“You want me to pick you up a biscuit for breakfast?” One colleague asked another on his way into the office one morning.
“No, Mary Ila is coming today.”
“Gotcha.” he replied back.
The HR Manager I work with regularly was the one refusing the biscuit because she knew if I’m there for the day, I am going to take her (make her go) to lunch. This is such a given that now her collogues know when I’m there not to count on her to be there at lunch time. Her friend/co-worker with the biscuit didn’t need any further explanation as to why she didn’t want a big breakfast. Mary Ila here = a good lunch. He’s gotten in on the lunch breaks with us at least once before too.
The lunches started out, in her view I think, as me just trying to be nice. And of course, I am taking her to lunch to be nice, but also because I’ve got to eat too.
But she’s come to realize that I have bigger reasons for taking her to lunch. She needs to get OUT of the office for a bit. The lunches help us both recharge, have more casual, but still work-related conversations. I can visibly see her relax a little once we get in the car and we are headed to what is most often our favorite-Mexican- meal.
I had a purpose for the lunch breaks with her because intuitively I know she needs it. Little did I know that there is a lot of science to back up lunch (not breakfast- see she didn’t need that biscuit!) as the most important meal of the day.
In When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink, Pink writes:
“For example, a 2016 study looked at more than eight hundred workers (mostly in information technology, education, and media from eleven different organizations, some of whom regularly took lunch breaks away from their desks and some of whom did not. The non-desk lunchers were better able to contend with workplace stress and showed less exhaustion and greater vigor not just during the remainder of the day but also one full year later.
‘Lunch breaks,’ the researchers say, ‘offer an important recovery setting to promote occupational health and well-being’- particularly for employees in cognitively or emotionally demanding jobs,’”
Pink goes on to describe two things that need to be present for lunch breaks to have this positive outcome:
- Autonomy- Exercising how, when and whom you do it with.
- Detachment- Being both psychologically and physically detached from the work place (and the phone, etc. that may connect you to it).
I do make her go to lunch and go with me, so I’m not sure how much autonomy I’ve given her in this. However, we do practice detachment.
I hope that the value she sees in the lunch breaks will help her be more autonomous in taking them. Also by engaging others in the practice of breaking for lunch, she can model the way to detach from the workplace and work activities at some point during the day to recharge and refocus.
Do you regularly take a lunch break? If not, what would help make you start? Call me- I’m always up for lunch if you need an accountability partner.
