When I was younger there was often something slightly furtive about these grabbed respites. They were tainted by a feeling of guilt, as if I’d been playing hookey. As I got older though I learned to value these moments away from the coal-face of work demands. I learned to use the breaks, to reflect and plan, or to catch up on the backlog of ‘things to read later’ that has been a permanent feature of any desk I’ve ever occupied.

Of course there have been many days when I have not been able to take these thinking breaks as or when intended. As time went on though I increasingly found that if I neglected this habit for too long, I suffered.

I have come to think of this pattern as the punctuation that helps me make sense of my days. One of the key aspects of this habit is that the busier I am, the more important these breaks are and the more they must be protected.

Aim to punctuate your day with at least five short breaks – anything between two and 10 minutes will do it – and it helps to move. Get away from whatever you are doing, breath, and make a conscious effort to change your focus of attention for a few minutes. You’ll find mental and physical energy levels improve, and productivity and creativity will be enhanced as well.

Kate Croston: Short Breaks That Improve Productivity.

Workawesome: The Path to Productivity: Short Hours, More Breaks.

The trouble begins when we start to believe our assumptions to be reliable predictions.  We don’t believe that the weather forecast is an accurate statement about what will come to pass, and no more should we trust our assumptions. But we do!

When we begin to act, or prepare to act, before the event because we assume something will happen in a certain way, we tend to see what we are expecting to see, and thus we filter out information that does not fit with our ‘prediction’. In so doing we may perpetuate unpleasant experiences and preclude opportunities for learning something new.

A simple example of this is my friend Dave, who has a reputation as the office bore (you can substitute any type of behaviour here). When people see Dave coming they either take a detour or, if they have to talk to him, switch off and go into a routine of courteous but meaningless responses while waiting for an opportunity to escape. The result in both cases is the same; they don’t get to hear whether Dave has anything interesting to say, and they are proved right in their assumptions. For Dave’s part, he has his social ineptitude confirmed and is given no opportunity to learn his way out of it by practicing meaningful social interaction.

We make assumptions to save time and to reduce uncertainty, in this they are useful. But we need to distinguish where there is uncertainty that implies real risk, and the sort that just makes us feel uncomfortable. Avoiding risk is sensible, (and probably why we have evolved the ability to make assumptions in the first place). When our preconceived ideas start to limit either our ability to see clearly or our openness to new experiences, however, they can cause problems. So much of life is uncertain that it is unavoidable that we will feel uncomfortable for much of it, so it is more useful to be able embrace the uncertainty and get used to the discomfort.

There are situations where it is vitally important to reduce uncertainty and where a low tolerance for ambiguity is an advantage, think of the role of surgeon, or airline pilot for example. But more generally we face daily ambiguities in our lives where procedures and outcome cannot be controlled or predicted as they can with a surgical procedure or controlling an aircraft. Human relationships and how people behave are obvious examples.

“Life”, it has been said, “is ambiguous”. So how does someone who has a low tolerance for ambiguity deal with life? Flexibilty: as long as they can apply different levels of tolerance to different situations there is no problem. Someone who needs a high degree of precision and to reduce certainty in their work can also adopt a more appropriate level of tolerance when waiting for a bus or managing their children, for example.

We are all different in our innate abilities to tolerate ambiguity and therefore to the degree that we are comfortable with life’s uncertainties. A higher level of tolerance for the things we cannot control and the uncertainty we experience is linked to creativity, lifestyle, management skills and resilience. Lower levels of tolerance for uncertainty can make us risk averse, overly worried, and tend to draw conclusions prematurely because we don’t allow ourselves the time to ‘wait and see’, gather evidence or reach a balanced conclusion.

Two conclusions

This post has two possible endings. If you have a low tolerance for ambiguity you will want to have a clear answer (preferably the ‘right’ one). If you have a high tolerance and are comfortable with uncertainty then you probably won’t be looking for an answer at all, but I’ve added one below anyway.

1) Working intuitively from your assumptions is a great skill, but beware of being too reliant on it because as we have seen it can lead to inflexibility and control-freakery. It also stifles creativity and it can be really tiring trying to reduce uncertainty all the time. The answer is to learn to lighten up and remember that, as Heraclitus said, “If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it.” If you want to know more about how to do this, see either of the titles I’ve listed below.

2) If you’ve read this far and recognised that you are able to allow yourself and others some latitude when faced with uncertainty, then I’d say “go with the flow”, but there is a cautionary note: Some people might mis-read your higher tolerance for uncertainty as ‘laissez-faire’ and think that you just don’t care about things. You might want to challenge that assumption.

See also

Von Oech, R., (2001), Expect the Unexpected (Or You Won’t Find It), The Free Press, New York.

Marinoff, L., (2000), Plato Not Prozac, HarperCollins, New York

Related articles

• Trying To Be Certain About Everything Kills Great Ideas
• Embracing Uncertainty

Related articles

The concept is simple, and because it is counter-intuitive (how can ‘less’ produce ‘more’?), it is appealing. It sounds as if it might just work. Maybe it is Eastern or something… they know a thing or two about productivity in the orient… Isn’t that where Zen comes from… etc.

We’ve seen the headlines that apply the idea to business, then there was weight-loss (No More Crash Diets);  eating (Slow Food: Eat it to Save it); exercise (The Bare Minimum Keeps you Fit); and even school homework (Less is More When it Comes to Homework). For anyone used to taking a Solution Focused perspective this is not such an odd concept: rather than struggling to solve problems by doing something new, simply look at what you are doing that works, and do more of it. Repeating success is easy, enjoyable and affirming.

Now it seems that there are situations where we benefit from the perception of doing less, while we are actually doing more. In Green Care: A Conceptual Framework, the authors draw on studies that compare walking in green spaces with walking in a built-up environment. When we walk in a natural environment we actually expend more energy and move a bit faster than we do in the latter, but we feel as if we are doing less.

Green is good

The benefits of a natural environment don’t stop there. It has been known for a long time, for example, that greenery promotes healing, so that hospital planners factor this into their designs; and that disruptive behaviour in children diminishes when they are outside connecting with nature. Trees and landscapes also reduce stress and increase resilience, and for those who can’t get outside even a picture or a screen-saver has benefits. The link here is that though popular notions about benefitting from nature often involve extreme challenges and tests of endurance, the reality is that, as Oliver Burkeman says “Even the tiniest kinds of engagement with nature deliver a psychological boost.”

So, as we are constantly exhorted to do more – both by others and our own expectations – it is worth remembering that our species has been shaped by the natural environment, the ebb and flow of the seasons, and our innate ability to reflect and learn. Strive as we might to do more, aiming to do less may enable us to reach the same ends, and find more enjoyment while we are at it.

See also

Oliver Burkeman, This column will change your life: nature and nurture.

Green Care: A Conceptual Framework; A report of the Working Group on the Health Benefits of Green Care

Related articles

• Nature delivers a psychological boost

Of course a certain amount of stress is necessary and beneficial. But even those who thrive on competition, stimulus and demand, must learn to balance this with periods where they can withdraw, reflect and make sense of the world if they are to remain effective. Most people know this intuitively, which is why a common treatment for stress is ‘time off’.

Read the full post at Inner Landscapes

• Taking steps to enhance wellbeing.

But whole topic has become more intense than it was 15 years ago when I started presenting it around the UK. Despite its un-PC title (as I’m sure you know, there are no difficult people, only difficult behaviour), most people I spoke to could stand back and take an objective view of problems they were having with colleagues. They could separate from their anger and frustration long enough to apply the ideas and regain a sense of control.

Things are different these days. All of a sudden, in the last two years or so, the people attending Difficult People Events are often struggling, and sessions can begin to feel more like group therapy than training.

One reason for this may be that – with cuts, fewer staff and increased focus on results – the pressure is on in the workplace, particularly in the public sector where I do much of my work. Managers are being asked to do more with less; time and tolerance are at a premium, and patience and understanding are in short supply.

Another, related, reason is that ‘performance management’ is ever more an issue and this is increasing tensions around behaviour which is seen as non-compliant or unresponsive to requests for change. This has become more visible due to ubiquitous restructuring and the role-changes that it entails.

As if this wasn’t demanding enough, there is a third reason that many managers are finding persistently resistant behaviour tough to manage, and that has to do with their own language. Clear communications are occluded and situations begin to lack clarity, because in the workplace we seem to be losing the ability to say what we mean.

For example, there is an aversion in the working culture of many organisations to give an order or an instruction; instead we ‘suggest’ or ‘request’. We no longer ‘think’ something, we are more likely to hedge by saying we ‘feel’, and many people seem incapable of telling their staff exactly what is expected of them in a way that can be clearly understood, much less followed, because the language they use is too abstract.

These are speculations and there could be plenty of other reasons. The fact remains that I am meeting seriously distressed and demoralised managers these days, who often can’t see the wood for the trees. The result is that they are not as effective as they could be, their confidence is down and this has a negative effect on them, and the organisations they work for.

See also:

See my post: Driving with the handbrake on.

Order the book: Difficult People; a Guide to Handling Difficult Behaviour, ISR Publishing, 2005

Find solutions: Handling Difficult People at Work

The first of these was Oliver Burkeman’s regular column in the Guardian. He wrote about research that shows, in brief, that while we happily accept that we change as we go through life, from a certain point (our 40th year, say), we think that we have finished changing and that the future – in terms of what makes us, us – will be more of the same. In other words, we are able to look back on our lives and see how we have changed as we’ve aged, but we are less likely to consider that we will go on changing as we get older. Burkeman says that we actually ‘recoil’ from this prospect.

Could this mean that though we can see that we have gained wisdom and insight with experience, we nevertheless consider that the process is over and that at any given moment we are as wise as we’ll ever be?

The second article was a confessional piece, What I’m Really Thinking, by a dating agency proprietor (as an aside, what do such people call themselves; ‘dateologists’; ‘dateographer’; ‘datist’, or even ‘splicer’?). It was an informative and entertaining read, a summary of which is that many of the agency’s clients are deluded “middle-aged people who are embittered and unrealistic about (their) own personal qualities and attractiveness.”

Apparently, people in their aspirations to re-make their lives tend to have an idealised image of the perfect (and therefore unattainable) partner they seek, and and an equally over-inflated view of what they themselves have to offer a potential mate.

The reason that these two pieces formed a whole for me is that they echoed a few of my deepest existential fears as I have gone through three-quarters or more of my life. For simplicity I’ll reduce these to two:
“What if I’m really quite stupid and unlikeable and people around me are just humouring me?”; and
“As I look back over my life I can see how stupid/gauche/arrogant I was back then, (sub-text, fortunately I’m not like that any more so I have learnt and improved).”

Taken together you can see how the second more or less counters any angst produced by the first; since I have been constantly changing (gradually losing naivety and gaining insight), assuming that this process continues, I’ll continue to improve, with the chance that I’ll be alright one day, as long as I keep learning.
Throughout my life I have been constantly looking towards the new set of opportunities presented by the next phase of my life.  If you like, my get-out clause has always been “If I’m not OK yet (as a fully rounded and admirable individual, which I clearly am not), then there is still hope for improvement at a later date, and with even more age and experience.”

So much has this been a theme that I have got a bit of a reputation as someone who is, depending on your point of view
a) not very stable as I keep changing or
b) able to re-invent myself with changing circumstances.

It was a surprise to me, when I read these two articles, to find that not everybody considers themselves to be a ‘work in progress’ as I do. Before you run away with the idea that this is just another delusion on my part, I can only say that my raison d’être has always been that the future presents possibilities; opportunities for growth and change, and that this is a chord which continues to resonate.

See also:

Oliver Burkeman: Happy Just the Way You Are?

The Matchmaker:  What I’m Really Thinking.

Image:   © Copyright Dirt Circle Design, with kind permission

Then there is the question of our mental well-being. For almost 100 years psychologists have been saying that we should protect ourselves from unremitting negativity, catastrophising and the constant worry of bad news. That which we focus on becomes our reality, so too much content filled with negativity and disaster does our heads in, as they say.

So limit your intake of bad stuff, and wherever possible contrast every negative story with at least two positive ones. This will provide balance and give your inner world-view editor something to work with.

I recently found a useful resource for doing this. Positive News has been going for over 10 years now. It is available as online and print versions, and on top of that it is a stimulating and at times inspirational read. Check it out at the link below.

Find out more: Positive News

Its available as a low-cost kindle version, so no reason not to start today (don’t have a Kindle? Then you can always download the app for your phone, iPad or laptop.) If you prefer the hard copy that’s available too.

If you have a project you haven’t been able to get off the ground this little book will give you some perspectives on why that might be, and what to do about it. One word of caution for the faint-hearted; if you are in the habit of blaming others for the setbacks and obstacles that prevent you realising your dreams, you may need to revise your thinking on reading this book.

Don’t misunderstand me, procrastination has its place. Hesitancy can be a virtue, delay and reflection are often there for good reason, but if you feel your project is stuck, then I think you’ll find this book useful.

Whatever the media might say, we live in inspiring times and the world is filled with unlimited opportunity for those that want to build, make or do something new. Go for it!

* Thanks Adrian.