Week 7: The Work-Rest Principle
KEY POINTS:
1. The Work-Rest Principle is a structured approach to living and working that embeds sufficient recovery into your schedule.
2. We encourage you to chunk your day into blocks of time that you are working at 100%, followed by a period of complete rest.
3. This will allow you to improve your quality of work, even if you’re actually taking more breaks throughout the day.
“We think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality of time we put in.”
The work-rest principle is a practice whereby you alternate periods of focused intense work with periods of deliberate rest, recovery, and regeneration. An example would be Tony Schwartz’s 90-Minute Solution from The Energy Project, in which people work in 90-minute increments followed by 30-minute breaks. Similarly, Robin Sharma advocates 60-minute work blocks followed by a 10-minute break. You can create whatever timetable works best for you, but we recommend a maximum work interval of 90 minutes or less with minimum rest periods of 10 minutes.
The important thing is to incorporate regular breaks into your day. This is likely a new concept for many people who, for most of their lives, have been cramming in as much work to as many hours as they can, day in and day out. Allowing for periods of rest within your day will move you toward a different way of working, the aforementioned Power Work. This can mean working for 60 minutes with 15 minutes off, working for 90 minutes with 30 off, or whatever works best for you.
The key is to find a cadence that allows you to up your game, improve the quality of your work, and improve your physical and mental health. And when you take breaks, really take a break—go for a walk, get away from the office, step away from work completely.
The goal is to create a situation where you know that you’ve got a stretch of time where you can really focus, be as undistracted as possible, be hyper-productive, but then take a break to recover and regenerate. Now, instead of operating constantly at 80% of your capacity, you can work at 100% and then commit 100% to your 30-minute recovery and regeneration period. The result is improved performance and better health, as breaks are key to eliminating symptoms of chronic stress and anxiety.
It is often the norm in a corporate setting for downtime to be viewed as slacking off or a lack of a work ethic. You can help to change that notion by showing that you understand the role that deliberate downtime plays in amplifying the productivity of work.
This week’s exercise is about overcoming the pervasive culture of “busyness” around us. See page 35 of The Focus Effect Workbook or click Here to download the exercise. The focus of this week, the work-rest principle, is based on the idea of taking breaks to boost your productivity. So, this week you’ll be adding in breaks throughout your work days, working around when you have scheduled in Power Work and your meals (from week 4’s Fuel Plan). Once you’ve scheduled in the breaks, you’ll be challenged to fill them with things that leave you feeling recharged and ready to get back to work, such as light exercise or healthy snacks.
Watch Greg and Bruce discuss the work-rest principle here and the importance of vacations here.
The information and advice provided in this program is intended to assist you with improving your performance, as well as your general health. It is not intended and should not be used in place of advice from your own physician or for treatment or diagnosis of any specific health issue. By participating in this program you acknowledge that undertaking any new health, diet and/or exercise regime involves certain inherent risks, that you assume such risks, and that you release Wells Performance Inc. from any responsibility or claim relating to such participation.