Creating Space in the Workplace
Time for breaks, decompression and seeing the bigger picture
By Mo Ford
The question of how to balance heavy workloads, long to-do lists and crisis management with healthy working practices, strategic planning and looking at the bigger picture has always been a challenging one. It seems that this question is pertinent for many professionals and organisations right now, as we emerge from three years of pandemic into an energy crisis, rising costs and the mental wellbeing issues that go with all of the above. It almost seems counter-intuitive to argue for slowing down and taking time to decompress, reflect and get a sense of perspective when everything feels urgent and we can’t see the bottom of the in-tray. But, somewhat frustratingly, these may be the times when we most need to find ways to create the space to pause and regroup.
Breaks and Brakes
It is well established that the structure of most working days does not reflect the average person’s concentration span. Our attention and ability to absorb information is thought to wane after around 45 minutes of sustained concentration, though this varies enormously according to the task, the individual’s baseline and the physical and psychological state they are in at any given time. Spending extended periods sitting down in front of a screen heightens the need to regularly move our bodies, rest our eyes and reset our attention. It’s likely that people in most roles and sectors have heard advice about taking a short break every hour or between meetings, though some workplaces are more accommodating of this concept than others.
When busy or stressed about looming deadlines, the temptation may be to push through lapses in concentration, tiredness, blurred vision or aching muscles in order to tick a task off the list and move on to the next one. But without opportunities – however brief – to reset, both the quality of our work and our wellbeing are likely to suffer. Mistakes or missing details are more likely to be overlooked when we are close to ‘running on empty’.
Organisational culture plays a significant part in our practice around taking breaks, though there are also wider cultural influences at play. Seeing leaders and colleagues eat lunch at their desks, check emails during ‘break’ time and regularly work outside their contracted hours suggests to us that this is the norm in a workplace and that it may be encouraged (regardless of whether a manager caveats their 3am emails with a statement about not expecting a response out-of-hours). Conversely, good role modelling around stepping away from desks, providing space for breaks separate to work areas and encouraging colleagues to genuinely switch off during down time will give permission to take breaks and enact healthy boundaries.
And then there’s the other type of brake – this is about permission to pause a task, conversation or idea-generating session. Sometimes, we might get stuck while trying to move an idea forward. We might spend so much time in meetings circling around the same issues that we’re adding pressure to our schedules with little payoff. There may be times when someone needs to step back and reflect on a situation before they are able to formulate a response. In these situations, the ability to intentionally apply the brakes, shift the focus to something else, and return to the original topic later can help to move things on and bring a fresh perspective. I use the word ‘intentionally’ because there is a difference between using a ‘brakes’ technique to help with getting unstuck and declaring that ‘we’ll come back to this later’ as a means of avoiding a difficult conversation.
Debrief, decompression and transition
At times of crisis and change, the working week might be full of stressful meetings, challenging group dynamics and tasks that take up more brain space than usual. During these times, our need for space to let go of the last challenge and reset for the next is higher than ever. And in some roles and working environments (I’m looking at you, healthcare), rushing from one crisis intervention to the next with barely enough time to swallow half a cup of cold tea might become the norm. But, whatever the context, I’d argue that space to process, regroup and move on is important.
A lot of what we bring into any given situation happens at an unconscious level. For example, a manager may bring the anxiety they felt in this morning’s finance meeting into an afternoon session where colleagues are sharing ideas. Perhaps they worked through their lunch break, with a view to regaining a sense of control and productivity. In the afternoon meeting, their anxiety may show up as impatience and a reluctance to listen, although they may not be aware of why they are responding in this way. Some space to notice and address the anxiety between meetings could have helped to contribute to a more enjoyable and useful afternoon session, even if it couldn’t alleviate the organisation’s financial troubles.
Opportunities to debrief after a difficult day, challenging interaction or particularly complex piece of work can also help to embed learning, process emotional responses and develop reflective practice. Depending on the work context, debrief might involve an impromptu chat with a peer or more senior colleague, space for reflection during a project evaluation, group reflective practice sessions, or better yet, all of the above. It’s important for debrief and reflection to be approached with intentions of growth, learning and processing responses – otherwise, we may run the risk of ruminating and getting stuck in feelings of resentment or powerlessness when things have not gone well.
Rather than rushing from one meeting, appointment or task to the next, slowing down just enough to reset offers an opportunity to manage transitions well - to psychologically ‘switch gears’ smoothly. Some organisations have discovered the benefits of this and are now scheduling 50 or 55-minute meetings as standard, rather than the traditional hour. This offers a little more space for people to get present (an adjustment that would be mentally occurring at the start and end of meetings regardless, so there’s arguably no time lost by ‘giving back’ those minutes).
And in terms of inclusive practice, it’s also worth considering a disability and neurodiversity friendly approach to transitions and scheduling. For some of us, switching focus from one task to another is not always a smooth gear change, and can be stressful or take longer than average. Building in time to meaningfully stop one action or area of focus and start another can make the difference between being able to offer our best work and being overwhelmed, distracted or stressed.
Space to see the bigger picture
Since 2020, I have become accustomed to hearing about strategic work and engagement with the ‘bigger picture’ stalling, being repeatedly delayed or being pursued in a way that contributes to unrealistic workloads and, ultimately, burnout. There is so much difficult stuff going on locally, globally and organisationally that even knowing where to begin or how to create space to engage with it can be overwhelming.
We may be too busy firefighting and trying to fend off whichever immediate threat is in front of us right now to look at the long term – the reflection can be done when the fire is put out. But what happens when each fire is replaced by a new one, and there seems to be no time to down tools and work out why our environment is so flammable? Some examples of the sort of questions that might support prioritising and perspective in this context:
Is this fire under control? Is it actually a ‘fire’? How urgent and significant is the threat, and who needs to be involved in tackling it right now?
What might we gain from pausing to look at patterns, themes, causes and long-term implications?
What are the risks if we don’t find a way to ‘zoom out’ and look at the situation strategically?
What non-urgent work needs to be postponed, paused or stopped to make space for the things we need to prioritise?
When it comes to looking at issues that seem non-urgent, but that are important aspects of the bigger picture, it can be tempting to kick them into the long grass while the more immediate issues are dealt with. Developing, for example, sustainability policies, accessible workspaces, equitable hiring practices, inclusive language and meaningful wellbeing support may be on the organisational radar, but end up deprioritised while capacity is diverted into, for example, addressing a staff retention crisis. This may be a crude example, since a skilled leadership team will likely notice the strong potential links between all of the aforementioned themes. But that’s part of the point – tackling the big issues in siloes limits our potential to understand how they fit together. Taking space to consider how accessible your workplace is, how well it really supports its people’s wellbeing, how attractive it is to a diverse range of people and whether it puts its money where its metaphorical mouth is regarding sustainable practice, may very well yield solutions to the staff retention problem.
All of this is, effectively, an argument for ‘working smarter, not harder’, as well as for an approach that favours breaks, brakes and boundaries. Protecting capacity to zoom out and see things through a wider lens can create better long-term solutions, offer breathing space and promote creative and analytical thinking. And, as most of us will likely know from experience, we tend to feel and work better when we are allowed to rest, process and reflect. With that in mind, I’d like to offer encouragement to digest all of this over a tea break…
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