PAUSE IS POWERFUL

#architectofabundance #deepakchaudhury

?It does not matter what is the mileage and the tank capacity of your vehicle, if you want to cover great distances, then you have to stop and refuel. The same is true for human beings too. 

During this lockdown, the normal working duration has changed from 8 hours to 10-12-14 hours a day. Add to that the other household challenges like having your kids at home all the time and then not having any domestic help that allowed you to focus on things that are important to you. But I am sure you know that this running in a hamster wheel is both not productive and not sustainable. You need to take a pause, not when things are done, but to ensure that you can take things to closure. You have to plan and strategically put a pause in your day.

Now depending on where are you in the journey of your life you might need a different type of pause. Some of the pauses that have been trending include,

• Taking a pause from using technology day and night, which otherwise is known as “Digital Detox” 
• Taking a pause from a relationship (or relationships) so that you could spend some time with yourself. Sometimes people refer to this as “me time” or “time with nature” or “solitude time” or “time for self-reflection” etc
• Third could be a pause from social life so that you could focus on people that are important to you - like scheduling time with your old parents or spending time with your kids.
• Then it might be time for a pause from career
• Taking a pause from eating junk or taking a pause from eating healthy every day
• Taking a 30-day pause from complaining or maybe taking a pause from saying yes to everything
• Taking a 30-day pause from Impulse Buying or taking a pause from minimalism

And when I am saying PAUSE, I am not talking about a petrol refuel and pressure check on a vehicle. I am rather talking about the servicing of the vehicle. And also to strategically schedule an engine overhaul on need basis.

Now let us understand what all happens when you pause. A lot happens when you pause, but here are a few of the critical ones.

• Neural pruning
• Reflection, Introspection, and Retrospection
• Creative Problem Solving

1 - Neural Pruning

This is a very important brain activity that happens during sleep. Without going into the mambo-jumbo of neuroscience, this is what it means - your brain shrinks when you sleep. During the day the brain keeps making a lot of synaptic connections. And when you sleep, the brain does a bit of auditing to separate the synaptic connections that are in regular use and will be required in the long-run from those that are not being used and could be marked for removal. And then these unnecessary connections are removed during your sleep. This process is called “synaptic pruning” or “neural pruning” without which there is a very good chance that you will go crazy as it has been seen with many studies conducted by keeping people sleep-deprived and testing their cognitive abilities, decision making, and memory.

So, take time to sleep at night and in the day too. More on this some other time :-)

2 - Reflect - Introspect - Retrospect

Second, a pause allows us to Reflect, Introspect, and Retrospect. All three sound similar, isn’t it? But I think they are different things. Allow me to explain.

Reflecting means I am thinking about the Choices I have made recently, the Decisions I have taken and the Actions I have taken, the opportunities I have pursued vs the opportunities I have let go, the risks I have taken vs the risks I have avoided, the skills I have learned vs the skills I have unlearned, the relationships I have made vs the relationships I have avoided. In essence, reflecting is like taking stock of the things, the progress that I have been making in life.

An Introspection on the other hand means, I am going inside myself to understand the reasons behind my thoughts, my choices, my actions & my emotions. Introspection means I am analyzing my Values, my Belief Systems, my Fears, my Goals, my Strengths & weaknesses, my Likes & Dislikes - things that drive my Thoughts, Decisions, Actions & Emotions.

And finally, Retrospection is like a postmortem. Taking an event and dissecting all aspects of that to find out, 

• what went well and should be repeated again 
• what did not work well and should be avoided and 
• what could be improved the next time? 

3 - Creative Problem Solving

This is the most important reason behind why should we take a pause. When we try to solve a problem and are not able to solve it, it is advised to take a break and distance yourself from that problem. When you pause, this problem is taken away from your conscious mind and is handed over to your subconscious mind for solutioning. And your subconscious mind is much more capable of solving problems because of its ability 

• to analyze humongous amounts of data and identify patterns and 
• To make connections between topics and subjects and events and skills and all kinds of stuff to create a solution that is not possible with your conscious brain.

*Fun Fact - Did you know that your conscious brain can process only 2000 bits of information per second, while your subconscious brain processes around 400 million bits of information per second? 

I hope that puts things into perspective. 

And I am sure you must have experienced some form of this in your life - a problem you tried hard to solve but could not. And then you went to sleep or did something different and allowed some time to pass and suddenly from out of the blue, a solution comes to your mind - just like the Eureka moment. This is why taking a pause is truly crucial for improving your creative problem-solving abilities.

In summary, let me share what kind of pause am I suggesting for you.

• A weekend off after working for 5 days - this is like refueling and pressure check of your car to ensure continuity. Here I am referring to actually not working over the weekends, which for some of you might be either a foreign concept or an elusive dream :-). But remember, if you do not take this weekly break your productivity next week is almost down in the drain - you will be working but not producing anything or solving anything. 

You will simply be running on something I refer to as a To-Do-Treadmill where you are running all the time (meaning completing all the to-dos in your list) but you are actually not going anywhere (meaning you are not making any actual progress). 

• A 15 day break every 6 months - where you are either alone or with your family and people you love especially with no devices and no connection with the outer world - completely unplugged. This is good and you can think of as a regular servicing of your vehicle. An excellent version of this would be when you can take this 15-day unplugged pause every quarter. You should also plan to learn something new in one of these 15-day breaks - think of it as taking time off to sharpen your axe so that you can cut more and more trees when you go back to work.

So, are you PAUSING enough? How many times have you paused in the last week and in the last month? Do you even take time and consciously plan this into your schedule or this is something you ignore and expect not to affect you adversely? Do you believe you are taking all the break you deserve and need?

I hope after reading this, you will sit down today (or tonight) to create a weekly / monthly / yearly strategy for your pauses and put them into your schedule. I hope, starting now you will PAUSE more to improve your Productivity, Creativity and Memory.

Thank you so much for reading this and sharing your insights in the comments.