Why Slowing Down Can Be A Good Thing
"There are not enough hours in a day" is a commonly uttered mantra among American professionals. Busyness and the weariness that comes with that is often worn like a badge of honor. We regularly work through our breaks and long past sunset with the expectation of doing it all again the next day. Drawing boundaries between work life and family time or downtime can be one of life’s biggest challenges. For some, this feeling of never being able to disconnect from work can lead to overworking and additional stress in our already fast-paced lives.
As leaders striving to help their company and employees reach their full potential, it’s crucial to consider how slowing down can be a good thing for us, our employees and the workplace culture at large.
Improved Decision Making
The United States Department of Labor reported that over 15 million Americans have suffered from worker fatigue. Worker fatigue can manifest in many ways, including reduced concentration and increased mistakes, often due to lapses in judgment. Whether someone is working as a cashier, physician, accountant or elementary school teacher, having the energy required to make smart decisions is essential to performing well in any job function or role.
When we slow down and take our time, we are more likely to have clarity and time to weigh the pros and cons before executing any important decisions. As leaders, we can encourage our employees to strive for a job well done by giving them parameters when assigning a task. For instance, is it important that this job is executed with perfection? Or, is there a more important deadline for the assignment that supersedes perfection?
Communicating these expectations gives our constituents the freedom to perform a job well done, even if that requires taking a bit more time. If accuracy is what we want, we must also be willing to create a culture that values work-life balance and encourages employees to take breaks and time for themselves.
Avoiding Burnouts
A Gallup study found that 23% of people experience burnout very often or always, while 44% feel burnt out sometimes. That is two-thirds of people claiming to feel this overwhelming work-related weariness. In addition to decreased decision-making sensibilities, workplace burnout has been shown to cause insomnia, high blood pressure and general exhaustion in employees, leading to strained relationships at work and at home.
Caring about our employees' emotional and physical health should be at the top of our priority list as leaders. When they feel burnout, we will feel it too. As employers, it is a far better investment of our time and resources to encourage our employees’ longevity by making the position they are in worth their time and energy. One of the top ways to help them avoid burnout and prevent losing our great workers is by providing them opportunities to rest. Perks like accrual-based vacation time, early release on summer Fridays or an occasional free lunch are all small yet significant ways companies around the country are giving their workers opportunities to unwind.
More Productivity
Leading to better productivity by slowing down sounds backward, but busy doesn't always equate to effectiveness. A study done by USC Professor Mary Helen Immordino-Yang revealed how allowing our brains time to rest improves our mental health and cognitive abilities, helping to avoid the burnout we talked about earlier. Although modern social science has shown us the benefits of work-life balance for years, as with most principles, the Bible showed us the importance of rest thousands of years ago.
After working for six days creating the universe, God rested on the seventh day, creating the first Sabbath. God had the power to create the universe and everything in it with one word. But He wanted to teach us the pattern He wanted us to follow. He worked six days and then had a seventh day for rest (not that God needed rest, but He knew that we would). If our Creator rested on the seventh day to teach us, then shouldn’t we as limited humans follow His example and find a way to put rest into our schedules? Maybe we should all give it a try!
The world around us will continue to move quickly, but we are in charge of our own pace. As enticing as keeping up with the world may seem at times, slowing things down at bit when appropriate can benefit us, our employees and our companies as a whole.
It took me decades to learn that before I say yes to something new, I need to think about what I will need to say no to or remove from my calendar or To Do List. Every time we say yes to something, we are essentially saying no to something else (and that is usually our family time or downtime). Let's invest in slowing down, and it will make us more successful in work and life.
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