About the Author: Juliet Funt is the CEO of the training and consulting firm The Juliet Funt Group
A strategic pause means taking a moment – or longer – to think, plan, create or just breathe.
When you take a strategic pause, you stop doing things and, instead, free yourself to think, feel, ponder, plan, create, reflect, question, dream or just rest. A strategic pause introduces white space into your day that can make your visible work more productive, purposeful and innovative. A white space mindset also means simplifying your work and home life to allow time for strategic pauses.
Taking a strategic pause doesn’t mean being idle or aimless, napping, or procrastinating. Strategic pausing also differs from meditation – which is predicated on maintaining focus on a singular thing, like a mantra or your breathing – and from letting your mind wander – an activity that frequently results from distraction.
“If only activity and productivity were the same – but they are not.”
A strategic pause can last just a moment – such as a pause to gather your thoughts during a conversation – or the length of a sabbatical. These pauses generally have one of four broad purposes: to recuperate from overwhelm, to declutter your mind, to step back and reflect, or to construct – as in, create, innovate or problem-solve. Think of these pauses as oxygen feeding a fire.
Aficionados of the strategic pause include LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, who schedules time to do nothing, and former GE CEO Jack Welch, who dedicated an hour each day to what he called “looking out the window time.” Nike’s Phil Knight had a chair specifically for daydreaming – another version of the strategic pause. One doctor taught his interns to pause for 30 seconds before entering the exam room, and some of those interns said this represented the most valuable lesson they received during their residencies.
People need to take strategic pauses because overload has become prevalent
Today, everyone – even people who live in remote places – has pressure to stay busy all the time. People no longer need a boss to crack the whip; they do it to themselves. People feel compelled to fill every gap in time with activities – listening to podcasts, checking social media, and so forth. In the past, people considered stopping to think a valuable activity, but now, it seems odd to be doing nothing but thinking. This busyness crowds out time to digest information, consider choices, innovate and rest.
“We need permission to pause – and to do so during business hours, not on our own time like a public school teacher going broke to buy their own clay and markers.”
Three mind-sets contribute to the drive toward constant busyness:
- “Insatiability” – People never feel they’ve done enough – they always feel the need to do more. The deceptiveness of appearances, “curb appeal,” fuels this feeling, as it causes people to try to compete with others’ accomplishments without a full awareness of the costs.
- “Conformity”–People unconsciously mirror their colleagues’ behaviors, resulting in feedback loops.
- “Waste”–Tolerance of wastedt ime and effort places huge burdenson workers, who pay the price in decreased wellness and happiness. Meanwhile, businesses suffer in terms of employee engagement and retention.
Quantifying the cost of wasteful activities can motivate decision-makers to reduce them – and free up bandwidth for strategic pauses. The Austin, Texas design firm, FÖDA adopted white space when their workload became unsustainable and habits such as perfectionism and underbidding were costing the company revenue. The team adopted practices such as blocking out white space each month and defining mornings as quiet time. Since then, the group has garnered dozens of design awards and clients around the world.
Pauses can benefit performance by allowing for cognitive recovery.
The brain – particularly the frontal lobe, responsible for higher thought – experiences cognitive fatigue, which reduces its performance. Brains need time to recuperate, and those that get enough rest function more efficiently, productively and creatively. Rest also gives the brain time to make connections between the frontal lobe and the regions that store memory. In studies, people who took breaks from a mental task enhanced their ability to focus over long periods of time. Workers also showed improvements in accuracy, engagement and creativity.
“Charles Darwin and Charles Dickens both worked four to five hours a day and on that schedule wrote 19 and 21 books, respectively.”
To benefit the brain, breaks should consist of relaxing activities, such as daydreaming, stretching or chatting with co-workers. Doing cognitive tasks during breaks only fatigues the brain further. Studies also show that, contrary to popular belief, time pressure depresses creativity and innovation. Brains work best under low or moderate amounts of time pressure.
Four attitudinal culprits work against taking time to pause.
Four “time thieves” lead people to overload themselves – the same four elements that propel people and businesses to perform. The thieves have a positive side, but they create dysfunction when taken to extremes:
- Drive transforms into overdrive – The push to do more can cause people to load themselves with work beyond their capacity. You often don’t notice the excessive stress of overdrive until you reach a crisis.
- Commitment to excellence turns into perfectionism–Chasing excellence may seem benign, but it can lead people to spend unnecessary time and energy optimizing details. You need to remember you have a finite amount of time.
- The pursuit of information becomes overload–The wish to be well – informed prompts people to seek information in excess of their capacity to consume it. Always responding to notifications and checking email excessively can signal a problem in this area.
- Dedicationtoactivityturnsintofrenzy–Theneedtofeelbusyoccurswhenpeopleconflate activity with productivity. Unchecked, this impulse can lead you to rush through work, and result in multitasking and exhaustion.
“There are some thoughts you just can’t have while hustling down a hallway.”
One condition fosters all these time thieves: hallucinated urgency, where it feels like everything needs immediate action. To counter hallucinated urgency, pause before you respond to requests, messages or crises, and categorize tasks according to their real urgency.
Free up time for strategic pauses by asking four questions – and apply “the Wedge.”
To neutralize the four time thieves, ask questions that target each one. These questions can help you simplify and reduce your own and others’ workloads, while minimizing the risk of eliminating valuable tasks. First, ask what low-stakes or unnecessary tasks you can set aside. Second, ask where “good enough” is good enough. Third, ask what information you truly need. Fourth, ask what tasks or topics really deserve your attention. You can ask these questions about any aspect of your or your team’s work. Take plenty of time to research the answers: Hasty task reductions could affect your reputation or your leader’s opinion of your competence.
“The Wedge…quickly separates two actions or experiences to uncompress them and allow the passage of oxygen.”
The Wedge – a brief pause taken after completing one activity and before starting another, or before taking action on an impulse or request – offers a simple, versatile way to introduce strategic pauses. Key moments to use the Wedge include first thing in the morning, after meetings, when deciding what to do next, after receiving criticism, while waiting in line and at the end of the day, before you walk in the door at home. Also, take pauses while you commute, eat or wash dishes – instead of filling those times with other activities. Companies seeking to implement white space thinking often stumble by neglecting to support workers’ behavioral changes. One-off efforts such as designated no-meeting days and limits on slide deck length often backfire. Instead, support people in learning skills such as how to compose concise messages, say no and control the impulse to interrupt colleagues.
To apply white space thinking to digital messaging, reduce the number of times you check your email and improve your composition skills.
Two changes can simplify your email life – as well as time spent on Slack, Yammer and other digital communications platforms. First, check your email less frequently, and work to trim the number of messages you send and receive. Raise your awareness of how much attention and emotional intensity you give your inbox – and understand you can dial down that intensity. Consider establishing a purposeful schedule for checking email; if you find yourself about to check off schedule, use a Wedge to defuse that impulse. Apply the four simplification questions to your email.
“A pause to reduce allows you to let go of what’s unnecessary and arrives like a bulldozer making room for everything else.”
Second, sharpen your email composition habits, so you produce clear, brief, punchy messages. Use the subject line to clue the recipient in to the email’s level of urgency. Employ bullets, boldface and underlining to make messages skimmable. Eschew one-word emails – they’re usually unnecessary.
Applying strategic pauses to communications can benefit teams.
Strategic pauses can benefit team communications by helping make them more thoughtful,
clear and considerate. Team members should first pause to decide whether to use a “2D” or “3D” communication mode. 2D modes include asynchronous, usually text-based interactions such as texts, emails, reports and online chats; they work best for simple or fact-driven content. 3D modes include a live component, such as meetings, video chats or face-to-face conversations; these modes help convey emotion and nuance, and enhance creativity.
“Once we have language around white space, it becomes easier to see its value and reset expectations for ourselves and our colleagues.”
For making yes-or-no decisions, team members can use a structured strategic-pause tool called “the Hourglass”: First, write down your initial gut response to the request or opportunity; then, pause to think systematically and in writing; finally, make a decision and deliver it. Team members should learn how to say no instead of ghosting people. Sandwiching the “no” between expressions of graciousness can soften it and convey good intentions. Team members should also take responsibility for making their needs clear – this will save time and energy, and forestall much complaining.
To improve meetings, do less inviting and accepting, and take strategic pauses both between meetings and during them.
Meetings should offer people opportunities to collaborate and create together – not bore or exhaust them. Use strategic pauses to gain discernment about whether to call a meeting, whom to invite and whether to attend. A feeling of boredom can indicate you’re in a meeting unnecessarily. Treat invitations as just that – know you have the option to decline. But, before declining, consider using the question, “What do they truly need to know?” to identify content you might want to provide in a 2D form.
“Make an empty space in any corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.” (Visa founder and CEO Dee Hock)
Make meetings more efficient by reducing fluff – niceties, fillers and validations that don’t contribute substance. Before making a contribution, participants should pause to consider whether it is necessary, honest and kind. Make all meetings intentional. Finally, block out time between meetings – “Hall Time” – for reflecting on and digesting their content.
Use white space at home, too, to ensure your time, and your children’s, is well spent.
Reducing your busyness at home opens up time for appreciating the small things, deepening your experiences and enjoying your personal relationships. Many people don’t allow themselves to stop working and achieve balance and sanity.
“Balanced people work harder, perform better in teams, take less sick leave and have sharper decision-making capabilities.”
Parents can transform their parenting by applying strategic pauses. Spend time with your kids doing nothing in particular. This will help your children relax and learn a white space mindset, too. Don’t overschedule your kids. Make time for joy.
