You Deserve a Break Today

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You Deserve A Break Today
 
As most of you know, I grew up inside the McDonald's system. The picture above was taken at McDonald's in Norrköping as we were waiting to open that restaurant. I spent countless hours growing up peeling potatoes (yes, we made French fries from scratch back then) and flipping burgers. Just about everything I know about business systems, cooperation, teamwork, discipline, quality management, leadership, decentralized vs centralized systems, and the power of culture was shaped by decades at the golden arches. And best of all yet, many valuable relationships that I still cherish to this day were formed during those incredible years. And the cherry on the cake was that I got to work so much with my father.

This is however not a post about that. I simply took the famous tagline that McDonald's used for so many years as a source of inspiration for what I wanted to write about. And that is energy management and the importance of having a break. 

I don't know about you, but I am a bit tired. It feels like more than the typical end-of-the-year fatigue. I feel humanity is a bit tired. We have for several years now been dealing with enormous disruption and uncertainties of almost inhuman proportions. We have gone from one crisis to another. And we are not out of the woods yet. From global pandemic to global inflation to global recession. And then wars, polarization, and division all around. No wonder we are a bit exhausted. 

But help is on the way. We are heading into my favorite time of the year. The one time when almost all of humanity goes into a slower motion. And we close one chapter and start another. And right between the ending and the beginning lies the opportunity. To pause. To reflect. To envision how you want the future to be different than the past.

My dear friend Dov Seidman often reminds us that: "When you press the pause button on a machine, it stops. But when you press the pause button on a human, they start. They start to reflect, to reconnect with their most deeply held beliefs, to rethink their assumptions, and then to reimagine a better path.”

It's so easy to live a “Groundhog Day” type of lifestyle. We just keep going. We grow accustomed to the comfortable patterns of predictability and repeatability. We busy ourselves with so much activity and attention that we almost become unaware of what is truly going on within ourselves and our broader environment. Busyness is partly a drug that helps us numb ourselves—or, at least, avoid dealing with those deeper issues begging for attention. 

But here’s the thing. We also know that stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. If we want different outcomes, we simply have to do something different. 

So, if we don't pause. If we don't stop. If we don't allow our impressions, our minds, and our cellular structure to have different inputs and different nourishment, we are most likely not going to change much. If you don't change the inputs, the outputs won't change either. 

I think about our soil. Good solid farm practices (fallow) leave some land unsown as part of crop rotation to restore fertility. The same principle applies to our human biology. We need rest. We certainly need sleep. But we also need longer periods of restoration. 

Intermittent fasting has become more popular. Letting your intestines rest for 14-16 hours each day and eating within a 6-8 hour window has proven to be healthful to your microbiome and overall health. 

We also need more intermittence relative to our attention. We need to shut down the attention machine. To let it rest. Probably for 2 weeks in a row, at least. 

This is probably my weakest link. I am not good at shutting down my brain and avoiding my work. Much of that is a blessing for me. I really feel lucky and fortunate to have a job that I find meaningful and important and to be surrounded by colleagues that I love to be with. It never really feels like work. But I still would benefit from shutting down in a more contiguous fashion. And I will try to do so this holiday season. 

Therefore, I will take a newsletter hiatus. I will resume this newsletter on January 8. Until then, I hope all of you will have a wonderful holiday season. Let's use this break to collectively rest, sharpen our saws, enjoy time with our loved ones, re-imagine and re-commit to how we all can show up in this world in a more constructive and helpful way. I truly want humanity to have a HAPPY NEW YEAR. We all deserve it, don't we?

Thank you for being part of this community. Have a wonderful break. You deserve it!
 

I couldn't help but link to one of my all-time favorite McDonald's commercials!