Join the Lunch Bunch for Improved Productivity
When was the last time you ate lunch during the workday? Not a protein bar, not something from a grab’n’go station that you wolfed down at your desk while staring at your computer screen. But an actual lunch that you enjoyed without a screen in front of you.
Been a while? Don’t feel bad – American hustle culture makes it seem like you’re more productive working endlessly without breaks.
American hustle culture also leads to bad decisions, fatigue, working for hours yet accomplishing nothing, burnout, and misery. If you’re into that, I’m not going to kinkshame, but I can’t help you either.
One way to ensure that you’re giving your brain some of the recharging it needs is to eat lunch without a screen in front of you. Take time to eat and digest and be in the moment, which is helpful for your mental and emotional health. August 31 is Eat Outside Day – and I bet there’s a great spot near where you work to take advantage of it.
Making time to eat lunch makes you more productive without working harder
Your brain needs rest after working hard for a while. Your brain also needs food to fuel it, because it is a big energy hog that only accounts for about 2% of your mass but 20% of your energy.
That’s why eating lunch (without a screen) is so tremendous for your productivity and ability to achieve your daily goals in your business. Your brain gets the rest that it needs from hard cognitive work at the same time it’s absorbing the fuel it requires for performance.
If you studied economics, you’ve heard about the law of diminishing returns. Basically, after you pass a certain point, putting in more effort brings smaller and smaller returns. In some cases, the returns disappear.
Knowledge work is also subject to the law of diminishing returns. You get a certain amount of peak performance from your brain each day (about four hours or so, per Cal Newport). After that you can work through some administrative duties and paperwork, including emails, because they don’t require peak performance from your brain. As you pile on more hours, the law of diminishing returns kicks in.
You achieve much less when you work all day and then come back the next day without doing anything to help your brain recharge. Had you worked during your peak brain hours and then recharged afterward instead of grinding through, you’d have more energy the following day. Plus you wouldn’t have to undo the mistakes made because you were grinding on an already fatigued brain.
Taking a break in the middle of the day to fuel yourself and recharge is smart. Trying to grind through every day is bad for your health and leads to burnout later as well. So, you know, choose wisely.
Eating lunch supports your brain to improve productivity
One of the first things I did when I moved from DC to San Diego in 2016 was to eat outside at a place that had fish tacos. I'd driven cross-country the last week of January (just after a massive snowstorm had shut down DC), so being in warm San Diego felt great. Also, at the time DC didn’t have a whole lot of good fish taco places, whereas on the west coast they’re pretty plentiful.
Eating outside isn’t always the best place to be, depending on the time of year and location. But when you’re able to eat somewhere that has outdoor seating, especially if you’re in or near a park or other natural scenery, your brain also gets to soak up all that outdoors atmosphere. Human brains love natural scenery, even a small neighborhood park, so spending as much time as you can in those places is great for your brain.
Lunch is also a great time to get some socializing in. Especially for introverts, I think. You can have lunch with maybe one or two other people and there’s food involved. Extroverts can pack their table with as many people as they like!
Recap (tl;dr):
Eating lunch is a good way to allow your brain a rest from thinky work and to fuel it up with the nutrition it needs. It helps you stay productive without getting tired or burned out. Eat outside and/or with others to level up your recharging.
Having trouble with so much work you can’t squeeze out time for lunch? I can help you right-size your work hours so that you achieve your daily goals for a profitable business and still have time for the important things in life. Click here to chat.