As the saying goes, “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
A strange paradox of the modern, tech-saturated world, is that despite having more conveniences and luxuries available to us than ever before, many of us are finding that we are increasingly busy, right around the clock, and struggling to actually find opportunities or excuses to just chill out.
Between work, email, personal projects, managing a budget, and more, it’s easy for anyone to feel burned out. But, for entrepreneurs and other unusually ambitious people, this often morphs into a burning urge to keep working as much as possible, without a break.
There are, however, actually some really good reasons to let your hair down from time to time. Here are a few of them.
Because you’ll be more productive over the long term if you do
Research done on high-powered business executives who just couldn’t give themselves a break, identified a pretty intriguing fact: when workaholic types were forced to take at least a bit of time off to spend on simple relaxation, their net workplace productivity actually increased.
There’s a certain paradox at play here, where it seems to be the case that in order to work hard consistently, and achieve meaningful things in the time you spend working, you need to counterbalance your “active” time with a significant amount of “leisure” time.
A similar principle applies for working out at the gym to improve your health and fitness, for example. You can’t work out for 12 hours a day, every day. You need adequate rest in order for your body to recover and become stronger.
Because a major part of emotional well-being in life is managing to stop and enjoy the simple pleasures when you can
Life isn’t just something that you try to “get through,” it’s also the kind of thing that you actually try to enjoy and get as much meaning and satisfaction out of as possible.
People can certainly find deep meaning and satisfaction in their work, but a life spent doing nothing but working would inevitably mean plenty of imbalance, and missed opportunities for stopping to smell the flowers.
A major part of emotional well-being in life is managing to stop and enjoy the simple pleasures when you can. That means embracing a slower pace of existence from time to time, and pausing to appreciate the small blessings around you.
Because many of our best memories are formed during “downtime” activities
One of the greatest assets that anyone can carry with him through life is their positive memories of time spent laughing with friends and family, cuddling with loved ones, and experiencing exciting and new things.
It’s been found that people who have very regular and predictable daily routines – often a result of office life – end up having fewer memories to reflect on, and experience time as moving by more quickly.
If you really want to stretch your days out, and collect plenty of warm memories to look back on, you’ve got to have some downtime, and you’ve got to do some memorable things with that downtime.
Why not take some novelty pictures with your friends courtesy of https://www.shindigphotobooths.com.au/ next time you have a big party or event lined up?
Speak Your Mind