Incorporating Rests Into the Rhythm of Work
I have always loved to sing. From the time I was little, I loved to make up my own songs, often switching out lyrics from songs I already knew with my own creative revisions, and in the process driving my siblings crazy with my nonstop belting of many of our favorite childhood songs.
As I got older, I spent a brief year learning the cello, four years playing the clarinet, and the beginning of a lifetime attempting to learn to play the guitar.
Between singing in school and church choirs and practicing a range of musical instruments, reading music became both an important skill and an essential lesson in my life.
At some point in the process of learning to read music, every student learns the importance of rests.
Rests – the pauses between notes – are active, intentional moments of silence designed to create specific patterns, rhythms, and feelings throughout a musical piece, and they are critically important for the musician and the audience alike.
For musicians, rests create natural places to breathe before jumping into the next notes. They also can create breaks between movements or a time to reset finger positions, adjust in your seat, or turn a page. When learning a new piece, musicians scour their sheet music for rests so they can understand how a piece will flow and plan ahead for how they will perform it.
For audiences, rests also create a natural place to breathe and absorb the impact of the music they are experiencing. The silences created by rests – whether brief or elongated – allow the audience to hear the notes on either side more clearly and completely, to feel new feelings, and to contemplate the acoustics and the ambient sounds of the environment they are in.
Rests are also critical for successful strategic planning and implementation.
I want you to take an honest minute with yourself here.
When was the last time you actively reflected on the progress or outcomes of a particular project, initiative, or effort? Was it a standard post-mortem where lots of notes were taken and opinions were shared but nothing actually changed based on the information collected?
How about any of the meetings you were in this week? Did you have any dedicated time to process the decisions that were made and whether they’re aligned with your overarching strategy?
What about your budget? Is it fully maxed out every year without any wiggle room to pivot to a new investment or opportunity?
If you’re so busy working that you’re not taking intentional, active moments to pause, reflect, and renew your effort based on those reflections or redirect to a new path, then you’re increasing the chance that your efforts will be less strategic, less effective, and less successful.
Rests come in many forms, and they’re essential to creating the space we – and our teams and organizations – each need to do our very best work.
Below are a few ways you can explore adopting rests into the work of your organization.
In Strategic Planning
One of the most important places to include rests or reflection time is in your organization’s overarching strategy.
As you go through your planning process, think about what it would look like to narrow your organization’s focus or reduce the number or variety of activities your organization is working on. Remember that strategy is a series of choices – not a collection of activities. Those choices should reflect that it’s not just the “doing” that matters, but the reflecting, advancing, and improving as well. To continue growing your impact, you have to intentionally create room to breathe.
You can also ensure your strategy includes built-in time for listening. Make listening a priority by holding regular discussions and reflections both internally and with the people you serve, with donors, and with volunteers, partners, and other supporters. These conversations and the learnings, data, and reflections shared in them should have the opportunity and power to influence or shift the organization’s strategy as needed.
In Operational Planning & Budgeting
It is so common in the nonprofit world for us to max out our time, energy, and budget in such a way that there is no space to breathe, shift or seize new opportunities. What’s worse, we often do this in a way that leaves out critical functions or approaches that will help us better execute our strategy.
In program work, we can incorporate rests by providing enough time and budget to thoughtfully evaluate program effectiveness and then using that information not just to report to funders but to examine what works best and improve the program’s design.
In development, one place we can build in rests is by setting the expectation that we will build meaningful relationships with donors through deep listening and ongoing conversations – and by providing the time and resources to do this well.
And in budgeting, every leader should leave enough flexibility so that they have the resources to invest in a mid-year opportunity that presents itself – whether investing to scale a program that’s working well, in a new technology or tool that can help the team in a big way, or some other key opportunity or enabler.
In Daily Work
Rests – just like musical notes – take practice. How can you and your team create intentional rests in your daily or weekly schedules that you can sustain over time?
Practices like reducing the default time of meetings by 5-10 minutes, creating a day where internal meetings aren’t allowed, or allowing people to spend the first several minutes of a meeting reviewing the pre-read materials can all support this effort.
So can instituting “stroll breaks” or other opportunities for folks to get outside and into some quiet contemplation time.
Or you can keep a running “What We’ve Learned” collaboration document that you and your team use as a tool to help you step away from “doing” to better reflect and prepare for what should be done next.
There are many ways your team can work together to adopt rests that make sense for you. Designing sustainable rests is a great collaborative opportunity for your team to create a regular rhythm to the organization’s work that centers your strategy and doesn’t leave you feeling so stretched.
Do you already incorporate rests like these into your organization strategy and implementation practices? Share what’s working for you in the comments.