Dreaming of a lazy summer?
It might be just what you need to boost productivity in the short-and-long-term
Imagine a cliché August and images of lazy summer days, eating watermelon on a gate by a field, swinging in a hammock, or lying in a field of flowers might drift into your mind. Of course, this is probably nothing like your actual summer experience. Perhaps summer for you is just as full-on as every other season (maybe even more stressful if you’re juggling childcare in the school holidays). You’ve still got to work, you’ve still got chores, there are still deadlines, obligations and needs to be met. You might get a holiday, but that will be sandwiched between multi-tasking to wrap everything up before you go whilst planning the holiday, and the post-holiday blues when it’s all over.
Hopefully I’m painting an overly negative picture, and for you the reality is a lot more ‘cliché summery’. But if it’s anything like this, it sounds like you need to be efficient, productive and resilient if you’re going to make it work.
Well, whilst lazy summer days may be a thing of fiction, finding a way to weave a little ‘laziness’ into your life could be a game-changer for your productivity and resilience.
Change the question and aim for sustainable performance
People often want to know how to avoid procrastinating, be more efficient, effective, productive, manage their time better, or achieve more. Counter-intuitive as it may seem, one question you might want to ask more is “How can I rest better?” Cultivating a rhythm of energy expenditure/ stress, and renewal / recovery is important for resilience and sustainable performance.
Energy management may be even more important for your performance than time management.
Your body and your brain expect and need rest. Adrenaline and cortisol are very useful chemicals that are released as part of normal operation in your body: they are crucial for activating us and making us alert and able to leap into action. But we are designed so that the levels of these chemicals, and others, fluctuate. If they stay high all the time, and if we are keeping ourselves in a physiological state of alertness – (eg operating from the sympathetic nervous system known for fight or flight) too much, it can be harmful to our health. Resting allows you to activate the parasympathetic nervous system (our recovery and renewal system), releasing acetylcholine, which counteracts the effects of adrenaline, and brings the heartrate back to normal.
Prioritise rest to optimise performance - now and in the long-term.
It is in this state that you are more able to think clearly, make decisions, regulate yourself emotionally, and take a moment to reflect and be intentional about how you proceed. It is as essential for your physical as your emotional, social, and cognitive performance and health that you prioritise and respect rest.
At Wachovia Bank, employees participating in an energy renewal program outperformed a control group of employees in multiple performance measures, including financial and revenue. Participants were taught strategies relating to physical energy (nutrition, rest, sleep etc), emotional energy, mind / focus, and spirit (meaning and purpose). The programme was also run successfully at Ernst & Young during the height of tax season.
Beyond high performance right now, you probably need resilience and endurance in the long-term - to keep going for those long-term goals or to keep afloat during the perma-crisis that life can seem to throw at you. Committing to rest, recovery and rejuvenation is an investment into the most important resource you have to success: yourself.
Practise micro-rests
Even just building in micro-moments of recovery or rest throughout the day can help to shift the chemical balance in your body enough to give you the endurance you need for the long-game. Micro-rests could be:
Moments of savouring to give your mind a quick rest from stress and loosen that intense focus on ‘the problem’
Paced breathing – spend a few moments breathing at a steady pace into and from your belly as though each breath inflates and deflates a balloon in your abdomen – this stimulates the vagus nerve and activates the parasympathetic nervous system – our recovery and renewal system (and gives the fight-or-flight system a break). This practice has been shown to help move past procrastination and improve cognitive performance on complex decision-making tasks by 62% per cent
Centering - this is what many top athletes and performers do - it’s especially effective to help you regroup and refocus when under pressure. Direct your attention to the point in your body that you believe to be your ‘centre of mass’ and breathe into it
Shake out – this is a part of the natural stress-cycle response, as seen in impala who have survived an encounter with a predator. Trauma expert, Dr Susanna Petche explains that shaking the body functions to process some of the excess energy and chemicals involved with stress and ‘resets you’. At Companies in Motion they teach people a practice to shake each part of their body for the same reason
Stretch - stretching your body (as close to a full-body stretch as you can manage) releases molecules that reduces the inflammation and tightness in the connective tissues of the muscle, which can be caused by stress
Close your eyes – even just for 10 seconds and give yourself a mini-retreat from stimulation. Even better, Claire Dale of the Physical Intelligence Institute recommends ‘proxy sleeps’. For 2-5 minutes lie down and put yourself in a restful state that is as close to sleep as possible. Taking even this brief moment for relaxation, the brain can slow down and increase the prevalence of theta and delta waves, allowing the release of various chemicals that promote regeneration, immunity strengthening, stress reduction and more.
As a certified Physical Intelligence coach I can help you to explore how these and other ideas could help you to incorporate rest and recovery into your life and contribute towards better performance in the long-run.
Prioritising rest
In addition to the micro-rests throughout the day, it really pays to schedule in a more substantial rest each day, each week and extra during intense or stressful periods.
Identify and protect times for a rest.
Be intentional and decide what kind of rest you need – is it a break from a specific thing or a break from everything? Do you need to retreat, power-down, calm, refresh, rejuvenate, replenish? This will tell you whether you should be mediating in a dark room, reading a book, jogging, playing the piano, chatting to a friend, going to the theatre etc.
Take care of your body by feeding it nutritious food as much as possible and giving it time to move, rest and sleep properly.
Try to shift the way you see rest and relaxation so that it is less something you have to deserve or earn, and more, an investment into your productivity and endurance – or simply meeting a natural need and recognising how the body and the brain function.
Taking time from ‘being productive’ to rest and recharge your batteries is not really lazy, it’s part of optimising your long-term and sustainable performance and resilience and even in the short term your performance will thank you.
As a Physical Intelligence coach and a Transformational coach, I can help you to have a healthier relationship with rest and renewal, and learn how to prioritise and incorporate it into your life, to give yourself the resilience you need to thrive and meet your biggest goals. Get in touch to find out more or schedule a free 30 minute discovery call.
Does a restful August sound dreamy or a pipe dream? Let me know in the comments!
