Earlier on ‘Samaj-Shilpi’, we talked about The Magic Burn-out. For those who are new to this term, ‘Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress’. It can also be caused due to over exertion and tight routine which makes you feel exhausted at the end of the day. Today, we will be studying a little more about how Surprises and Recovery can work wonders for preventing these Burnouts.
When you hit the gym and workout for at least 5 times in a week, the rest two days, usually weekends, are set aside for the ‘recovery phase’. Recovery Phase is the amount of time it takes for your muscles to recover from exercise. The time taken for recovery depends on your fitness levels and the difficulty of your workout. The healthier you are, the faster you’ll recover from a routine workout session. After a relatively light workout, your muscles may be able to recover in 24 hours, whereas a more challenging workout might take two to three days.
Similarly, our brain and mind, both require it’s ‘Recovery phase’. When we tire out our brain on a daily basis with same repetitive thoughts and work load, we end up spiraling into boredom and eventually lose our capacity to think creatively. This Monotonous way of living often leads to decrease in productive in whatever work we do. Recovery phase of the brain, just like the body muscles, also depends on the levels of our mental health. The healthier the mind, the faster it will recover.
This is where the importance of Adventure comes in. Adventure by definition is an unusual and exciting or daring experience, but here, adventure is more like a detox for your brain to ‘Recover’. Your adventure can be as big as travelling to another city or as small as going out for a walk and having that favorite ice-cream of yours. Depends on how big a break you really are in need of.
As the owner of a startup, what I usually do to keep the adventure alive is, I make chits of all the tasks I need to complete in the ongoing month or week. I fold and put all the chits together and pick up one every morning to see what new task is assigned to me for the day. The little trick here is, I also add chits saying “Observe nature and chill”, “Netflix bonus”, “explore new songs”, etc.
What happens here is, I give my brain a new impulse by surprising it to do something completely random than what it normally has to. In the artist community, this “Recovery-surprise combination” is known as ‘Inspiration’. Artists usually lookout for inspirations when they realize that they have exhausted their thinking capacity and can only enhance their art by an external stimulus such as visiting historical places or connecting with nature.
If you are really looking towards increasing your productive, then make sure to fit in these ‘unplanned adventures’ in your schedule. Surprise yourself so that you can go the extra mile next time when you get back to work again. Work is indeed important and so is the recovery.