We work a lot, here. We work a lot more than we probably should.
That's not really a problem. Not long ago, where I'm sitting was the frontier. Hard work was necessary to survive and to thrive.
Yet, even in frontier times, people rested. They worked hard and then they rested. Then they worked more.
I think we lost that somewhere along the way. People feel like they need to spend every second working.
The mentality is this:
If you're not busy, you're wasting your time. So get busy.There are many problems with this.
First, you're way more effective for the period of time shortly after you've rested than you are when you've been working for a long time; at least, that's true for most people. So you lose productivity by trying to stay at full utilization. It's a self-defeating proposition from the get-go.
Next, there's the fact that the impulse to work hard continuously suggests there's something fundamentally wrong with your approach. There's a practically-limitless amount of work to be done. Work needs to be managed and sliced into bite-sized pieces with adequate funding. If heroics are required, then the work isn't really being managed. Mismanaged work is nearly-guaranteed to fail.
Finally, there's the fact that work is probably not the best part of your life. I mean, every workplace wants to be a second home, or whatever, but the reality is that most of us have something else that matters more. We have families. We have hobbies. We have charities. Those are typically the reasons why we work in the first place. Working to the detriment of our higher goals is, again, self-defeating.
So if you want to work hard, great. If you want to cannibalize your life to try to get a little more done, spare a few minutes asking yourself way.
The break will probably help you get more done anyway.
