When you don’t break, you break

I receive this article a few times this week (from different colleagues) and I guess it probably says a lot of what almost 99.9% of us are feeling.

If you haven’t read it already please do. As a short summary it highlights the importance of taking breaks (which we all should already know about), or in essence you’re the one who breaks.

In the world of covid, all of us are working from home and with that it meant 5 minute coffee chats were replaced by 1h meetings. We are simply having meeting overload. And if you end up with far too many your brain can’t really have the necessary breaks to recharge. Here’s the picture from the article:

My personal story

Given I’m a project manager working with people accross multiple locations I do end up having a ton of meetings. On average I’m between 10 to 14 meetings a day! I end up being dragged in a lot of meetings in the capacity of SME as well. Whereas I’m protecting my team from too many meetings, I’m not protecting myself at all. I have huge meeting fatigue (despite me implementing all the rules I shared under show your calendar who’s the boss).

Also I am in a really stressful project at the moment, and what the meeting fatigue above is adding to is that I am just exploding in meetings where I feel incredibly frustrated that the right things are not being followed. This Friday I received a ridiculous email which took my stress levels throught the roof. Given I had blocked my calendar I went for a walk (and also to get my daughter’s school uniform). On the way in I was still fuming and feeling really stressed out, but on the way back I was feeling a lot better.

I have also tried to go back to mid day meditation. When I was pregnant (and due to the stressful nature of my work), I ended up using one of those meditation apps and during 3 years I did it every single day, so now trying to incorporate quick breaks to just breathe in and out.

My take on the breaks

The article advises for breaks in between meetings, but I would rather plug all the meetings together and then manage to get a 2h slot of uninterrupted work. I find that on the few occasions I manage to sit down and focus on a piece of work and complete it, my brain feels happy and I feel good about it. 45 minutes and 15m break allow you for a comfort break but I would never get any work done. Although, this is really specific to my own case I guess.

My ideal day would be something like this: start by looking at my calendar, scan through the emails to see if I received anything critical overnight, then get 2h uninterrupted work (after breakfast), plug in a few meetings. Lunch break with a quick walk outside, come back for more meetings and then another 2h of completing work and preparing for the next day.

So really, find what works for you but ensure you get good quality breaks in your day, otherwise you’re the one who breaks and no one will thank you for it.

When less is more

I will never forget the words of a friend of mine when he told me: “Don’t work harder, work smarter”. I think this is a mantra that has stayed with me despite me struggling to follow it.

On this note I was having a chat with my husband around how we couldn’t see ourselves going back to south europe (me spefically) because I can’t tollerate their ways of working. As we can’t travel right now, how about a cultural travel to the different ways of working and use them as a debate if longer hours represent more productivity: spoiler alert, they don’t.

I guess most people’s diagrams will be similar to the one below (you can notice my lack of drawing skills):

For most of us at least (I still can’t compreenhed the vampires out there who are very productive in the evening. At some point at uni that’s the only point I could focus not because I was more productive but because the looming deadlines would trigger an adrenaline to finish), the most productive slot is actually the morning. As per my “how to show your calendar who’s the boss” post, that’s the slot you should reserve for your most important tasks.

Then there’s lunch and we all know after lunch all energy is in trying to diggest so it’s not a very productivy slot anyway, then you focus on the last few activities and after a while there’s a point where if you continue to work longer there is a big risk you’ll do mistakes (negative productivity) and next morning you’ll want to slap yourself because you’ll have to rush to fix the mistakes you didn’t even notice you were making.

I remember once I was doing something in excel and I was so tired I was not even thinking of the best way to get it done, my husband asked me what I was doing and he proposed a much faster way of completing what I wanted (using formulas vs doing something totally manual). If I had not been so tired I could have thought about it too.

So how about a little travel?

Disclaimer: I’m using only the examples of the places I’ve worked from or where I’m familiar with, I’m sure there are many more that could be added here.

South Europe

Not productive at all! I started my career in south Europe and a normal day goes like this (for private workers, for state workers it’s probably closer to the Swedish model ahahahaha):

• Arrive to the office around 09h, turn on the coffee and go for breakfast
• Around 10h get together in the coffee machine and do a break for coffee (and coffee chat)
• Around 11h30 most people are thinking where to go for lunch
• From at least 13h to 14h people are out for lunch – except if there are critical meetings or deadlines (not uncommon to have a 2h lunch break). Lunch is always sitting down with your colleagues
• Then another coffee break in the afternoon
• At 17 something that’s when your line managers will remember something you need to deliver next day
• Leave the office between 19h to 20h if not later
• Arriving late means something 30m later (I had meetings who were delayed for like 1h30)
• Until covid there was no such thing as working from home, if the “boss” doesn’t see you, no one believes you are delivering work

London (or any UK big city)

• Most people arrive to the office around 8h30 (I was in the office at 07h because I need silence to start my day)
• Between 9h to 10h most people will do a 15m break to get a coffee and have a chat with some colleagues. It’s not uncommon to use this slot to have mini meetings to discuss more confidential topics which can’t be discussed with the wither team
• Lunch is mostly at the desks with a quick break outside for a quick walk or some people manage to squeeze going to the gymn. Most people only spend like 30m in total with a lunch break
• Most people leave between 17h to 18h given there is a long commute home
• Arriving late means 5m delay and people will appologize
• Work from home was already quite common before covid

Germany / Paris (Can’t really say about the rest of France)

Similar to UK but lunch is sitting down with your colleagues. It tends to be around 30 to 45m. Work from home was not very common either

North America

Also similar except people will work much longer hours, especially in US

I’ve never worked in North Europe, but would love to, in order to have hands on experience with the swedish model, whereby people work a much shorter work week and parental leave is properly shared between women & men.

Why less is more

If you know you have less hours to achieve your goals you will cut the crap and focus on what you need to do. Unlike south europe where the million breaks and the volume of chit chat would mean every hour @ work was not productive and meetings would be delayed you had no control over your calendar. I remember having colleagues teasing me if I was leaving at 18h! Then there is this culture that you need to stay longer to show to your “boss” that you are very committed and if you know you stay late you will try to squeeze in as many breaks as you want. Then people wonder why they are burnt out!

If you can discuss with the team all the key priorities for the day, then reserve morning to get most of the work done and afternoon for all the other team meetings I’m sure most of us would be able to leave much earlier, spend time with the families and have time for hobbies, which in turn will probably contribute to more creativity at work.

If you are tired and burn out, the longer you work, you will be stressing out that it’s getting late and late and sooner or later you will do mistakes. Sooner or later you will end up burnt out. Is it worth it? Absolutely not.

Do you have any specific cultural views which different from those I’ve shared?