Unfortunately you can’t day dream all the time. But now and again seems to help creativity. I think this goes hand in hand with Stephen Covey’s principle of sharpening the saw.

Too often I find myself ultra focused and get bogged down in the mire. I read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about it today Go ahead interrupt me

There are those, and often find myself in the camp. That believe long hours of trudging along.  Will lead to success, much like the fabled tortoise, of the “Tortoise and the Hare.”  But the kid in me want to be the hare and kit back on the grass and see what I visual in the clouds floating by.

I think too often companies don’t think daydreaming or relaxing is productive and try and find way to make people work.  As an aside I believe much of the school system works this way also.  Both companies and schools believe being active and busy = productivity.

I was working in an office once were there were breaks forced because we received work in drops.  So when the work was finished everyone would sit around and wait.  The company didn’t care much they were sitting around because they were paid by what they produced.

The problem for me as a manager sometime people would complain that they had to wait without getting paid.  I had installed a few games on some of the computers for when I would bring my 6 year old son to work with me on Saturdays.  Some of the employees found these games and started playing during the breaks.   As a result they stopped asking for extra money.

Some of the other office managers around the country were noticing I was paying less for break time.  They asked why and I told them to install games and see what happened.  We all discovered that sometimes the employees would work faster to get done faster to be able to play the games.  And if they were playing the games they didn’t request to get paid for the game time.  Most of these worker still averaged over $15 an hour, about double the going rate for work of that kind in the area.

If we can all figure out how to implement this in our offices people will be happier

I’d like to know if that is possible for you?