They say that the best way to increase productivity is to give your brain a “holiday”.
It sounds contradictory, but it has been proven over and over. When you relax your mind, instead of slowing down, your brain actually starts to click, fire and whirr like an old piece of machinery warming up. This doesn’t happen immediately and I guess it depends on how fried your mind is as to how long it takes for the creativity to start to flow. In my experience it happens EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Now a “holiday” can simply be a holiday from the everyday but a distraction holiday is by far the most efficient way to get your brain to think it’s a teenager again.
This is why, when we travel we spend a day or two catching up on sleep, then I’m literally jumping up and down wanting to go out and explore.
I’m wide eyed and aware of everything around me like a small child seeing the world for the first time.
It’s an amazing feeling and one that I think I might be addicted to.
- I want to see where the path leads.
- I want to walk up a mountain.
- I want to sit at the top and think of nothing at all.
- I want to be so high the clouds are swirling around my face.
- I want to walk down sliding through the autumn leaves.
- I want to walk to the village then the next village and the next.
- I want to walk down to the stream to sit with my feet in the clear water.
- I want to go shopping for local ingredients.
- I want to try new and interesting foods.
- I want to challenge myself AND
- I want to watch the sky change over the valley.
- I want to see the sun come up over the mountains.
- I want to have tired muscles and a clear head.
- I want to hear church bells singing across the hills.
- I want, I want, I want….😁
I just have this enthusiasm for simple things that I don’t experience normally.
The fact is that everything is new and different. Everywhere I look I am learning something new. The trees are different, the wildlife is different, the view is different. The air is cleaner and crisper. The sky is bluer. The grass is greener.
Even the barking sheep dogs are bigger and barkier than I’ve seen before.
I don’t know exactly where every path or road leads. People are dressed differently, even the cars are different. The driving is certainly different! The occasional Ferrari is like a brilliant wildflower on a freshly mowed hillside. Every time I try to speak Italian, I’m challenged and every time Italian is spoken to me I’m even more challenged! Every time I put my hiking shoes on I’m moving my body in a way that I don’t often have time to do when I’m in my life.
They say that setting and achieving small goals releases dopamine which makes you feel good and makes you want to do that thing again. Or makes you want to try another thing because the first one went so well. Works for me.
Your brain wakes up. You literally start to open up neural pathways that haven’t been used for many years or ever. It’s a phenomenon that happens every single time we travel. In fact, I’ve had to make a rule that we are not allowed to register domain names whilst on holidays because we come up with so many schemes! It’s almost like someone flicks the “on” switch and suddenly everything is possible. Now, you might say that you get away from work to relax so working whilst you are away is counter-productive. But we are so much more productive in the few hours we do spend working. We have to download all the creativity to capture it whilst we have the chance.
When you do it after enjoying a four hour hike in the Apennine mountain air and a hearty meal of fresh local Italian ingredients it hardly seems like work.
