Take a second to imagine yourself working all day, non-stop, without taking a single break…
“Nature has not intended mankind to work from eight in the morning until midnight without that refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts twenty minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces.”
– Winston Churchill
It’s not natural to be in ‘focus’ mode all day long – you are not a productive machine. Like all living things, you need to go through periods of stress and recovery to perform optimally. This is true for muscle performance AND mental performance. Just as you increase your strength by exposing your muscles to period of struggle followed by a period of rest (lifting weights in a gym), you increase attention by working in periods of intense focus followed by a period of un-focus.
Jim Loehr, a doctor in performance psychology and co-founder of the High-Performance Institute (a center for elite performers), wanted to discover what made the greatest tennis players in the world so much better than other players. This is what he found:
“The best players had each built almost exactly the same set of routines between points. These included the way they walked back to the baseline after a point; how they held their heads and shoulders; where they focused their eyes; the pattern of their breathing; and even the way they talked to themselves. It dawned on Jim that these players were instinctively using the time between points to maximize their recovery. Many lower-ranked competitors, he began to see, had no recovery routines at all.”
– The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
A dominant performer is one who has the ability to experience moments of serenity – absolute relaxation – between periods of intense focus. The elite performers experience serenity between shots (the Tiger Woods trance-like walk between golf shots), serenity between points (Pete Sampras picking at his racket and lowering his heart rate after a point is decided), serenity during timeouts (Michael Jordan sitting on the bench with a towel over his head) and serenity between matches (legendary UFC fighter Royce Gracie taking a nap just minutes before a championship fight).
The human mind goes through a rhythm of attention throughout the day. Scientists refer to this as the ‘ultradian rhythm’ and it is characterized by the following chart:
https://www.eeginfo.com/research/articles/David-Kaiser-ILF-Ultradian-Rhythms.pdf
The ultradian rhythm is a natural biological cycle of energy that our bodies experience throughout the day. There are typically 10 ultradian cycles during the course of a single day. The first part of each ultradian cycle is characterized by an increase in heart rate, hormonal levels, muscle tension and brain-wave activity – which increases overall alertness. After an hour or so these measures start to decline. As authors Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz explain in their book The Power of Full Engagement: “At the end of the cycle your body begins to crave a period of rest and recovery. Signals include a desire to yawn and stretch, hunger pangs, increased tension, difficulty concentrating, an inclination to procrastinate or fantasize, and a higher incidence of mistakes. We are capable of overriding these natural cycles, but only by summoning the fight-or-flight response and flooding our bodies with stress hormones that are designed to help us handle emergencies.”
After monitoring and recording my daily attention levels over the course of 3 weeks, I discovered that my ultradian rhythm appears to peak around 8am, then again at 11am, and three more times at 2pm, 5pm and 8pm. My ultradian cycles happen to be evenly spaced out, but yours may vary slightly throughout the day. I find that my peak focus times remain the same day after day unless I am traveling (jet leg really screws up ultradian cycles). I find that when I get 7-8 hours of sleep, eat well and exercise regularly I amplify my attention periods, but am unable to extend them without raising my stress levels.
***Use this week to subjectively chart your alertness during each hour of the day on a scale of 1-10. Try to identify when you typically feel most alert.***
The most important thing to do is to identify your low points of attention – determine the time that falls in-between your peak alertness times (for me: 9:30am, 12:30pm, 3:30pm, 6:30pm). At those times I MUST ENSURE that I go mental rest – go into ‘unfocus’ mode. If I don’t step away from my work my body will go into fight-or-flight mode, causing me to feel stressed, irritable and distracted the rest of the day. Consistently using caffeine or sugar to override my need for mental rest results in a permanent reduction of attention levels. Repeatedly rejecting your bodies need for mental rest eventually causes burn-out.
“The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.”
– Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching
Honor your mental rest/recovery periods at all costs. I suggest blocking out 15 minute in your calendar for each low alertness period.
What should I do during these mental rest/recovery periods?
Engage in a task of low processing demands – allow your ‘thinking’ mind to rest. Go from directing your experience (using willpower and solving problems) to observing your experience (being mindful).
Mindfulness is the best way to let your conscious mind rest. Mindfulness is simply focusing your attention on your experience without trying to control it and letting everything else pass by like clouds in the sky.
“You don’t have to say a mantra, you don’t have to visualize anything, you don’t have to develop any type of fondness for the iconography of Buddhism or any other revision religion. Mindfulness is just paying attention to your experience in the present moment.”
– Sam Harris, neuroscientist and skeptic
Don’t evaluate. Don’t label. Don’t try to manipulate what you’re doing. As soon as you find yourself trying to solve a problem or evaluate a decision – interrupt that thought by returning your attention to whatever it is that you are doing for the time being.
Here are five examples of mindfulness:
- Breathing mindfulness while sitting [focus on counting your breaths while allowing the torrent of thoughts in your mind to simply pass by without engaging]
- Walking mindfulness [focus on the your natural walking pace while allowing all other thoughts to pass by with engaging in them]
- Social mindfulness [simply listening to what someone else has to say and let go of your need to judge to come up with what you want to say next]
- Music mindfulness [listen to the music and allow all thoughts, images and feelings to pass by without engaging them]
- Mundane Work Task mindfulness [focus on the movements required to complete a repetitive and boring task – cleaning, sorting, signing – and allowing all other thoughts to pass by without engaging them]
See the following document for 16 ways to effectively take breaks.
“It just seems like I’m wasting my time when I’m mentally resting…”
Researchers from Drexel University found that the brain is very active during perceived ‘downtime’. Wandering minds are highly active minds. Our brains were once thought to go dormant when we daydreamed, studies have shown that activity in many brain regions increases when our minds wander.
The next time you see someone working on a task for a long period of time picture their brain activity going dim. When you see them pausing, stepping away and being allowed to daydream or be mindful, picture their brains turning back on.
Psychologists at Lancaster University found that when people took a break from their work, they were more likely to “experience an increase in both problem-solving speed and in the likelihood of arriving at an insightful solution” upon returning back to their work (Sio & Ormerod, 2009).
“What if my break occurs in the middle of doing something?”
Ernest Hemingway, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, would often stop writing mid-sentence
“The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.”
– Ernest Hemingway
It is better to stop when you have momentum, when the going is good. Doing so allows your subconscious to come up with brilliant ideas while you rest.
“Is not taking a break really that bad for me?”
Continual focus renders our work unimportant:
Psychologist from the University of Illinois found that “constant stimulation is registered by our brains as unimportant, to the point that the brain erases it from our awareness…deactivating and reactivating your goals allows you to stay focused. From a practical standpoint, our research suggests that, when faced with long tasks (such as studying before a final exam or doing your taxes), it is best to impose brief breaks on yourself. Brief mental breaks will actually help you stay focused on your task”
Failing to take breaks puts you at risk of being ‘Always On’:
Dick Wolf, is the executive producer of Law & Order and half a dozen other network television series. He once told a reporter that he had worked as many as thirty-four days consecutively, and gone as long as four years without a vacation.
“‘The scary thing,’ he explained, ‘is that I’ve lost the ability to shut off, even on a weekend, even when I’m up in Maine, where we have a vacation house away from it all, and even if I have nothing to do when I’m there. I find myself feeling guilty if I’m not working. I’ll think, ‘I really should be doing something.’ And I’ll almost always find something to do. It’s an inability to pull the plug and just vegetate.’ It never dawned on Wolf that what he called vegetating might actually be a powerful way to refill his energy reservoir. ”
– The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
The ONE takeaway today:
Find your periods of low focus/attention throughout the day (typically 4 times during the day), and schedule mental rest activities during those times – mindfulness is the best form of mental rest. The anxious feelings your having is your body telling you that you need to take a break – not that you need to work more. Your ability to focus is determined by your ability to rest. The deeper you rest the more intense you’re able to focus.
Practical action sequence:
- Reflect: discover your natural times of ‘heightened distraction’.
- Block Out: plan ahead and block them out in your calendar (start with 15 minute time blocks) AND/OR set four alarms on your phone 10 minutes before every scheduled downtime to remind you.
- Disengage: during the break turn off your problem solving mind and simply be mindful/observe your actions without controlling them (for example: go for a walk and notice your natural pace and allowing all unrelated thoughts to pass by)
- Re-Focus: return to your work after a period of disengaged focus to experience a period of enhanced mental clarity.
An image to take home with you:
The best tennis players in the world mindlessly pick at their racket in between periods of intense focus, just when you think they should be focusing on how they will get the next point.
Distraction Hit-list:
Unmotivated – ELIMINATED
Overwhelmed – ELIMINATED
Bored – ELIMINATED
Anxious – ELIMINATED
Apprehensive – Day 5