Recently I was watching  this video about time orientation and it reminded me of something I’ve been wanting to talk about: time and money.

I get to watch a fair number of entrepreneurs work. There’s a variety of styles are time use and time orientation. But time and again I see a theme emerge. The business owners and entrepreneurs who set reasonable work hours and take time for themselves (including vacations, meditation, relaxation) are consistently more productive, high earners and happier than those who work constantly. In fact, check out Chief Happiness Officer’s The Cult of overwork.

I’ve read more than one study that talks about decreasing effectiveness of work as hours increase. There was one I read years ago and that said that efficiency decreases after 6 hours and dramatically after 8. Working more doesn’t actually help get things done. It does make you tired and keep you from your best ideas. I realized this again myself today. I’ve been working and traveling the last couple of weeks and this morning I was totally beat. So I took some time outside on the swing in my parent’s backyard (where I’m visiting right now) and just relaxed in the sun. Within about 20 minutes an idea surfaced for a project that has been plaguing me for months. I know exactly what I want to do about it. But I hadn’t been taking time to just relax and allow myself to re-coooperate from all the hard work so there’s no energy for creativity and problem solving. This is, of course, related to the big theme of this blog: self-care.

When we take good care of ourselves, amazing things happen. How can you take good care of yourself right now?