Doubling down on your downtime- increase your productivity

Leaf clock

These days, it seems that we are all obsessed with achievement and efficiency. Some of the most popular role models today advocate working long hours to get the most out of our lives. Jack Ma, the billionaire CEO, advocates a 996 working mantra for all young people in China - 9am-9pm, 6 days a week, and Elon Musk claims he regularly works 80 to 100 hours per week. While work and success are undoubtedly critical aspects of many people's lives, preserving wellbeing, mental health, and personal relationships are also important. Unfortunately, it is often hard to reconcile an extreme work ethic and a healthy mental and physical state.

Each of us is built differently, and the optimum balance between work time and downtime is different for everyone. It can be difficult for us to know what our optimum split should be. It requires us to think about the level of work and downtime that keeps us both motivated and successful, but also allows us to enjoy our achievements.

Social media is littered with influencers and celebrities claiming to have achieved their financial, relationship, and physical goals through methods that often cannot be verified. Unfortunately, these unreliable claims lead many of us to conclude that we are not working enough to be successful, and we must try different approaches to become more productive.

The obvious first approach is to simply work more, reduce downtime, and devote more time to work. Another option is to be more efficient and effective while working by choosing methods to improve our efficiency at work. These approaches should be familiar to most readers, as numerous resources exist online that advocate using one or both to improve our productivity.

Here, we wish to discuss a third, lesser-utilized approach to improving productivity - the optimization of our downtime. This involves adapting our downtime to improve our overall life quality. It shouldn't be confused with removing or even reducing downtime - the focus of the actions is productivity.

Below are 5 tips on how to make your downtime, and thus your overall life, more productive:

Plan your downtime (at least some of it).

While the idea of planning and downtime don't necessarily immediately go hand in hand, it can be the best way to get the most out of your break. All too often, when there is no plan for our downtime, we can fall into the trap of procrastinating, oversleeping, or overindulging. While these activities may seem relaxing when compared to work, they aren't beneficial for us in the long run. Having a plan on how to spend your time can ensure you utilize it effectively.

Modify your activities to reach deeper relaxation levels.

We all have our go-to activities for relaxation - the things we do when we want to relax. When we want a break from our work and the demands of our busy lives. Another way to enhance our productivity is by modifying our go-to activities to make them even more relaxing. Some approaches could be changing the way you do these activities or how you do them. For example, if you use the gym to relax, think about including a recovery activity to enhance your experience. If you like to play video games, think about making the environment you play in more comfortable, by changing where you play or using a more comfortable chair. These are just a couple of ideas you could use to modify your relaxation activities. Take some time to think about how you relax and how it can be changed to get more out of the time.

Do relaxing activities with transferable skills

Firstly, consider some life skills you would like to improve. Some examples include concentration, organization, patience, social skills, resilience, and leadership. Then, consider relaxing activities you can do in your downtime that also help you develop these skills. Some examples of leisure activities and their transferable skills include:

• Gym: Perseverance and resilience

• Playing video games: Strategy and leadership

• Yoga: Patience and focus

• Puzzles: Strategies and patience

By selecting activities to do in your downtime that can help you relax and also train transferable life skills, you can greatly improve the productivity of your downtime.

Catch up on sleep

Sleep is an effective way to rejuvenate the body, but unfortunately, many of us don't get enough of it. Therefore, if you're not getting enough sleep, one of the best activities you can do in your downtime is catch up on sleep. Some benefits of sleep include boosting the immune system, improving memory, strengthening the heart, and improving mood. So, if you're not getting enough sleep, try to add a nap or two to your downtime.

Record your thoughts and feelings

Our downtime has the potential to be extremely creative. Without work or daily routines to preoccupy our minds, our downtime can be a time when our mind is able to explore different ideas and plans. To be more productive during this time, consider not letting important thoughts or interesting ideas go to waste. This can be done by having a way to record them.

You can use a notebook, dictaphone, smartphone, or just a pen and paper. Try to have something with you in your downtime to record ideas and practice doing so. Many of our thoughts will be trivial or meaningless, but a few may be deep, reflective insights or creative ideas. By having a way to ensure the good ones aren't forgotten, you can make your life more productive.

Think about adding productivity and efficiency to your life by optimizing your downtime. It's an approach to try that could work for you. If you need help managing your downtime, get in touch. You can book a free 15 min chat with a trainer or send us an email at info@senschen.com.