Perhaps the point of a football huddle isn’t just to set up the next strategy. What if the 20 minute period break during hockey isn’t just so the team can rest. Maybe taking a month or two off after college graduation is better than running straight into a job. Science tells us we retain, understand and think about information better by getting a good night’s sleep. I see rest as effective on a smaller scale too.
Having a brain storm session then forcing employees to get working on an idea right away isn’t as effective as letting them sit on it for a bit or congregate around the water cooler to chat about it outside the Thunderdome Of Ideas.
Too often we invest in the belief that being and staying busy is being productive, is creating value. Wrong.
A remarkable friend of mine schedules time to get away each week, not because he’s unhappy or that work is too much for him, but because he knows to give himself time for things to sink in.
When you react to a medication, that’s a bad thing. When you respond to treatment, that’s a plus. – Seth Godin
The best feedback on meetings comes the day after. When you ask for feedback right at the end of the meeting, you have a room full of people reacting, not responding. Yet, so many managers ask for feedback right away or schedule tasks one after the other, no break.
By regularly placing ourselves in an environment that isn’t pulling us this way and that, we can process situations on a deeper level of understanding, we can invest time to truly think why X happened instead of Y or maybe realize why X was a good thing to happen in the first place.
If you think all this is hard to believe, then you’re thinking right. Take however much time you need to mull it over.
Stay Positive & Wine Tastes Better After You Let It Breathe
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