Self Care for the Overwhelmed: Recover by Reclaiming Your Time
How often have you felt that there aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything you want and need to do? What if you could build in just ten or twenty minutes of recovery every day?
Let’s look first at multitasking. Think about your typical day and evaluate how often you are focused on one thing at a time. For most of us, we have multiple things going on. During a lesson in the Happiness Studies program, Dr. Tal Ben Shahar discussed our incessant multitasking and how detrimental this can be to our well-being, productivity, and happiness.
I looked at my workspace and realized that I had two computers running, three email accounts opened, and my phone was constantly vibrating from a group text. Additionally, I had 14 tabs opened on the computer that I was actively using. All this was happening while I was in class, trying to take notes! I started wondering how much time I was wasting by having so many distractions. In addition to wasted time, it was clear that I was not putting myself in an optimal learning state.
Have you ever thought that you were accomplishing a lot by multitasking? Unfortunately, multitasking does not help us accomplish more; it makes us less productive! Studies have suggested that multitasking is a myth. Our brain doesn’t simultaneously process work; instead, it rapidly switches between various activities. Switching back and forth is considered necessary for anything that requires action planning.
Our brains aren’t designed for this. It’s completely taxing. For a moment, think of your two favorite songs. Would you love to hear both of them right now? Would you love to listen to both of them play simultaneously? That would not be awesome; it would just be a mess of sound.
A study by Dr. Glenn Wilson and colleagues found that excessive use of technology, such as attending to email, texts, and phone calls while doing other work, is the equivalent of temporarily losing 10 IQ points.
Think about that for a second. If having email open while doing other work can have that kind of impact, what do you think all of the texts, social media, and TV are doing to our brains? How many IQ points might we be dropping in a typical day? How much time in the day is lost because we constantly shift our attention?
I’m going to challenge you here.
What if, instead of checking email, texting, checking Facebook, looking at Twitter and Instagram, taking phone calls, and listening to bad news, you shut it all down for blocks of time and worked on just one task at a time? (You can use the necessary technology tools to complete that task.) Once you finish that task, it’s time to build in a brief recovery period. Then, choose your next single task to focus on for another 60-90 minutes. Your increased productivity alone should buy you some extra time during the day.
Let’s also examine how much time you spend on some common activities. Grab a pen and paper.
Estimate how much time you spend daily on the following things: watching lousy news, Facebook, texting, tweeting, Instagram, or other social media tools. How many minutes/hours does that add up to in a week? Write down your estimate.
What if you took just 5% of those minutes and shut everything down? Give yourself the gift of peace. What would 5% mean for you? Is that ½ an hour per week, an hour, two hours? What gifts could you give back to yourself during that time? What brings you joy or something new you want to learn? Is there a book you’d like to read? Is there a person you want to call or spend time with? Would you like to spend some time alone in nature? What is something fun you’ve wanted to do but haven’t had the time to do?
Write down three to five enjoyable, meaningful things you can do with your extra minutes.
Start experimenting. Take 5% of those minutes and commit to building a recovery activity into your week. This is your recovery time; it’s for you; make it fun!
Build in these “Islands of Recovery” every day, week, and year. Remind yourself that you are more productive, more creative, healthier, and happier when you take time to recover through fun, play, rest, exploring, creating, and simply doing things that you want to do rather than what you have to do. One final motivation to consider is that it is often during these recovery times that we are more creative, have our best ideas, and solve problems. Cheers to recovery!
Wishing you an abundant life,
Karen
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