Boost Productivity and Reduce Anxiety with Worry Breaks
00:00:00.000 | There's one break that you reference in the book that I thought was super interesting and it's a worry break.
00:00:04.840 | This one surprised me as well. I ran into a leader who had a sand timer on his desk.
00:00:10.560 | He had a reputation for was being very very calm even though he worked inside a very cutthroat culture.
00:00:16.000 | People loved working for him and he had exceptional results.
00:00:20.160 | Was he naturally like this or were there some hacks, some things that he put into practice?
00:00:23.960 | And he said that what he would do is every time there was a worrying thought and it wouldn't go away,
00:00:29.240 | what he would do is he would go into his office and he would shut the door and he would take this five minute timer
00:00:34.160 | and he would flip it over and for five minutes he would focus on nothing but that one worry.
00:00:39.180 | It sounds like a recipe for anxiety, but as I dug deeper into it
00:00:43.520 | what I realized is that there's a lot of science behind this practice.
00:00:47.120 | When we have a worrying thought inside our head, we'll tend to try to push it out or compartmentalize it and to basically say,
00:00:52.620 | "Hey, I don't have time for you right now. I'm focusing on this other thing."
00:00:55.600 | When we push things out, what they tend to do
00:00:58.440 | is they tend to grow louder.