Zen and the art of work/life balance
Work can be addictive and a pleasure, after all if you enjoy what you do you’ll probably do it well. Hard work doesn’t hurt anyone but spending too long at your desk can blunt your performance and jade your creativity, and not just that.
Research by Thorin Klosowski shows that prolonged sitting at a desk not only damages your productivity but is actually bad for your health. This is what the research tells us.
Most of us have been conditioned to believe that sitting at a desk, sometimes for hours on end, translates to a greater level of productivity but does that mean that more work—or better work—was done?
Thorin Klosowksi answers this question, he asserts that we can be both productive and healthy if we are willing to follow a schedule that reminds us throughout the day to step away from our desks for a breather. He writes: “Creating a schedule to remind yourself to stand up and exercise a little might seem insane, but it’s pretty clear we all need some type of motivation because we’re not doing it on our own.” Thing is, we’re so trained to think that walking away from our desks means that valuable work time is also taking a walk on the non-productivity side. How can we break this conditioning, this strongly ingrained habit to be tethered to our desks?
On average we sit for about 15 hours a day, Klosowski reveals. His research uncovered the following: “When you’re sitting, the big muscles, especially in the lower part of body, are completely unloaded. They’re not doing their job,” That inactivity prompts changes in the body’s metabolism…and produces a number of biological signals, what scientists call biomarkers, which are linked to cancer.” Imagine day after day of sitting, almost immobile, tackling one to-do list item after another—even eating at your desk in an attempt to counter an ever-growing list of tasks or emails. It’s probably not too hard to envision this because it’s probably your reality. And that’s a problem. Long stretches of sitting may not directly translate to certain cancers for you, but the odds are increasing—and not in your favour.
And it’s not just a lower body/sitting issue. Klosowski takes a look at other modern-day office hazards, like eye and wrist strain, which can be annoying at best, or require surgery at worst. It’s not just our bodies that suffer; our minds can take a beating as well. In her article, Phyllis Korkki quotes Rotman School of Management professor, John P. Trougakos: “Mental concentration is similar to a muscle…It becomes fatigued after sustained use and needs a rest period before it can recover.” Trougakso recommends in the article that we take a break before reaching the end of our mental rope. Korkki writes: “Symptoms of needing time to recharge include drifting and daydreaming.” But we wonder: Is there an exception to taking a break every hour? Wouldn’t it be better to keep working if you’re in “the zone” and ideas are flowing from your mind like water from a tap?
The answer to that may surprise you. Enter Klosowski’s schedule (devised in collaboration with Brian Parr from the Department of Exercise and Sports Science at the University of South Carolina Aiken), which is designed to make you take leave of your computer every half hour. This may sound like defying gravity, but it really isn’t. And there’s good incentive to do it.
Klosowski quotes Parr as saying, “I think a good goal is 5-10 minutes of activity (away from the desk) per hour. Many of these ideas can be done “secretly.” The benefit of taking breaks for the amount of time that Parr suggests is that you are giving some stasis to—if not preventing altogether—the negative impact that sitting at your computer can have on your body and mind. The research shows that short breaks, again, away from the desk, actually make us more productive than if we’d stayed at the desk all along. We may seemingly “lose” work time every time we get up to take a break, but we gain it back in spades through our increased productivity throughout the day.
Now you may think I’m using all this research just to make an excuse to leave my desk or take another week of work, travelling to France for a break; but I’m sitting up (or should that be standing up) and taking all this research on board. According to a well known saying “All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy”
A la fois prochaine