focus on restfulness. Even a short break will refresh you and you will be more productive afterwards.
- Tackle the most challenging tasks early in the morning while you are still fresh, and have energy to spare.
- Put aside specific downtime for focused thinking. Some people call this meditation, but even if you are not into the religious element of meditation, you can benefit. Focus your thinking on calming and positive themes that will refresh and relax you.
- Take time early in the morning, before you start your day, for focus and reflection. Read an inspiring book or listen to uplifting music. If you have faith, use that time for prayer and spiritual reflection, and connecting with God.
- Schedule time away from work, and be strict about avoiding work-related activities. Switch off completely.
- Learn to set boundaries around your downtime. For your own wellbeing, you need to say no sometimes. Employers, family and friends often unintentionally encroach on your downtime.
- Use your “in-between” moments to switch off. When you are on the bus, walking to work, or waiting in line, switch off to the world around you. Focus on your inner self, connecting with yourself right where you are. Pay attention to how you are feeling and what you have been thinking. What is your brain trying to tell you?
It Really Does Matter
Michael Taft makes the point that although many of us know what we should be doing, most of us don’t commit to it. As a result, we become stuck in a rut. We convince ourselves that we are unable to change the behaviours that are causing us long-term harm. “Getting out into nature on the weekends, meditating, putting away our computers now and then—a lot of it is stuff we already know we should probably do,” he says. “But we have to be a lot more diligent about it. Because it really does matter.”