My new favourite tip to add breaks to your day

So many people I talk with of late – clients, family, friends – are grappling with how to get breaks in their day. This can be particularly challenging when working from home.

In an office, even in a day filled with back to back meetings you still get some sort of a break as you stand up and walk from room to room. When all the meetings are online, you can literally sit in your chair all day long. ERGGH.

A client last week was saying how he intends to take a break between zoom meetings, but that even when he has some clear space between one meeting and the next, he finds himself clicking over to his emails and churning through them. Before he knows it, the next meeting is starting and he’s feeling even more drained.

After talking it through, we came up with such a simple and – I think – downright genius idea that I want to share it with you. I’ve been using it myself and it’s so effective.

It’s just this:

Hang up, stand up.

Yep, we leveraged the science of habits to rewire what was happening. It’s so easy and makes such an impact, I can’t even tell you!

A habit runs like this: trigger – routine – reward.

Something triggers the habit, you run the routine (do the thing) and get the reward – the “benefit” of doing the thing. The only problem is that habits, as we know, can be dysfunctional. The longer term downsides can seriously outweigh the in-the-moment upside.

In this case, my client’s habit looked like this:

Trigger: Hang up from the meeting

Routine: Click over to emails

Reward: Feel like he was being productive. The only issue was that he was actually undermining both his productivity and his wellbeing.

To change a habit, you can intervene at any of these points. It’s easier to replace a routine than to eliminate it.

Enter: Hang Up, Stand Up (and yes, singing a bit of Bob Marley to yourself does help wire it in, I think)

As soon as you click that red “hang up” button, you stand up. That’s it. You’ve immediately disrupted your old routine. You might then have a quick stretch and just sit back down, but what I’ve found is that I end up wandering out of the office for a short break. It’s fantastic!

You’re welcome :)

Until next week,

Take care of yourself and others

Madeleine

PS If you’d like to work with me to help you get more space in your day, let me know. Send me a message to enquire, and please share with anyone you think may benefit.

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