December is the time of year when many people can experience burnout. Socialising with friends and family at the same time as rushing to meet deadlines before Christmas can take a mental and physical toll.
As a business owner, how can you keep your team effective when they’re under so many different pressures at the same time? The key is simply knowing when to stop.
Writing productivity expert Bec Evans, author of Written: How to Keep Writing and Build a Habit that Lasts has lessons to offer any team, whether you produce widgets or words.
In order to sustain any effective habit – and by extension an effective working life – Bec argues that you need to recognise the value of stopping. Taking a conscious pause is essential, in order to rest and replenish your ideas, imagination and inspiration.
In Written, Bec quotes computer scientist Cal Newport whose shutdown ritual at the end of each day is a mantra of the same few words, to tell his brain that his work is finished for the day.
Before he closes his computer at the end of each day, Cal reviews his to-do list, his calendar and his loose plan for the week. And then he says these words to himself:
“Schedule shutdown, complete”.
If work worries come into Cal’s head after he’s shut down, he tells himself that he would not have said his mantra if his work wasn’t complete for the day, so there’s no need to worry.
This means his brain is free to wander and focus on other things, which makes him more balanced and productive all around.
Productivity author Oliver Burkeman also explains the benefits of stopping in his best-selling book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It.
Oliver quotes studies that showed that the academics who are most successful at publishing are the ones who keep the writing habit going as a routine in increments, rather than waiting until they find big chunks of quality writing time.
These academics favoured brief daily writing sessions, even as short as 10 minutes a day. They never wrote for more than four hours a day, and always took weekends off. It’s called ‘radical incrementalism’. Key to their practice was stopping. Trusting, when they stopped, that they’d be able to pick the threads up again. Oliver Burkeman puts it like this, in Chapter 11 of his book:
“Stopping helps strengthen the muscle of patience that will permit you to return to the project again and again, and thus to sustain your productivity over an entire career.”
So, the secret to being truly productive may not be working longer, harder or faster. It may in fact be stopping. Recognising that your performance hits a peak and that once it is past this peak, you may gain more from stopping and resting than you will from carrying on.
This December, the key to remaining effective amidst the whirl of office parties, children’s Nativity plays, deadlines and the retail rush is to bear radical incrementalism in mind, and just keep producing good work, in manageable chunks.
By the end of the month, you’ll find you’ve been more effective than you imagined, with less stress and burnout.
So whether you’re stopping work at the end of the day or shutting down for the Christmas holidays, embracing ‘stopping’ as an unlikely productivity hack could change the way you work and how you feel when you’re not working.
Wishing you a very happy Christmas from all of us at Enjoy Benefits, and here’s to a holiday ‘shutdown’ that leaves you and your staff feeling happy and refreshed.
Our Employee Benefits
We offer benefits that help your staff achieve a better work-life balance while also feeling valued and rewarded.
From childcare benefits to the cycle to work scheme and gym membership, our benefits help businesses show they recognise the importance of employees’ lives outside the office.
We also offer risk benefits that help cushion the unexpected blows that life can bring, from accidents to illness. And our Wellness benefit helps employees to maintain balance and well-being, so they are more resilient and positive.
Our benefits aren’t just for Christmas, but they certainly help staff during this high-pressure time of year. And they’re just as useful in the New Year when fresh goals and resolutions around finances, health and wellness come to the fore.
Find out how we can help you and your business by getting in touch with our friendly team. We help thousands of clients in the UK support their staff with a range of benefits and rewards.
About Us
At Enjoy Benefits, we have great experience in helping companies of all sizes introduce benefits that are suitable for their workplace.
Benefits are easy to set up and ongoing administration is then run through a hub, allowing employees to manage their own benefits while the employer can see which benefits are proving popular and what level of take-up each has had.
If you would like an obligation-free chat to discuss which benefits might work for your business and your employees, please contact us by calling 0800 088 7315 or using our Contact Form.
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