• Home
  • Training
    • Effective Online Facilitation >
      • Effective Online Facilitation Waitlist
  • Services
    • Create New Offerings
    • Design Your Organization's Future
    • Assess your organization's program portfolio
    • Additional Services
  • Programs and Resources
  • Results
    • Catching up on growth
    • Focusing on the right things
    • Learning from one another
    • Emerging from a crisis
    • Building shared leadership
  • Mission: Impact Podcast | Blog
  • About
    • Carol Hamilton
    • Contact
Grace Social Sector Consulting, LLC
  • Home
  • Training
    • Effective Online Facilitation >
      • Effective Online Facilitation Waitlist
  • Services
    • Create New Offerings
    • Design Your Organization's Future
    • Assess your organization's program portfolio
    • Additional Services
  • Programs and Resources
  • Results
    • Catching up on growth
    • Focusing on the right things
    • Learning from one another
    • Emerging from a crisis
    • Building shared leadership
  • Mission: Impact Podcast | Blog
  • About
    • Carol Hamilton
    • Contact

Mission: Impact podcast

The Power of the Pause

8/21/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
​I allowed myself to take a break yesterday. I had been traveling for a chunk of the week and felt weary.  My body and mind were telling me I needed a pause. Yet our go go culture abhors the break. When you are at your job and you are not being super productive instead of encouraging people to listen to your body and take a break, most work cultures want you to power through. Or at least pretend you are busy. 

​Busy Bragging Rights

​Powering through was what I have done most of my life. I’ve played the “I’m more busy than you” game. I remember the one-up manship as early as when I was in college. ‘Oh geez got a paper due tomorrow and I haven’t started.” “Oh you think that is bad – I have a paper due and a test tomorrow.” And it continues – the endless cycle of bragging who is more overwhelmed by work. Multiple articles and studies have been done recently on the idea that busyness is a new status symbol. “I am a very busy and important person – you have two minutes to make your pitch.” I spent much of my teens and twenties sleep deprived. I’m not interested in winning this game any more. 

​Recharging

​And today I just proved it doesn’t work anyway. After just 24 hours of a little rest and relaxation, I came back to my to do list fired up and moved through it with ease. I got more done today than I have in a while. And certainly more than if I had plodded through yesterday which would have spilled over into plodding through today.

​We are not machines

​A work ethic is critical. Yet lots of science is demonstrating that through our economy is made for machines – we have to remember we are actually NOT machines. In addition, much work today is now knowledge work that requires creativity and innovation. These require white space. They require all the things you were either told not to do growing up – day dreaming, for example. Or the things that weren’t necessarily valued - time away from work – play – time in nature. I don’t need to go to Arianna Huffington’s extreme of collapsing from exhaustion to agree with her assertion that our constantly busy ethic is killing us.  

​Is rest just to make you more productive?

​At the same time, my argument is a little perverse – or at least still representative of our culture. My reason for a pause is to recharge to be able to get back to work and be more productive. I would call myself a recovering ‘productivity-a-holic.’ I can aspire to relaxing into taking a pause for the sake of taking a pause, rather than to just make me more productive later.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    carol Hamilton

    My passion is helping nonprofit organizations and associations have a greater mission impact.

    Archives

    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017

    Categories

    All
    Advocacy
    Associations
    Awareness
    Board Development
    Book Review
    Burn Out
    Business Model
    Change
    Change Leadership
    Communications
    Community
    Community Engagement
    Consultant
    Customer Centered
    Data Gathering
    Decision Making
    Decision-making
    DEI
    Delegation
    Design Thinking
    Diversity
    Equity
    Evaluation
    Executive
    Facilitation
    Group Process
    Health
    Inclusion
    Innovation
    Leadership
    Leadership Transition
    Lean Start Up
    Learning
    Meetings
    Mentoring
    Mindfulness
    Mission Creep
    Nonprofit
    Nonprofit Life Cycles
    Nonprofits
    Online Meetings
    Organization
    Organizational Culture
    Organizational Sustainability
    Partnership
    Pause
    Poc
    Podcast
    Productivity
    Professional Development
    Reflection
    Reorganization
    Research
    Results
    Self Care
    Self-care
    Social Sector
    Somatics
    Strategic Planning
    Strategy
    Strengths
    Succession
    Team
    Team Building
    Team-building
    Technology
    Transitions
    Trust Building
    Values
    Vicarious Trauma
    Virtual Meetings
    Wellness
    Workplace

    RSS Feed

    Picture
    Grace Social Sector Consulting, LLC, owns the copyright in and to all content in and transcripts of the Mission: Impact podcast, as well as the Mission: Impact blog with all rights reserved, including right of publicity.

Home    Services   Results   Programs & Resources     Podcast/Blog      About    Contact            


Telephone

240-696-7816

Email

info[at]gracesocialsector.com
  • Home
  • Training
    • Effective Online Facilitation >
      • Effective Online Facilitation Waitlist
  • Services
    • Create New Offerings
    • Design Your Organization's Future
    • Assess your organization's program portfolio
    • Additional Services
  • Programs and Resources
  • Results
    • Catching up on growth
    • Focusing on the right things
    • Learning from one another
    • Emerging from a crisis
    • Building shared leadership
  • Mission: Impact Podcast | Blog
  • About
    • Carol Hamilton
    • Contact