I made it through the month of January on this experiment. I successfully took an hour lunch 19 out of 23 work days.
Surprisingly, to me, the most common day to miss was Friday. My boss buys the office lunch on Fridays. One would think that would be an easy win. But that’s probably why it wasn’t. I’d typically eat, but with everyone else, which means I was easier to reach and easier to distract. I’d end up back at my desk troubleshooting a problem instead of taking the full hour.
Even knowing that’s what happened after the first week, I still missed that full Friday lunch the following two Fridays. Knowing the problem doesn’t matter if there’s no plan in place to mitigate the problem.
I used my goal tracker app to keep up with which days I took the full lunch and which I didn’t. It was the only thing I tracked. I wanted to track other habits but didn’t.
Did I feel behind at work?
Yes.
Was it because I worked 19 less hours this month than if I didn’t take those full lunch breaks?
Maybe.
Or maybe I just always feel behind. Because that’s the nature of my work.
Did I actually eat lunches? Did I get anything done? Did I feel better overall?
I did actually eat more lunches. I ate soup some of the days. I have a bowl at work, and it’s easy to dump a can of soup into it and heat it up, assuming the can doesn’t require a can opener. I don’t have one of those at work.
I ate salad a bunch of the days too. Aldi sells pre-bagged salads, which are a ripoff compared to buying the ingredients individually but maybe worth it for the convenience. Clearly, I haven’t been buying individual ingredients and making my own, yet. For the pre-bagged versions, I’d dump everything into the bag and eat them that way. They’re tasty and don’t leave me feeling bloated or tired.
As far as getting anything done, I wrote most of the blog posts I’ve published this past month over these lunch breaks. So yes.
And no. The lunch break is conducive to getting short projects done, things that require a quick burst of activity. I made some phone calls and a few other minor errands. It’s a lot harder to accomplish anything that rolls past one lunch break. The time and effort required to get into the project is often more than the break allows.
Overall, I did feel better. Mostly, I think I felt better because I was more in control of my time. Whether I got anything meaningful done or not, whether I physically needed the extra time to make a decent lunch or whatever, the real win was in realizing all that stuff that seems like it matters in the moment, well, it still might matter to some extent, but it can wait.
