“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes… including you.”

~ Anne Lamott

When work piles up, it’s dead easy to tell yourself, “I don’t have time to take a break!” But, that’s exactly when you need it most. When we ignore the signs our body sends us, we inch ourselves closer to burnout, so break BEFORE you’re broken. In this short video I share a little nudge, inspired by my dog Islay!

Watch the video below, or read the transcript that follows, then make sure you prioritize regular brain and body breaks… before you’re broken.

Hey Michelle Cederberg here, out for a glorious afternoon walk with Islay-puppy, partly because she’s forcing me to, but partly because I know that it’s good for my productivity.

I don’t know how many times you might say this to yourself throughout the day when you’re busy…”I don’t have time for a break!”

I get it, because our desks can be piled up with too many things to do, so we think that if we just keep on working we’ll get through that pile. Let me tell you why the break is the most important thing that you can do in your productive day.

Your brain is a massively energy hungry organ and while it only represents about 2% of your body’s weight, it sucks upwards of 25 to 30% of your body’s energy in the form of glucose, or blood sugar. If you don’t give it intermittent rest, it’s going to stop working for you the way that it should or could.

So, if you’ve got lots of work to do you may think the best thing to do is to just hunker down and get that work done, but that’s not how your body works.

If you can break your day up into 90-minute or 120-minute work blasts, followed by at least a 10-minute (preferably a 20-minute) work break you’ll find that not only will you get more work done, but you’ll get better quality work done.

When we get tired, we will read the same sentence over and over again. Problems that are usually easy to solve become difficult. We get distracted by ‘shiny things’. These are all signs you need a break.

Be like Islay and take those moments to just stop and sip the water, breathe the air, have a snack…and walk to get some energy. When you do that your body will respond in kind and you’ll come back to the work with greater productivity.

And, it’s when you it’s when you least think that you can afford to take a break that you most need to prioritize one. I have lots to do today, including the editing and posting of this video, prepping the message for tomorrow, plus other work, but if I don’t stop to take a break, 1) Islay is going to give me a tough time, and 2) the quality of my work will go down, and the time it takes to do it will go up.

Listen to your body. It knows what it needs throughout the day. Schedule those breaks. If you need to set a timer it’s something that I definitely encourage.

So until next time, I’m Michelle Cederberg reminding you if you want to Ignite High Performance, you need to listen to the physical body and brilliant mind in it. Take your damn breaks!

Don’t forget to join me on Instagram or subscribe to my YouTube so you don’t miss a video!

And if you’d like to bring me in to your organization to talk about this topic or any others related to stress management, resilience, and how to ignite high performance in your team, pop me an email at hello@michellecederberg.com. I’d love to chat.

Resources Galore!

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