In our modern world when we think of “downtime” its usually has a negative meaning. In fact Wikipedia defines downtime as “The term downtime is used to refer to periods when a system is unavailable. Downtime or outage duration refers to a period of time that a system fails to provide or perform its primary function.”
Another word with similar negative connotations is disconnect. In business if you have a disconnect it means you have a breakdown in communication or a systemic problem.
Downtime and disconnect while bad in the business sense are both necessary for you to be successful in your business. Huh?
“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”
– Captain, Road Prison 36
from the movie “Cool Hand Luke”
All kidding aside, words mean different things in different contexts. Both downtime and disconnecting are necessary for you to maintain your health so that you can run your business. In terms of you, not your business, downtime means time away disconnected from your business and other stresses.
We need the quiet time for contemplation. Before you think this is some “new age” nonsense and start telling me why you have to be working every minute consider that the need for rest and time away from work was known when the Bible was written.
“Only someone who is foolish does not know when to go home and wears himself out with work.” — Ecclesiastes 10:15
If you want to be more productive at work you need to have balance and that means including downtime in your schedule and perhaps laying down rules for what can and can’t be done during downtime. Now it may seem like scheduling and rules is overkill but take it from someone who is prone to working 24/7 if I didn’t have a schedule I wouldn’t take any downtime until I crashed from exhaustion. Of course while having a wife that won’t let me work myself to death without paying some attention to her certainly helps, I still have rules for what I can do during the time I disconnect from my business.
During my downtime I allow myself to do the following:
- read personal email — I mean email that has nothing to do with business, email from friends and family members
- surf the internet — but only for non-work related items, finding funny videos on youtube, listening to music, reading a book
- playing games — computer and otherwise
- going for a walk or bike ride
- watching a movie
- spending time with family
Are there exceptions? Sure. But they are exceptions and not the rule.
I know there are still some of you work-a-holics out there who are screaming “say it isn’t so” but the truth is downtime is not a waste of time.
So try it. Disconnect from your work. Make sure that downtime is scheduled in your planner, whatever form it may take. Shut off your business phone. It may seem like an unnatural act at first but you will get used to it and your productivity will increase.
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