Tanja Yardley, innovation and leadership coach, gives her favorite tips and techniques to take advantage of the cycles of energy and rest we experience during the workday. Learn more about the importance of flow state in innovation and how to achieve it in your everyday work.
Episode Transcript
It’s useful to know that through the day, we experience cycles of energy, concentration, and rest and recovery. In general, these cycles last about 90 minutes of peak performance followed by about 20 minutes of restoration and recovery. You can take advantage of this by planning your work cycles according to those same flows. I like to use a technique called the Pomodoro Technique, with a few modifications. Basically, you decide on the task that you need to do, you set your timer for about 25 minutes, and then get to work without any distractions and without any other multitasking happening during that time period. You work on that task until your timer rings after 25 minutes, and then you take a short, five-minute break. You repeat that cycle three times with the 25-minute intense, focused concentration followed by a five-minute break, and at the end of that 90-minute cycle, you take a longer 20- to 30-minute break.
The nature of that 20- to 30-minute break is also very important. If you’re doing focused, routine execution work that doesn’t require a lot of creative thinking, then you want to actually do something on that break to make yourself more alert like running on the spot or doing jumping jacks, drinking coffee, or doing something that amps up your alertness level. If you’re doing a learning task, you want to do the opposite. You want to stop, close your eyes, take some deep breaths, and have some quiet time to allow time for that learning to sink into the brain and embed into your memory system. It’s really important that you take that pause at the end to make sure it really sinks in.
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