Want Optimal Performance? Do this
When did you last take a one or two-week vacation? One where you didn’t check email and were able to remember who you are as a friend, traveler, lover, partner, or mother?
When my iPhone was freezing each time I opened Contacts, I went to to the Apple store to fix it.
Technician: “Every so often you have to power down your iPhone completely.”
Me: “Why?”
Technician: “For optimal performance.”
That’s it! Actual genius advice at the Genius Bar.
To further illustrate the importance of stepping away for optimal performance, check out this poem about the importance of the “space in between.”
FIRE *
What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.
…
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.
…
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way. *
Taking A Brain Break
We can get so caught up in the frenzy of building our businesses that we forget to leave “the spaces in between” the logs, and take brain breaks. By a brain break, I don’t mean a Friday off, a weekend without checking email or leaving early to go to the movies ( I recognize all these feel monumental sometimes).
In the early days of my business, it was really hard to “allow myself” to take time off. I felt guilty and I thought: “I own my own business, so when I don’t work I am losing money?” Right? Wrong.
If your business is only making money when you are showing up, then I have bad news for you… you don’t have a business, you have a job you created for yourself. And one that probably doesn’t have built in holidays or a dental plan. You have a business that can scale when you are lying on a beach reading a novel, and you are still making money. Your team is working, or your software is collecting leads, or people are buying from your web site while you decide between chocolate gelato or sorbet.
When you don’t take time off, you are losing money because you risk burning out, you aren’t forcing yourself to create systems and implement delegations best practices that allow you to leave, and most importantly, you are not treating yourself as your company’s greatest asset.
Research has shown that giving your brain a rest allows you to see things differently and leaves you room to innovate.
Check out this TED Talk on how boredom leads to creativity by Manoush Zomorodi and what she learned in her research study about our relationships with our phone and all the multi-tasking we do. She called it “bored and brilliant” (and wrote a book on it). I’ll give you a hint: taking time off helps your brain free up precious glucose and have the literal energy to come up with new ideas and inspiration. It gives you a needed break from multi-tasking and expending energy on keeping up with all the stuff that needs forever doing. And as a business owner, it sends a message to your team, investors, and advisors that you know you are the linchpin in your business, and you will take good care of that linchpin so that the company can keep growing and scaling. Where will you go to optimize this summer?
* poem by Judy Brown, from The Sea Accepts All Rivers