Embrace Downtime to Preserve Productivity

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To preserve productivity in the holiday season and beyond, you must embrace downtime. This advice might seem paradoxical (especially if you’re new to the Ridiculously Efficient methodology), but Scott Belsky, author of “Making Ideas Happen,” argues that downtime fosters creativity and enables our best ideas to bubble to the surface.

In a recent editorial for The 99 Percent, Belsky writes about “creative pause,” or the mental shift that happens when you transition from being fully engaged in work or another creative pursuit to being disengaged or passively engaged. For example, compare the creative thoughts you have while working hard on a presentation to the creative thoughts you have while taking a shower later that day.

Belsky says, and I agree wholeheartedly, that to protect your creativity and imagination, you must similarly protect and embrace downtime:

I believe that genius in the 21st century will be attributed to people who are able to unplug from the constant state of reactionary workflow, reduce their amount of insecurity work, and allow their minds to solve the great challenges of our era. Brilliance is so rare because it is always obstructed, often by the very stuff that keeps us so busy.

Some Ridiculously Efficient reading to help you embrace downtime:

• 5 Ways to Meditate Efficiently and Boost Productivity
• Emotional Refueling: Recharging to Unlock Work Productivity
• 5 Ways to Make Parkinson’s Law Work for You
• 5 Ways to Procrastinate Productively
• Hobbies and Productivity

How have you worked downtime into your daily schedule?