Take a breather

I’ve found that people can put in amazingly hard work … for a while.

It’s not that people are lazy – they just get worn out. And our current society seems to love adding more and more stress, especially mental.

We need a break.

A great example was some volunteer work that I did with our church. I put in tons of hours, and it wasn’t easy for me to be an introvert with this group. But we learned that by taking each summer off, we would come back rejuvenated and energized, willing to put in another year.

I stuck with that for probably 20 years, maybe more.

In my work as a project manager, I also learned how important it was to give people a break between projects. Otherwise the team would not be productive, and would grow to resent working long hours as we got close to the end.

I gave people some slack time, and we’d make sure to celebrate our accomplishment.

This also happens at the personal scale. We need weekends. We need holidays and vacations. We need sleep. All these cycles are healthy.

So give your team the opportunities for rejuvenation which are appropriate. They’ll be happier and more productive.