We all know that moment when we stop everything in our lives for a day at the garage. That day, in professional language these days, is called “preventive maintenance.” Reason says that even the best motor in the world has to stop once in a while for changing the oil, brake pads and filters. This is how it is in nature. What happens if we don’t get to the garage every year for the annual treatment? Nothing happens for five years – at least that’s how it seems – but after five years, the car stalls in the middle of the road on a hot summer day and conks out. We then call a tow truck, cancel all our appointments, get angry at whoever about whatever, and the guy at the garage says that the motor is gone, or the gearbox, and it will take him a few days to fix it. This repair is called “breakdown maintenance.” The problem with this kind of maintenance is that it always takes us by surprise, catches us at the worst time, and its emotional cost is immeasurably high. The financial cost, by the way, will be more or less the same, but there is a difference in the distribution of payments. Will I make a small payment once a year or pay a big wad of bills every five years plus an unknown emotional price?
Like every mechanism in nature, we too need a break. A lunch break, to eat and to disconnect from all the emails, whatsapps and information feeds that overwhelm us at any given moment, is not considered a waste of time. On the contrary, it only means that we had a few very busy hours, and in order to keep going and get through the day, we need to stop for a minute for a bit of servicing and refueling. A one-month vacation in Colombia without a computer and without internet doesn’t mean that we are bums and don’t want to advance in our careers. It only means that in order to continue being as productive and creative as we expect ourselves to be, we must stop everything for a moment and get to the point that we forget the password for the computer at the office.
We often hear people say something like, “I closed my biggest deals at the coffee machine.” It sounds strange, doesn’t it? What did the deals have to do with coffee? Well, our negotiation partners also need a break. Sometimes changing the location or the atmosphere for a timeout in a negotiation, that minute we give ourselves, and mainly our partners, to think again about what was said, the silence that comes after we’ve already said everything, all of these, and more, enable any of us to see things in a slightly different way, more sober and more correct for us.
A break also allows us to relieve stress and not let our overwhelming emotions, whether positive or negative, distort our highly skilled decision-making mechanism. A break can be an excellent thing not only with regard to a decision that may have negative consequences. Even before a favorable decision is made, taking a break is advisable. We call this a buffer. “Let me sleep on it,” is a line we often hear. Why? What could change? The deal already looks great to us, we really want to close it already, and we’ve waited months for this moment, so why not? Well, the answer is simple. It often happens that the enthusiasm we feel when closing a deal blurs part of the picture, and we may miss some important things. The timeout, the night we sleep on it, usually enables us to see things from a different point of view, a more relaxed and correct one for us.
True, sometimes we simply want to get it all over with, because it is very hard for us to live in a place where there is no certainty, but being able to stay in a discomfort zone is already a subject for another article altogether.
So, shall we go out for a coffee break?