Why An Outlet from Work is the Restorative You Need

If we’re lucky, we have jobs: something that pays the bills, adds to our savings and enables us to live a decent life. If we’re really fortunate, we’re reasonably energized by what we do: we like the people we work with, find satisfaction in our professional responsibilities, and the hours pass quickly.

Whether you like your job or not, it’s all too easy to get into a rut and stagnate.

But even if you can’t change your job – the market, your family life, lack of available opportunities won’t allow it – you can still grow. One simple way? Find an outlet – creative or not – that’s completely unrelated to your work.

Here’s why:

It’s fun. Fun – you remember that, right? If you’ve grown a bit foggy on the concept, it’s something you enjoy. Executives from Yahoo and Google drive race cars, tearing around the track, leaving coding behind with every rev of the engine and squeal of the tires. I write fiction and it’s not because I have a drive to get published (though that’s happened from time to time). It’s just something completely different than what I do in my day-to-day. Give yourself that mental break – it’s refreshing and needed. If you need more convincing, consider this: the human brain can really only concentrate on one task for 20 minutes straight. Now think about how many tasks you’re doing in a single day – all related to the same thing. Bottom line: you need a break. Why not let it be fun?

You never know how fresh knowledge and experiences might prove useful. Steve Jobs famously took a calligraphy class at Reed – just because he was intellectually curious. Waste of time? Of course not – absorbing new insights never is. But it also ended up paying dividends for Apple. Jobs applied the principles and discipline of good calligraphy to digital typography – something that helped set the tone for Apple’s famously clean aesthetic. Think outside the box for yourself. Like to cook? Maybe that French dessert workshop, where you plated your creations with an eye for the beauty in exacting detail, will help you arrange the smallest components of a presentation into something exceptional.

Doing something different stretches your brain. Think of it as mental Crossfit. When you do your first WOD, you’re lucky to walk like a normal human being the next day. The reason is obvious: you’ve just used muscles that normally don’t get much play. Same thing is true for your brain. If you’re in a creative field, for instance, find a hobby that taps into that unused mathematical side. Facts and figures part of your daily routine? Mix it up by checking out an art book or two. The Mayo Clinic says even simple things – like doing a crossword puzzle or reading parts of the newspaper you normally skip – can improve brain function like memory. Something physical like yoga or lifting can simply take us out of ourselves for awhile - and that break can help us come back stronger and smarter.

How did you find the outlet that restores you?