Energy Management: Micro, Meso, and Macro Breaks
In This Episode
Did you know that there are three types of breaks you should be taking to maintain your energy? Tune into this episode of the LeaderLab powered by LifeLabs Learning to learn more.
Transcript
Vanessa Tanicien: Hello, and welcome to the Leader Lab, the podcast powered by LifeLabs Learning. I'm your host and LifeLabs Leadership Trainer, Vanessa Tanicien. In each episode, my Labmates and I distill our findings into powerful tipping point skills, the smallest changes that tip over to make the biggest impact in the shortest time. On this episode of the LeaderLab, we're continuing the conversation on energy management and what we can do to avoid burnout.
Vanessa Tanicien: So burnout is pretty pervasive right now. It's those feelings of complete exhaustion, energy depletion, and it really gets in the way of us having a meaningful experience at work and in other places in our life. So we're going to be exploring a number of different tools that are going to help you keep burnout at bay.
Vanessa Tanicien: For today's skill, we've got our one and only Massella Dukuly back on the show. To remind you, she's one of our talented leadership trainers. She's also the host of the Keeping Score Podcast and a huge lover of reality TV. She claims that it gives her brain the break that it needs. Speaking of which, she's trying to get me into 90 Day Fiancé. Apparently, she can't look away. Is that still true, Massella?
Massella Dukuly: That's very true, Vanessa. Oh, it's good! It's really good!
Vanessa Tanicien: I am so thrilled to be putting that on my watch list, and I'm curious: What energy management technique have you brought for us to explore in the lab today?
Massella Dukuly: Happy to be here with you, Vanessa. And for all of you, if you're like Vanessa, and you haven't watched 90 Day Fiancé, you are missing out on life. However, don't worry. I've got some breaks in mind for you. Today, I'm going to be sharing some ideas that come from Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar. He's an author and a lecturer based out of Harvard. He specializes in positive psychology. His ideas on breaks actually break them into three meaningful and interdependent levels. There are micro breaks, meso breaks, and macro breaks. Micro breaks are like 5- to 15-minute breaks that someone would take every 60 to 90 minutes of work.
Vanessa Tanicien: Okay. So that's like a stretch break, getting some coffee, maybe, I don't know, a little Jazzercise?
Massella Dukuly: Yeah! Jazzercise sounds amazing. Do whatever you need to do. You can break dance. And then, after those micro breaks, you also want to be mindful about taking meso breaks. So meso breaks are, in an ideal fashion, seven to nine hours of sleep each night.
Vanessa Tanicien: bOof. I felt like you punched me in the gut with that one.
Massella Dukuly: Yeah, yeah.
Vanessa Tanicien: Do you know what year it is?
Massella Dukuly: I'm struggling with that one, too. It's hard! It's really hard. There are a number of reasons, right? So there's context, there's stress, there's babies, there's Netflix, there's news. Outside of that, this could even mean just like truly taking a day off, really utilizing your Saturday and Sunday for a time to step back from whatever it is that you're doing.
Vanessa Tanicien: Okay. And then what's this last layer of the breakdown on breaks? Very meta.
Massella Dukuly: I like that. Last layer of the breakdown on breaks. Those are macro breaks. You want to be taking about two to four weeks off each year.
Vanessa Tanicien: That sounds nice. I also know that, in the United States, we have a problem with taking breaks. What does Dr. Ben-Shahar say about all this?
Massella Dukuly: Yeah. We do have a pretty major problem, especially here in the US, especially in 2020. 2020 in general, with a global pandemic going on, has made this really hard for people. Right now, so many folks are thinking, "Well, I can't really go anywhere or do anything, at least in the way that I want to. So I won't take a break." What he talks about is the need to make sure that we're taking all three of these breaks as a preventative measure for burnout. So right now, on average, people are taking maybe one or two. And each of us has one that we lean to more than the other.
Massella Dukuly: You might be really good at getting away from your computer, stretching, going for a quick walk, getting coffee. Or maybe you're somebody who truly can relax on the weekend. Like that is your time to unplug. Or maybe you're the person who doesn't do those two things but can take two weeks off and typically would go away on a vacation. But again, they're interdependent. We need them all in order to be mindful and preventative of burnout.
Vanessa Tanicien: So this all sounds really compelling in theory, Massella, but I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around how to actually operationalize this. What do you suggest we do?
Massella Dukuly: I got you, Vanessa. Let's do a break audit. I'm going to take you through it right now. So, Vanessa, listeners, here's what's going to go down. I'm going to describe one of the three levels of breaks that we already mentioned. I want you to give a thumbs up if you're already good at this, something that you do regularly, or a thumbs down if you know that you could use some work. Don't worry. Nobody's judging you. I'm sure that you're...
Vanessa Tanicien: I'm judging myself, but that's a different kind of conversation.
Massella Dukuly: All right. So micro breaks. Again, this is a 5- to 15-minute break that would happen maybe every 60 to 90 minutes worth of work. Thumbs up?
Vanessa Tanicien: Solid thumbs up. I take these mini breaks, and we also help each other do it as well at LifeLabs with little minute challenges, "Do a plank," or, "Do a dance party!" So we're good on that.
Massella Dukuly: I like it. That's fun. Meso breaks. This would be about seven to nine hours' worth of sleep. Or an alternative might be actually just taking a real rest on let's say a weekend, a Saturday or a Sunday. Not doing anything.
Vanessa Tanicien: That is a very sad thumbs down. I could do a little better with that, but I'm sure you can walk me through that a little later.
Massella Dukuly: Last but not least. We've got our macro breaks. This would ideally be about two to four weeks worth of off time in a given year. Doesn't have to be all at once.
Vanessa Tanicien: Can I put my thumb in the middle? I'm going to do that. I'm breaking all the rules.
Massella Dukuly: Sure can.
Vanessa Tanicien: Putting my thumb in the middle. I am okay. But I could be better.
Massella Dukuly: Okay. So sounds like we had a variance of responses, and listeners, maybe you have the same. The goal here is to take a look at those areas that might really need some work. So, Vanessa, what was most compelling for you?
Vanessa Tanicien: Definitely on that solid thumbs down. I'm not so good at the meso break. It is very easy for me to cut into sleeping time with other activities and then to use part of my weekend to catch up on a few things.
Massella Dukuly: All right. So it sounds like meso breaks are those areas of opportunity. What specifically do you actually want to change?
Vanessa Tanicien: Well, that sleep situation that you mentioned in the very beginning is probably something I want to get ahead of. I just got a fitness tracker, so gaining some awareness around how much I actually am sleeping, and improving my sleep hygiene, I think, would go a really long way. I'd love to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for a morning meeting once in a while.
Massella Dukuly: Yeah. I love that one, and I think it's really easy to want to avoid it, often because we're distracted or we have a lot going on, but it sounds like, one, technology is going to be a huge help just in understanding what's going on with your sleep. The other thing that I think is really cool is that Dr. Ben-Shahar has this quote around this sleep portion, and he says, "Your AM starts in your PM," and by that he means how we actually treat our evening. Whether or not you're going to bed on time, whether or not you are staring at your phone in the bed all night is really going to impact this vicious cycle of how our energy is managed throughout the day.
Vanessa Tanicien: So I'm feeling way better already, knowing that I have a plan around these meso breaks, and I want to take this to this leadership application, right? How can we as leaders encourage our teams to take breaks, to manage burnout and to up their energy?
Massella Dukuly: Yeah. Great question, V. There are two major things that I would really encourage you to do. First is to encourage breaks. Get really curious about them. It is not enough to rely on the fact that we have an unlimited PTO policy. Ask questions of your team. "Hey, have you actually had a chance to eat today?" "Have you gone for a walk?" I know that right now things are hard. I know that we're no one's parent, but it makes such a difference if we normalize the fact that these breaks are important and necessary.
Massella Dukuly: The second thing is to make sure that we are modeling these breaks. If you ask about them and you say that they're important, but people never see you do them, there's a good chance that they might not, especially if we are in leadership roles or in places of influence. Oftentimes, when we see somebody being successful at work, it might mean that they're working all of the time, and we have to be able to break those norms.
Vanessa Tanicien: So what you're saying is that you can be firefighting all day but just make sure you don't burn out. You get it? You got it?
Massella Dukuly: Yeah.
Vanessa Tanicien: Okay. So we have covered three kinds of breaks that you can use to keep burnout at bay, micro breaks, meso breaks, and macro breaks, which leads us to our LeaderLab listener experiment of the episode. So, Massella, what should people be trying out in their laboratory of life?
Massella Dukuly: All right, LeaderLab listeners, this is your experiment. I'd like you to schedule in one of each type of break for yourself over the next couple of weeks, a micro break, a meso break, and if you don't have a macro break coming up, 2021 is just ahead of us. Make sure you have something for the upcoming months.
Vanessa Tanicien: Fantastic. And that's a wrap of another episode of the Leader Lab. Make sure you subscribe, so that way you don't miss an episode, and share this with at least one other person who you know needs a break. I know that you know at least one human being. If you want to hang out with us on social, go ahead and find us on LinkedIn or @LifeLabsLearn on Twitter. And of course, to bring training to your team, head on over to lifelabslearning.com. See you in the lab next time.
