I read an article last week that suggested that one of the ways to increase one's work place productivity and efficiency was to stop eating lunch at your desk. As I pack my lunch most everyday, I almost always eat lunch at my desk. So, as I felt a bit stagnant at work for part of the past couple weeks, and seeing that I had a very busy month ahead of me, I decided to give it a try.
Last Friday and today I took my packed lunch, hopped in the car, grabbed a book, and went to a local park where I sat, read, and ate my lunch. The early review is positive, as Friday was very productive for me, and I have a clear and focused mind going into this afternoon.
And today, my book provided a nice little coincidence. I am reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, which details in part, the Republic of Congo around the late 1950s - early 1960s and its independence from Belgium and other interests. On the radio, as I'm reading, comes Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire," which has this great lyric - "Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo, We didn't start the fire, It was always burning, Since the world's been turning."
And I happened to be reading a passage at that very moment that I found very profound,
On the day of the hunt I came to know in the slick center of my bones this one thing: all animals kill to survive, and we are animals. The lion kills the baboon; the baboon kills fat grasshoppers. The elephant tears up living trees, dragging their precious roots from the dirt they love. The hungry antelope's shadow passes over the startled grass. And we, even if we had no meat or even grass to gnaw, still boil our water to kill the invisible creatures that would like to kill us first. And swallow quinine pills. The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.
Beautiful day, nice lunch, good music to listen to, and a nice book to reflect upon. Nice how all those coincidences worked together. Makes for a fantastic lunch hour.
I'm pretty sad that I've adopted the trend of eating at my desk with such ease. I've seen the dangers of such tunnel vision at work -- and yet the seemingly "urgent" suggestions of the rational lizard brain have come to overrule the lessons learned through that observation.
ReplyDeleteA wonderful suggestion, which I think I'll try to adopt.
Nick, it's hard, I know. It feels counter-intuitive to me that less time at the desk may mean more work done (obviously, there's a balance-proportional "thing" that needs to be respected there). But I thought it was worth a try, but still too early to really gauge any results. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteJust reading this now, of course while eating lunch at my desk. Working hard to correct bad habits and make sure I'm paying attention to the right things more of the time.
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