{"id":35471,"date":"2017-02-13T04:45:26","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T10:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelhyatt.com\/?p=35471"},"modified":"2017-02-13T04:45:26","modified_gmt":"2017-02-13T10:45:26","slug":"dont-skip-lunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fullfocus.co\/dont-skip-lunch\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Skipping Lunch Is Bad for You and Worse for Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

Did you skip lunch last week\u2014either by gobbling down something at your desk or forgoing food altogether? The odds are good that you did.<\/p>\n\n

A 2012 workplace survey by Right Management<\/a> found just one in five employees take actual lunch breaks. That\u2019s a problem because both the lunch and the break are good for you.<\/p>\n\n

Skipping lunch is bad for your mind, bad for your body, and bad for your workplace productivity.<\/p>\n

Can\u2019t Leave Their Desks<\/h3>\n

The good news is that most workers do eat something in the middle of the day. According to the Right Management survey, in addition to the one fifth of North Americans who take a lunch break, another two-fifths eat some food at their desks.<\/p>\n

The bad news is that almost 40 percent of workers and managers eat some kind of lunch \u201conly from time to time\u201d or \u201cseldom, if ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Haid, a vice president for the management firm, called this \u201cyet another warning sign of the relentless stress experienced by workers.\u201d<\/p>\n

If we\u2019re being honest, it\u2019s worse than that.<\/p>\n

The decline of the lunch hour is a sign of poor leadership. Organizational policies and team culture pressure workers and leaders alike to embrace busywork and distraction\u2014and hurt their own long-term productivity in the process.<\/p>\n

The Lunch Hour Dividend<\/h3>\n

A lunch hour is good because we need food if we are going to be energetic and sharp. Plus, we need a change of scenery if we are going to be creative. We might treat it like an interruption standing in our way, but there are at least two key reasons lunch is critical for peak performance throughout the day:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Energy.<\/strong> We need fuel in the tank. Otherwise, our bodies and brains will punish us with distractions. Not only will we experience hunger pangs and thoughts of food, but we\u2019ll also experience drowsiness, fuzziness, and fatigue.\n

    So it\u2019s good to make sure that we eat something healthy in the middle of the day. It\u2019s also beneficial if we get away to do that, which takes me to the second reason.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  2. Creativity.<\/strong> Taking lunch to your desk might seem like a good idea, but it\u2019s actually detrimental. \u201cCreativity and innovation happen when people change their environment, and especially when they expose themselves to nature-like environments,\u201d Kimberly Elsbach, an expert in workplace psychology at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, told NPR in an interview<\/a>.\n

    She argues that \u201cstaying inside, in the same location, is really detrimental to the creative process. It\u2019s also detrimental to doing the rumination that\u2019s needed for ideas to percolate and gestate and allow a person to arrive at an \u2018aha!\u2019 moment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Miss this and you\u2019re missing out on what I call the Lunch Hour Dividend. You\u2019re sacrificing breakthrough moments that could take your organizations to the next level for the unbroken monotony of calls and meetings and emails. That\u2019s a bad trade.<\/p>\n

    Lunch by Example<\/h3>\n

    Leaders have to be intentional about turning this around. Let it be known that you want people to take their lunch breaks and set the example. Your team will eventually follow.<\/p>\n\t\t