AUSTINTOWN, Ohio – Daylight Saving Time ends Sunday, Nov. 2, when clocks are set back by one hour.
It’s also a day when many people change the batteries in their smoke alarms and do other chores to fill the hour they gained.
But a Mahoning Valley-based author has another proposal for the day.
“Suppose we took a different approach and regarded those precious 60 minutes as a gift – a time when we can take a breath, relax, reenergize and ‘de-load’ ourselves,” said Nancy Christie, award-winning author of “The Gifts of Change” (Atria/Beyond Words) and nine other books. “That’s the premise of Zero-Tasking Day.”
Christie created Zero-Tasking Day in 2005, feeling a need to catch her breath, as she put it, after a particularly difficult series of life events. In talking with others during her book events and speaking engagements, she realized that the need to “do” often outweighed the need to just “be,” with many people left feeling overwhelmed and frustrated.
“For most of us, there are not enough hours in a day or days in a week to do all the things we want or believe we have to do,” she said. “Stress builds as we push harder and harder to fit in more. The more we do, the more we think we should do. And when we find a few extra minutes, we regard them as time to fill, instead of opportunities to take a break and let our bodies and minds heal. Zero-Tasking Day creates a space in our hectic schedules when we can do absolutely nothing. The idea of choosing to do nothing for a set period of time is foreign to many of us – yet essential for our well-being.”
Studies have shown that taking even short breaks gives the prefrontal cortex a chance to take a breather, so to speak, from its executive functioning responsibilities. It can increase levels of creativity and rebuild the levels of attention and motivation that have become depleted over time.
Most importantly, it can also help people cope with stress, of which there has been no shortage, Christie pointed out. “Financial worries, health issues, grief over the loss of loved ones coupled with natural disasters that have impacted so many communities – any and all of these illustrate that the stability of our lives can be destroyed at any moment,” she said.
The fear and anxiety this causes can be overwhelming and lead to physical and psychological damage, said Christie, making it even more important that people find ways to decompress and time to destress if they want to remain productive and healthy.
But this can be difficult since so many people are now handling more obligations, she acknowledges, and may not necessarily have the choice about how much they have to do.
“We all need to make our own health and well-being one of the items on our ‘must do’ list,” she said. “Zero-Tasking Day highlights the value of taking some time to catch our breath, figuratively and literally, which will then allow us to come back to the issues at hand with a fresh perspective and a healthier mindset.”
Christie noted that most people don’t grasp how important it is to have moments of silence that give everyone time to listen to the voice within. Zero-Tasking Day is the perfect day for this since we ‘gain’ an extra hour in a sense,” she said. “This gives us the chance to experience 60 minutes of restful peace. My hope is that people will incorporate a Zero-Tasking Day into each month and some Zero-Tasking time into each day.”
For information about Christie and her books, go to NancyChristie.com.
Christie is also the award-winning author of three Midlife Moxie novels as well as four short story collections and two books for writers.