Reach more by doing less

Valuable creative breathers

A few years ago I spent every minute on my job; I was working hard and hardly ever had a break or allowed myself to have a breather – there was no time for any sort of timeout.
Always running, having my Laptop, Tablet and Smartphone with me helped me to keep organized and to work for my customers whenever and wherever I was – this is mobile computing at its best and highly efficient! – and all around the clock. If there was some time between two coaching units or two meetings – well, I knew what to do. It was the time when I founded my company, and in the startup time I created a solid base for it’s future development.

As my company grew rapidly over the last few years I learned to be even more productive – but not in the traditional sense by producing more, organizing better or working even harder, but by doing less – and taking frequent creative breathers.

Let me explain.

Frequent working until I was completely exhausted made me think about having small breaks between my coaching and consulting units, in order to get my head clear again and to be fit for the next big thing.

During those short breathers I often take my camera and start exploring the surroundings – and sometimes I find myself simply standing in the sun observing and chasing the light.

Making photographs during those short breathers – in fact during official business hours! – gives me the chance to switch to a different topic quickly and to gain distance from (sometimes) stressful or oppressive issues related to my job – and simply helps me to refocus and to recognize my own goals again.

As a result at the end of the day there is a significant overall improvement of productivity and performance. I can’t measure this improvement by numbers and figures, but I feel better, more balanced and more efficient.

I am sure those creative breathers help me to reach more by doing less – and finally – this is most important! – there is more time for myself.

Here are a few images made during a breather on March 12th 2019 in Zurich.

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Time

Speaking about time – do you remember Pink Floyd’s “Time” from the album “The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)”?

Interesting thoughts from 1973 about time and life. Here are the lyrics, or at least some parts of them:

You are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then, one day, you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun
—
And you run, and you run
To catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same
In a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught
Or half a page of scribbled lines

Lyrics (parts of them) from Pink Floyd’s Time (1973), Source Genius

 

 

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Images: Ricoh GR II, GR Lens f=18.3 mm 1:2.8. .DNG RAW format. Edited in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

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