Simple Kat Style: Take a Break or Your Body Will Take One For You

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Take a Break or Your Body Will Take One For You

As I mentioned Saturday, last week was hectic. To top it off, I went into the weekend thinking I could do everything - Fall decorating, quilting, house chores, shopping, you name it. Then midday Sunday, I hit a wall - physically, mentally and emotionally. The sinus problem I was having turned into an infection and the enthusiasm for all I was getting done faltered and fled. What had gone wrong? I mean, I was cranking last week and this weekend. I was being PRODUCTIVE. My body knows when it needs a break and it took one!

Enter the Productivity Paradox!!! (If I could hum the tune to The Twilight Zone on this blog, I would do it right now - do DO DO do, do DO DO do - does that work?) The Productivity Paradox concept was popularized by MIT Professor of Management Erik Brynjolfsson (huh?) in 1993. Well, to put it SIMPLY (in KatSpeak), it means that you feel like you have to be constantly producing something in order to feel like you are not just wasting your precious time.

Monday, I was home from work, running a fever with a severe sinus headache, and I STILL felt like I should be doing something - ANYTHING to feel like I wasn't wasting this day!!! So I tried reading (ha! - like that was going to work with fever and a headache). Then I turned to listening to a CD book I had picked up at the library - One Month to Live: Thirty Days to a No-Regrets Life by Kerry & Chris Shook. This is not your typical "if you only had one month to live, what would you do?" book. It is more about living in the moment than having a bucket list (though a new RED 2012 Roush Stage 3 Mustang would be tempting, but I digress).

For those who don't know what a 2012 Roush Stage 3 is - this is the baby!
(courtesy of the Roush Performance web page)

And what did the Shooks just happen to be talking about when I started listening? That you CANNOT be productive all the time - you need to take a Sabbath (a day or an hour or ten minutes here and there) that you spend quietly and unbusily (KatSpeak again) in meditation or in soul-searching or in just BEING.

And it hit me - KABAM ! - this last week I got so caught up in the "doing" that I quit writing in my journal, I quit sitting by the table watching the birds, I quit stitching at night, I quit reading my inspirational books, I quit talking to God (I was too BUSY to talk to God !!!! Oooops!!!! That is a BIGGY, isn't it?!).

Well, that is all part of the reason for this blog and for what I am trying to do at this time in my life - as I say, I am searching for TRUE contentment through SIMPLE LIVING. Running around being "productive" in the sense of getting gobs of stuff done is NOT truly being "productive" in accomplishing LIFE itself. I may take many wrong turns or be driven off the path many times, but I am really HAPPY that I am becoming more aware of this "problem" earlier (or Someone is doing it for me) and that I can start to better enjoy life through those Sabbath times more often.