We all now live and work in an increasingly fast world, characterized by multiple, often conflicting demands on our time and attention—and an overarching pressure to achieve more with the same or fewer resources. Sometimes, multifactorial demands and pressures like these can be energizing, pushing us to perform at a higher level. Eventually, however, unless intentional recovery features in our routine performance behavior, energizing busyness can become a depleting strain. This is why the “do more with less” strategy touted by many career experts is a mistake. Because unlike computers, humans are not built to be always on.
Intentional recovery, sometimes called “strategic recovery,” is a deliberate act. It is not a break that you grant yourself when you are caught up with your work. Instead, it is a formal and focused decision to insert small but dedicated periods of time—perhaps 10 minutes every 90 to 120 minutes—to disrupt the linearity of doing the same thing or holding the same physical posture or location for too long. In our research, we have found that intentional recovery can be a form of sustainability investment in the next wave of performance. Intentional recovery can also break the day into a series of short, highly engaged sprints in preference to one gradually energy-depleting marathon.
The practice of intentional recovery is a key modifiable factor in keeping pressure and stress separate from each other and the enabler for sustainable, healthy high performance. Despite this, intentional recovery rarely gets prioritized and is often misunderstood as a concept. This intentional act is seen by some as unproductive time, or even slacking.
Unfortunately, seeing recovery time as unproductive or wasteful is to fundamentally misunderstand the mechanism of sustainable performance in the first place. Humans aren’t designed to always be “on.” Promoting and supporting intentional recovery in the team is one of the most productive and strategic tools in a manager’s toolbox, equipping teams to use pressure to their advantage, avoid stress, and keep developing and growing.
Intentional recovery can lead to sustainable high performance, yet it’s often not used or rejected as an option because of outdated narratives about what it means to work hard. Failure to recognize the human need for recovery is to the detriment of both employee well-being and organizational performance.
Human society functions cyclically on a 24-hour cycle. But within that cycle, there are secondary cycles known as ultradian rhythms—shorter waves cycling every 90 to 120 minutes whereby certain physical needs are required to be met. These needs will include moving around to get more oxygenated blood circulating through the body as well as the need to hydrate, eat, or use the toilet. We are therefore wired through this rhythm to attempt to recover the energy expended in the preceding 90 to 120 minutes.
Our bodies are programmed to prioritize our physical needs, such as sleep and food. And when our needs are not addressed, our ability to focus on work declines. For instance, think about your ability to concentrate in a Teams meeting if you need to use the toilet. Your brain will be intently focusing on the most opportune moment to absent yourself, not on what the speaker is saying.
It doesn’t matter how interested you are in the subject matter or how mission-critical it seems, the body will try to get its primary needs met. But unfortunately, social workplace conventions often push us to suppress or ignore what our bodies need—we feel we can’t get up in the middle of a meeting to stretch or improve blood flow. When ignored in this way, the body naturally finds workarounds. These may take many forms, among them lower concentration or less creative cognition. Without exception, physical discomfort comes with negative energy and performance consequences.
By intentionally recovering our energy every 90 to 120 minutes and working with the body’s ultradian rhythms, employees give themselves the best opportunity to sustain a high level of performance and be at their optimum for most of the day. While some workers may find it difficult to find time to rest while they are on the job, fortunately, intentional recovery can take many forms. The number of options may be more limited in some job roles than in others. Factory workers for example have more limits but they can ritualize posture breaks while on the production line and ensure that when their scheduled break does come, they use it in an intentional way to recover energy. This means moving the major muscles in the body, perhaps by taking a short walk or using the stairs in preference to taking an elevator, avoiding sugary snacks and caffeine in preference for more nutritious food, and where possible, deliberately engaging in activities that separate them from the work and use their brains in different ways, such as social interaction, reading, listening to music.
Office workers may have more varied options for intentional recovery. For instance, they may be able to switch their focus to tasks that are not most critical in favor of something that they really enjoy doing and which is easy to do. Indeed, recovery does not have to be rest. Sometimes, just moving about and picking off a quick task or chatting to a colleague about a different project is enough to break linearity and re-energize. Time spent recovering is a time investment that both fuels and enhances our next performance wave. Research suggests recovery should be practiced repeatedly and for short periods—as opposed to working flat out for four hours and then taking an hour off. The best news of all is that this well-being and performance-enhancing activity requires absolutely no capital investment and is freely available to all workers at all organizations.
If something so highly beneficial to your well-being and performance was free in a store, you’d be queuing up to grab some. Yet despite this, teams don’t dedicate enough focused time to strategic recovery. Intuitively, we know performance degrades over time—and physical signals are sent to help us notice—but at the root of this behavior, is a societal belief that says “just keep on keeping on.” As much as we’d prefer to believe otherwise, personal sustainability is not achievable without regular and intentional recovery.
