Science says, taking a break from work can actually boost your productivity

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10th Sep 2019

We’re all guilty of it. Before you’ve even started your daily step count, you’ve probably checked and responded to your emails, scanned your news feed for the latest updates, mentally documented your to-do list and perused other people’s #Europeanholiday on a perpetual loop of Instagram stories. In 2019, being busy is a badge of honour.

But our go, go, go attitude could actually be making us less productive. Experts are praising the benefits of taking time out to be idle – that is, a licence to be lazy – which not only recharges our mental batteries, but can also actually boost our productivity.

“I feel like we’ve grown up in this culture where you’re supposed to have something to show for your time,” says Jenny Odell, artist and author of How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. “And, of course, this is really just the idea that time is money. So the notion of wasting time has a similar feeling as wasting money.”

But just as rest and recovery helps build muscle between workouts, our off switch allows us to more effectively process key learnings.

“These periods of not feeling like I need to do or make anything are probably the times in which everything is coming together in some configuration that could be called understanding. Without that, it would just be a big pile of information,” says Odell.

Studies have shown switching off can even spark our imagination. Researchers at the University of Central Lancashire found that a direct upshot of boredom is increased creativity. When participants were tasked with a boring activity followed by a creative one, they were more imaginative and resourceful. “Boredom, like many other emotional states that we have, plays an important role in our lives,” explains Andreas Elpidorou, an author and associate professor at the University of Louisville. “We don’t want to be left without boredom. We just want to know what boredom can do for us and how we can best react to it.”

Put simply: you don’t have time to not waste time. Earlier this year, the World Health Organization listed burnout as an occupational phenomenon, calling for a revision to its International Classification of Diseases. And it’s little wonder some of the top hotels globally are offering dedicated sleep concierges. Mindfulness, too, a once far-out concept, is today commonplace for managing stress and refocussing.

In response to this always-on phenomenon, the Dutch have even coined the term niksen, which means to do nothing, or to do something without purpose.

It might seem straightforward, but often the only thing more daunting than our growing to-do lists is the reality of down time.

“This might sound funny, but scheduling down time is really helpful,” says Jacqui Lewis, meditation teacher and founder of Sydney’s The Broad Place. “How rare is a weekend with nothing in it these days? We have to make that happen so we have the space and time to be inspired, take it easy, and rest.”

Daydreaming, meditation and taking a lunchbreak – all things we know how to do but often don’t – help us reset. As can the simple act of looking up from your phone and absorbing your natural environment.

“Just look around at where you are and try not to take everything for granted, and start asking why things are where they are or what’s the history of this place, what are the plants that are growing around me,” says Odell, who, not by coincidence, is phoning from a rose garden near her apartment. “Invite a state of curiosity – which I recognise in itself can be hard, but I think that even small interruptions of that can really add up to something.”

This article originally appeared in Vogue Australia’s August 2019 issue.