Could cutting down on work revitalise your life?

This week, the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, took the unusual step of making his Cabinet team work longer. In an extended Cabinet Meeting, he held “crisis talks” after the Bank of England halved its growth forecast for the UK economy. Quite apart from the fact that the Bank has rarely been correct with any of its projections, the Cabinet was asked to work more hours to discuss Britain’s poor growth and lack of productivity.?

Paradoxically, the UK works the most prolonged hours in Europe and is one of the least productive nations. Indeed, in the International Labour Organisation’s productivity analysis, the UK is 18th in the world, with Macau and Guyana doing better. Longer meetings and more time in the office are not linked to additional output. If anything, that extra-long Cabinet meeting could have made things worse rather than better.

But you already knew this, didn’t you? You understand that the more you work, the less you seem to achieve. There’s a jolly good chance that if you are not working “all hours”, the people around you are doing so. The UK is awash with people - including me - who work more than is good for them. But our systems and processes are poor, which means we all need to work for longer to get everything done.

That fact struck one of my colleagues the other day. As I left my office to deliver a lecture, he stopped me and asked, “How many days holiday can we carry forward each year?” He needed to check to ensure he didn’t lose any valuable time off.

Later that day, I was reading the Harvard Business Review and realised that taking days away from the office might not be the best idea. Indeed, many people who have days off will spend a little of their time peeking at their emails or messaging services. Some people even log in to their business systems while at the beach on their hols. In other words, they are only taking time off “on paper”. They are still working and hence they are not recharging those batteries.

The Harvard article provides another idea altogether. It suggests that we should “step backwards” from our jobs occasionally. The concept is that you agree with your boss to take on fewer responsibilities for a short time. You might, for instance, agree that you will opt out of a particular project for a while, with someone else taking on your responsibilities. Equally, you could change your working hours for a month or so to enjoy more time with your family. You might also want to start a side hustle so you would spend fewer days in the office while you organise your new venture. The concept of stepping backwards goes beyond workplace flexibility. It’s the notion that you do less work each day but in agreement with your boss.

Doing this would give you more “headspace” for your actual job. Only yesterday I was in a meeting when one of my colleagues said they could not complete the task because they did not have the headspace to do it, so their report would have to wait until next week. Their brain was simply too full to do any more thinking. Familiar territory?

Stepping back from their job a couple of weeks ago could have been all they needed to have the capacity to do this report without delay. In this example, doing less would have increased productivity.

However, you can’t just reduce your daily work to improve things; you need a complete break too. This was established in a significant review of vacations published in the Journal of Applied Psychology this week. Researchers from the University of Georgia, USA, have discovered that a proper break from work has long-lasting effects on our well-being. The analysis in this study shows that you get your best mental refresh when you switch off entirely from work and engage in some physical activity while away. Interestingly, this research indicates that long holidays are unnecessary and can cause more problems. However, the researchers also discovered that we are better served by having a couple of days to get over a holiday before we return to the office.?

So, if you haven’t booked a break yet, now is as good a time as any to do so. But before you get on that plane, train or ship, think about ways to step backwards. Ultimately, you will feel better for it and you will be more productive. Could someone tell the Prime Minister he needs to let his Cabinet do less work and take a holiday?