Reboot Your Mind

Android developers and IT workers can work extremely long hours. It's a common fact within the IT workplace. In a New York Times article that was written earlier this year, written by Tony Schwartz, executives who wake up tired, find themselves doing activities such as e-mail before getting out of bed, skipping breakfast or grab something on the run that’s not particularly nutritious, rarely get away from the desk for lunch and more are signals the inability to  juggle overwhelming demands and maintain a seemingly unsustainable pace. The article explains that the best way to get more done may be to spend more time doing less by “More, bigger, faster.” The results? Strategic renewal.

Google / Life Hacker

Tony Schwartz also said the following in his article, “I learned that it’s not how long, but how well, you renew that matters most in terms of performance. Even renewal requires practice. The more rapidly and deeply I learned to quiet my mind and relax my body, the more restored I felt afterward. For one of the breaks, I ran. This generated mental and emotional renewal, but also turned out to be a time in which some of my best ideas came to me, unbidden. The power of renewal was so compelling to me that I’ve created a business around it that helps a range of companies including Google, Coca-Cola, Green Mountain Coffee, the Los Angeles Police Department, Cleveland Clinic and Genentech. Renewal is central to how we work. “

Balancing doing more by spending time doing less can result in the following:

• daytime workouts

• short afternoon naps

• longer sleep hours

• more time away from the office

• longer, more frequent vacations

• boosts productivity

• job performance

• improve health

The article also explains that daytime naps have a similar effect on performance. Sara C. Mednick, a sleep researcher at the University of California, Riverside, found that a 60- to 90-minute nap improved memory test results as fully as did eight hours of sleep. It also highlighted more vacations as being beneficial. In 2006, the accounting firm Ernst & Young did an internal study of its employees and found that for each additional 10 hours of vacation employees took, their year-end performance ratings from supervisors (on a scale of one to five) improved by 8 percent. The more vacations, the more loyalty employees were to its companies.