Slowly but surely: how to restore the balance between rest and work

Based on the fact that it takes us 8 hours to sleep, there are 16 hours of wakefulness left. So work takes at least half of our time – at least on weekdays. Therefore, the answer to the question of how satisfied we are with life in general depends largely on whether we are satisfied with our work.

However, not everyone is able to enjoy the work. “I feel completely driven out, even though I like my specialty and my colleagues,” says Olga, 34, an HR manager. “There are too many tasks to solve, you need to switch all the time, your head is cracking from this, and there is sorely not enough time!”

Stop, moment!

“First of all, let’s try to understand how efficiently your day is organized,” suggests time management expert, Doctor of Economics, Professor Marianna Lukashenko. – The technique is called “timekeeping”: you write down all your affairs and the time spent on them. You can do this in a notepad, on a computer or on a smartphone, using special applications that build a schedule themselves. At the end of the day, you will see what your time is really spent on.”

There is no right or wrong amount of time to spend, for example, checking email – it all depends on your responsibilities.

But if you decide that you are ready to devote two hours to reading letters (viewing news on the topic, calculating profitability …) and spend all three, then it’s enough just to follow the time for several days so that it begins to change in the direction you need. The same thing happens with other indicators, says Marianna Lukashenko.

By needs

Everyone organizes their workflow in their own way. Someone needs a drive with constant deadlines that allow them to feel in good shape. Someone – for example, hyper-responsible perfectionists – does not need it at all. We belong to different psychotypes, and our working rhythms depend on it, psychologists say.

For example, a choleric temperament is characterized by faster reactions and a high speed of thinking, while a melancholic temperament is slower. These features are useful to consider.

“If a client with a slower psychotype gets into a structure where everything happens very quickly, then for him such work is daily and increased stress,” explains existential analyst Svetlana Mardoyan. “We, adults, should understand ourselves and not strive, for example, to become pilots, while having a weak reaction.”

The work schedule should take into account the usual mode of the day. So, for “larks” the peak of activity falls on the morning hours, so the most complex and important tasks are best done in the morning. But for “owls”, on the contrary, it is better to postpone the solution of important tasks for the second half of the day.

Train from A…

Nothing gets in the way of work quite like multitasking. Constant jerking, switching attention and distractions do not benefit us or the work. In his book The Rules of the Brain, John Medina talks about the conclusions reached by psychiatrists: a single interruption increases the time of work by one and a half times – and one and a half times increases the number of errors made.

“Let’s draw an analogy with the movement of a train,” explains Marianna Lukashenko. A non-stop train travels from point A to point B in 4 hours. With four stops, 40 minutes longer. At the same time, the train stops at the stops themselves for a total of only 6 minutes, and the remaining 34 minutes are spent on acceleration and braking. The same thing happens to us: in order to accelerate, and in order to stop, we need time.”

You can do several things at the same time only if they do not require inclusion: such is mechanical work like rearranging and putting things in their places, Svetlana Mardoyan notes. In other cases, multitasking scatters attention: being completely immersed in only one topic does not work, and because of this, the likelihood of missing something important increases.

Rest – do not work

When we cannot distract ourselves from the work process for a second, then closer to the final we usually find ourselves squeezed out like a lemon. Is it possible to catch the moment when it’s time to slow down? Once an hour, you need to rest for at least a few minutes, Marianna Lukashenko is sure.

“Divide the work into blocks,” she advises. – Once you have completed the block, wash your face, eat an orange, brew herbal tea, do neck or eye exercises, play darts, make your workspace cozy.

If you are sitting at a computer, then a cup of coffee and scrolling through social networks is not what you need, because in this case you are still sitting. For the rest to be effective, we should switch from one type of activity to another: if we were sitting, get up and stretch ourselves, if we were digging the ground, lie down.

But if we are in a state of flow, that is a different matter. For example, when preparing a presentation, the thought flows, the pictures themselves go into the hand, brilliant phrases are born one after another. In this case, artificially interrupting yourself is not worth it.

“Stay in this stream longer,” advises Marianna Lukashenko. “But when you emerge, a huge amount of work will remain behind you.” And after that, allow yourself a longer rest – depending on how long you were in the labor “binge”.

Maintain balance

The manager’s syndrome, or burnout syndrome, has become so widespread precisely because too often we push ourselves to the limit, forgetting about the “stop tap” and not correlating the amount of work with the amount of rest. Even keeping a daily routine for many becomes an impossible task. As well as the organization of leisure.

What do most of us do on the weekends? It is sent to shopping centers and grocery hypermarkets,” says Svetlana Mardoyan. – It is not surprising that after that we do not feel rested at all. Therefore, it would be more efficient to devote the evening hours after work to shopping, so that Saturday and Sunday could be filled with your favorite activities.”