Going into airplane mode

Learning to do this downtime thing

The curious case of the wandering woman

Last Saturday I had nothing to do. I mean yea I had the newsletter to write but I really didn’t have any office work on my mind, the house was already clean (happens sometimes).

I sat down to read and just immediately knew that there *must be* something productive I could do in that time. And then spent the next few hours floating from room-to-room like some unsettled ghost from a Bollywood movie, in search of that something productive.

While on Instagram I would have loved to talk about the relaxing weekend I was having, in reality I was just wandering my home looking for work.

Looking for clothes to fold.

Or some shelving to dust.

Finally I settled on organising a donation drive for my society and then spent all my energy on making my weekend as hectic as possible coordinating with the NGO and what not.

That’s when I decided to rethink downtime and get myself to take it seriously.

Downtime leads to Up(?)time

The chase for productivity and achievement can mean choosing to prioritise getting ‘work’ done over everything else. I’ve been guilty of that more times than I’d like to be remember.

Before I became a mom I had a long list of passions that I spent considerable time on after work hours.

Perfecting the pirouette was one of them. Countless hours and scraped knees later, it pretty much looked like this, just not half as cute.

There’s plenty of conversation on my social feed these days about the sheer relentlessness of corporate life. And some say that we are wondering about these things now because our covid-days are more hectic with having to care for our homes, cook, care for kids.

I disagree.

I think what the lockdown has done is allowed us to not be distracted by the busyness we have become accustomed to. It has given us pause in our auto-pilot lives to ask questions that we should have asked anyway.

I’m fully aware of my financial privilege when I ask this, but was your pre-covid normal really great to begin with?

Or was it maybe a little bit broken and you just didn’t notice?

Downtime is a critical part of managing your energy. And here are some reasons if you’re still a skeptic.

Reason # 1 It’s good for your health

Gump and co-author Karen A. Matthews, PhD, of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, analyzed data from a nine-year study of more than 12,000 men at high risk for coronary heart disease. The study participants had filled out questionnaires each year including a question about vacationing in the past 12 months. 

Those with regular annual vacations had a lower risk of death during the study period relative to those skipping their vacations, according to Gump and Matthews.

Reason # 2 It’s even better for your productivity & expertise

Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson of The Florida State University has spent more than 30 years studying how people achieve the highest levels of expertise.

Based on his own work and a thorough review of the relevant research, Ericsson has concluded that most people can engage in deliberate practice—which means pushing oneself beyond current limits—for only an hour without rest; that extremely talented people in many different disciplines—music, sports, writing—rarely practice more than four hours each day on average.

“Unless the daily levels of practice are restricted, such that subsequent rest and nighttime sleep allow the individuals to restore their equilibrium,” Ericsson wrote, “individuals often encounter overtraining injuries and, eventually, incapacitating ‘burnout.’”

How to do this downtime thing?

I bring you answers from

1. A retired army general who has handled real life-or-death kind of stress (no, sending your artworks is not life-or-death)

2. An extraordinary self-caring, happy shiny person who lives life to the fullest all the time making us incorrectly believe that her life must be easier (follow her Insta here)

Without further ado, here are the top tips that we could all do well to absorb. I take full responsibility for these since I may not have exactly stayed faithful to what they said :D

• It’s more than just balancing two things - (work&life). For a happy life you need to have everything in balance - health, family time, work, hobbies. When did we decide that first comes work and then whatever is left is distributed amongst the other things which we bundle together as ‘life’? Unbundle it. Embrace your life in totality.

• Make time for downtime but actively getting work out of the way. If you’re procrastinating on a project or moving it ahead by a few hours you’re only going to spend your downtime thinking about what you need to get to later. Get it out of the way. Do all the important stuff. Then enjoy your downtime wholeheartedly.

• Finish watching that Youtube cat video first. Focus your attention to what you’re doing and absolutely shut everything else out. If it’s work then work. If it’s chilling then chill. That phone call from a random acquaintance can wait. In all probability they called you by mistake anyway. Being able to segregate your attention is a master skill that one needs to develop. Once you’re done prepping for the meeting tomorrow, do the next thing (which could also be doing nothing and just drinking your coffee leisurely). Don’t keep thinking about work and then sending those hundred messages to colleagues every few seconds about what else needs to be done.

• Prioritise what matters to you ruthlessly. Think about what you want from your life and then prioritise things you want to spend time on.

• This is YOUR life. So how can ‘you’ come last and that random could-wait-till-monday request from a colleague come first?

• Forgive yourself a little. Maybe even a lot. If you’re sleepy after that big lunch, take a 10 min nap. It’s proven to help productivity. If you’re finding it hard to work on something, come back to it later. If your house is a mess, have that coffee first and then tackle it. Stop being hard on yourself.

If you’re keen on a long read about why your brand needs downtime, head here.

We have just 3 more newsletters to go so write to me if you’ve got suggestions on what else we should cover.

Until then, chill.