Tag: Productivity; Overworking; Mindfulness; Overcoming Struggles; Time Management

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The Day of Doing Nothing Can Benefit Us

One day, I decided to do nothing because I felt my attrition rate increase, especially in tasks requiring creativity. It is because I have been extremely busy with year-end audits, taxes, and other year activities. Although, it was not as bad as the prior year since my husband took over many household chores. I also have been working on improving my lifestyle to be healthier by getting adequate sleep, meditation, proper diet, and exercise. Yet, I noticed that I tend to be less focused. It was high time to relax and refresh my brain.

I wanted to take a week off from work; however, it was impossible to take a whole week off. So, I took two days off—a day for only reading, playing the piano, writing, and thinking. I did the exercise for one of the two days. I made a strict rule not to think about work at all during these two days. I intentionally created two days without a to-do list or appointments, which was surprisingly challenging.

In total, I had two days of vacation. I decided to do whatever I wanted to do that day. One rule I strictly enforced was not to think about my work at all. On the first day, I mostly spend my time reading and playing the piano on these days. I did approximately 90 minutes of exercise during the day. I was physically tired, so I slept so well. I scored 91 on my sleep quality score according to my Fitbit. On the second day, I was doing the same activities as the first day, but I did not exercise. I had too much energy to sleep that night. I am usually busy on my vacation days doing something, and I never noticed this problem. I need to test it again. It will be better for me physically active on my vacation days. Although, I thought two days were too short to be effective.

Sometimes, people purposely take days off from daily routines to be more creatives and focused. Bill Gates takes one week off from his busy life twice a year so that he does nothing but reading articles and books, studying and thinking about the bigger picture (McKeown, 2021). I do not remember when I took a week off for vacation the last time because I spent all my vacation and holidays doing projects. So, I decided to take to see what would happen from the day off.

Surprisingly, many Americans forfeit their vacation times. According to the Washington Post (August 28, 2019), 55% of Americans did not even use their vacation time, leaving 768 million days of unused paid time off. The average number of American’s paid days off is 17.4 days in 2018; however, this number includes paid holidays (para. 9-11). When I came to the United States, I was surprised by this. I am from Canada, and I worked in Germany, where we must provide paid statutory holidays.

Many Americans indeed chose not to use up their paid day off. Perhaps, many of us feel guilty about taking a vacation. Many of us fear we may be seen as more of a liability for the company to take time off. The question we must look into is – are those beliefs are correct? When I thought about this question, I realized that I do not know. I have heard about the benefit of taking breaks from problems or taking a vacation to affect people positively. I assumed that taking breaks allows us to get recharged. Since I was interested, I researched the benefits. Surprisingly, there is ample research about the effects of taking breaks.

Some consulting firms are discovering whether employees taking vacations benefits a company. According to Rook from JP Griff Group (June 3, 2019), the 2017 project study they conducted revealed that the employees who forfeit their vacation were 4 % less likely to receive raises and 6 % less likely to receive bonuses (para. 10). They found out that people who continue to work without a break or vacation; are less focused and less engaged. They are more likely to make mistakes because they are fatigued. It gets much harder to generate new ideas with an overused brain.

Taking days off improves our productivity has been empirically observed and is a generally accepted scientific theory. Some researchers observed the benefits from it; then, they further investigated how the benefits are created. Being away from work allows our brain to generate more ideas and solutions to the problem, which psychologists call the incubation effect. According to Ritter & Dijksterhuis (2014), the effects of incubation are generally accepted; however, there are two opposing theories of how the benefits are created, the Unconscious work theory and the conscious work theory. The Unconscious work theory suggests that our unconscious activity of solving the problem contributes to the effect. The Conscious work theory argues that the effect is caused by actively relaxing the brain by being away from the problem (pp.4-5).

A few days of incubating problems allows us to solve the problems, especially problems that require remote association. Researchers theorized that sleep has an essential role in the incubation effect. Scientists have found that REM sleep enhances our creativity. According to Wagner et al. (as cited in Ritter and Dijkstehuis, 2014), students who slept more than seven hours at least twice were more creative and solved problems faster than people who did not. Sleep enhances cognitive flexibility and the ability to find remote associations.

Furthermore, sleep allows students to find solutions to abstract problems (p. 4). This theory interested me because I had found that I could solve problems during dreaming when I was in high school. It tends to happen when I have been thinking about the same problem for at least three days. It happens a lot with me with math problems. The last time it occurred to me was a few months ago when I was building a query. Unfortunately, I cannot control this ability. I always speculated that my brain removes the limit of my creativity during sleep, which allowed me to solve the problem.  So, sleeping has a vital role in the incubation effect. Then we should not be spending our days off partying all night.

People need days off because taking days off allows us to walk away from the problems at work. There will be no phones, tablets, or laptops. Stay away from the work because you want to be actively not thinking about the work. Another important part is we still need to get adequate sleep during days off. After struggling to solve a problem, try to walk away from it. Sometimes working away from the problems leads us to their solutions.

This little research made me view vacations differently. Perhaps, we need breaks to be more productive and creative. I thought people say it to sound and humanely compliant for a company. We, accountants, flags other accountants if they do not take breaks—accountants believe in taking vacations to prevent fraud. We gain benefits from taking days off. After my investigation, I realized that we should take days off to be more focused, creative, and productive. Getting adequate sleep is also important while doing so. Sometimes, walking away from problems leads you to the solutions. Although, this may not be economically feasible for some people. According to the Center for Economic and Research, The United States requires zero yearly time off, much lower than France, Austria, Spain, Germany, Canada, and Japan (as cited in Sampson, August 28, 2019, para. 3). In some cases, people do not get paid off at all. Although, many of us do have paid vacation. If you choose not to use up the paid days off, you may want to reconsider taking them. I will try to use up my vacation this year, and I will try to go somewhere next time and note any differences.

References

McKeown, Greg. (2021). Essentialism. [Kindle edition].

Ritter, S. M., &Dijksterhuis, A. (2014). Creativity—The unconscious foundations of the incubation period. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00215

Rook, David. (June 3, 2019). JP Griffin Group. The Importance of Paid Time Off (PTO). https://www.griffinbenefits.com/blog/the-importance-of-paid-time-off-as-an-employee-benefit

Sampson, Hannah. (August 28, 2019). What Does America Have Against Vacation?https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2019/08/28/what-does-america-have-against-vacation/

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Escaping the Infinite Loophole

For years, I kept myself as busy as possible. I always had long-term and short-term goals, which I used for generating my to-do list. I earned a graduate degree and professional designations while I was working full time. I even managed to eat, sleep, and exercise regularly. Then, my husband became ill, and I almost lost him. The sense of guilt haunts me for being idle. Since my husband could not do some of the house chores, I took over all of them.

Despite the additional work, I managed to do some exercises with my busy schedule until some events would push me to the edge. Then, I was too busy to do some tasks such as exercising, sleeping, cooking good meals, or spending my time with my family or friends – which I now think should have been higher on my priority list. I neglected my body, social life, and mental life. As a result, I gained weight, felt ill and unhappy. My condition was affecting my husband. When I am felt low and sick, it made my husband feel sad.

I think I exceeded my actual capacity. Since it seemed to be working, I thought I could maintain this schedule rather than prioritizing tasks or delegating work. How arrogant and wrong I was. I felt physically and mentally ill several months ago. Since then, I have been rethinking my lifestyle. If I did not feel sick physically several months ago, I probably would have continued to ignore this impending problem.

It puzzled me why I could not detect this problem earlier. Perhaps, I have never seen this situation as a bad thing. We grow up with the mind that working hard is good behavior. My culture, Japanese, views overworked people as respectable people. We have people dying from overworking, which we describe as “Karoshi.” According to Reuters (2015), 1,456 Japanese people were reported dead from overworking in 2015; however, the actual number was probably ten times higher (para. 3). My parents always worked long and hard hours. My mother often came back late during month-end. Sometimes, she even brought back work at home and worked past midnight. My sister and I helped with household chores, but my mother worked a lot. Everyone around me worked long hours. This “overworking” syndrome is manifested in many countries throughout Asia. We believe that a respectable person must work hard; Confucius heavily influences this belief. I left my country a long time ago, but I never got rid of this norm or expectation.

Working excessively hard is physically and mentally unhealthy because the endless work puts us under a constant sense of urgency. The endless work makes us feel a lack of control. This feeling puts us under a lot of stress. When we are under constant pressure, our body goes into a fight-or-flight condition. According to Mayo Clinic (March 19, 2019), Our bodies increase adrenaline and cortisol production to prepare us to fight off danger. Of course, this is a survival mechanism. However, the long-term activation of the stress mechanism forces us to overexpose ourselves to cortisol and other stress hormones, which can harm our health in the long run (para 5-7). In my situation, my constant stress caused me anxiety, sleep problems, and weight gain. Unless I start managing my stress, I will endanger myself with a massive health risk. I realized I have to work on the root cause of my problems, leading me to be constantly stressed, which was my over-scheduling problem.

Working hard does not necessarily make us happy. Japanese often suffer from having low life satisfaction. According to the “life satisfaction” index from the organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD), Japan ranked one of the lowest among the 33 other member countries in the organization. Only 30% of Japanese perceived themselves as healthy, which was much lower than the OECD average of 69% (para. 1 – 3). I was getting unhappy because I noticed I was not getting things done as effectively as I thought. Why Should I be able to accomplish more? I lacked energy due to health neglect.

Hard work is not necessarily productive, and I was starting to notice this problem. I tend to make more errors. It took me longer to complete a single task as I became unhealthier. According to Morikawa Masayuki, the vice president of the research institute of economy, trade, and industry (March 5, 2019), Japanese productivity is the lowest among G7 countries. Their productivity is two-thirds of the United States. He pointed out that the Japanese work too long hours (para. 1- 9).

I still think it is good to work; however, we must understand our limits. Otherwise, we will risk our physical and mental health. If we are not careful, we could be working hard on something but not being very productive.

Life is all about making choices. Since we have limited time, we must be selective with what we do. Greg Mckeown (2020), the author of the book, essentialism, says this, instead of doing gazillions of things, accomplish the genuinely vital things. We must exercise essentialism, which is not about getting more things done, but it is all about allocating your time and energy to work on what is considered essential (pp. 6). It is just like business owners or managers who allocate their available resources to generate more profits for their company.

We should also choose a single highlighted task for the day. The task we prioritize must also satisfy us by completing it. Knapp and Zeratsky (2018) called this the most important thing as one high-priority goal, improving your satisfaction and providing energy to complete the rest of the tasks. This single priority must be significant and represent what you want to do. We must focus on this task and eliminate any distractions. Finally, we must make time to recharge your brain. Make time to exercise, eat food, sleep, allocate time for reflection and social time so that you can renew your energy (p. 20).

I started to be more selective on my to-do list. Initially, I was worried that I was doing less, so I ended up with two lists, one for work and one for personal; however, I had too many total items to complete to maintain a balanced life.  Now I have only one list with six things, one of which is my highlight. Surprisingly, I feel much better with only six list items. When I work on my highlight, I shut myself off from any distractions. I often have classical music on because background music usually helps me focus on my task. I keep my body’s batteries charged by exercising, sleeping, talking with others, and eating good food. Of course, I still make bad choices which I usually noted at the end of the day. I usually know when I make a mistake because I feel less happy at the end of the day. It is ok to make mistakes because I will start a new day tomorrow. As Scarlett from Gone with the wind famously says, “I’ll think of it all tomorrow. At Tara. I can stand it then. … After all. Tomorrow is another day” (Mitchell, p. 1024). I will learn from what did not go well, but I try not to cry over the spilled milk. Ever since I became selective about what I do, I feel like I have gained control over my life with much greater energy.