The Lunchtime Effect – choosing the positive side of ‘busy’

Busy is such a big word. By big, I mean layered – like a croquembouche cake, with one thing on top of another, on top of another. That’s our lives. We’ve normalised “busy” in a world so desperate to slow down. Somehow October seems to be the most “normal” month of all, where stress indicators fly off the charts as we rush around the clock in a frazzled fiasco to December.

Between school obligations, work pressure, planning Christmas (yes, you know it!) and the on and on and on of daily admin, we find ourselves letting things slide at this time of year; bingeing on our own adrenaline, picking at any strands of energy we may have left. We scramble for more time, more sleep, more energy, more joy, more peace, more hope. It never comes.

With the world’s depression statistics on the rise, and our matriculants suffering the knock-on effects of anxiety, we’re becoming increasingly endangered by our own ecosystem of “busy”. Mental exhaustion is a real thing for all of us — and if encountered for long enough, it becomes a debilitating part of our lives. We think we are functioning at optimum, but we are not. It’s like switching on the oven for an hour and forgetting to put in the chicken. “Busy” yields the same result — an overheated roast of delicious nothingness.

October is World Mental Health Month, and it’s a time I take quite seriously. It’s a chance for us to become acutely more aware of our mental game in our work and home environments; to push the pause button for a bit and take stock of our consumption habits, and our energy inventory. For most of us on the busy bullet train, we run out of steam before we’ve made it to lunchtime. And lunchtime, in my book, is non-negotiable.

To fully appreciate this idea of “lunchtime”, one must first understand that lunchtime is a time for lunch. Not working, not texting, not catching up. Actual lunch. And usually, it lasts for an hour. A ritual that was shaped by the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century – which, in context, was a super-stressful period. Labour laws back then already recognised the importance of “taking the lunch break”. Today, we praise busyness as a multitasking gap of eating on the run, snacking at the computer, munching in our cars, or watching our kid’s soccer game with one eye on our laptops, the other on the field and on WhatsApp — all while unconsciously consuming a takeaway salad dangling from our forks. By every stretch of the imagination, this is not what the Industrial Revolution had in mind – and neither should we.

I call it “The Lunchtime Effect”: it’s my spin on lunchtime, with long-term effects. Depending on how you take your lunchtime each day will render the effect either negative or positive – for the long haul. The negative side of lunchtime is when we use this space for “catching up”: making that obligatory call, checking a few emails, doing groceries, planning the school week, working through lunch (the worst!). All that thinking kind of stuff. Basically, this is just a series of gap fillers that becomes a toxic admin hole, rather than a pause for purpose.

The positive side of lunchtime is a method of “Lunchtime Mindfulness” – a method I have been using for years, to combat my own stress indicators. Lunch, for me, doesn’t have to be just about the food we eat, it can include one of anything that constitutes a mindful pause in the busy day — one dish, one garden or one really good daytime series. Whether you’re tucking into a wholesome dish during lunch, or weeding the garden or tuning into your favourite soap opera for an hour, start to pay attention to it. Be aware of it. Be present for it. That’s the winning strategy. Mindfulness doesn’t have to be dramatic or difficult — it just needs to be deliberate, and it needs to show up for lunch.

Improving your wellness is about choosing the positive side of “busy” and re-establishing a conscious connection with your lunchtime: with your food, your day and yourself — and then deliberately making a healthy habit of it. Mental wellness starts with setting the intention for your lunch break — keeping things easy while expanding your capacity for self-care without any guilt.

Joshua Bekker of Simplify Magazine said: “To live intentionally, we must first recognise that our life has value and is worthy of being lived well.” There is no greater truth to this. When we appreciate that our minds and bodies are ours to love and to lunch with, we start to believe we’re worthy of the lunch break. By extension, we make space for rituals that are ours to keep — and at the very best, ours to sustain through our busiest periods.

Lunchtime Cooking

Mindfulness in the kitchen can start with your preparation of a simple, fresh lunchtime salad: focusing your attention on washing the tomatoes, slicing the fresh cucumber, crumbling the feta, then sitting down in a quiet space and eating it, one conscious bite at a time. This is a mindful practice that requires no special technique or added pressure — just slower movements with intended outcomes, done and dusted in one hour. My All Sorts of One-Dish Wonders were pretty much built on this exact concept — cooking with more mind and less fuss. It works.

Lunchtime with Nature

Mindful lunching can include gardening, too. I believe in getting out into nature, feeling the grass under your feet. Taking your lunch under a tree, or watering your plants is a wonderful way of reconnecting you to the little things that matter. And if you can’t get into a garden, go for a walk around the neighbourhood instead. Magic!

Lunchtime Series

As for my daytime series ritual, this works for me too. Switching off my busy mind and jumping into a rerun of CSI gets me out of my head and into a “no-mind” setting. Turning off the world outside and diving into an hour of clue-crunching is a form of escapism that needs no extra thinking — which is a welcome relief from the to-do list.

Mapping out your Lunchtime Effect helps us return to a still point that transcends the idea of eating to survive the day — to rather getting us to thrive through the day. The truth remains, we all have the same 24 hours in the day, it’s up to us to break the cycle of chaos and choose betterment instead.

No matter the lunchtime ritual, it deserves its place in your attention span. You’d be surprised at the mental and emotional effects that consistent (or inconsistent) lunchtime rituals can have on your mood and digestive system, and ultimately your long-awaited December holiday. Whatever lunchtime represents for you — take it. Take it with love and choose its desired effect. My advice: choose mindfully, make it deliberate, make it mean something — then, do it regularly. 

Chantal’s ​​Sesame-dressed Black Bean and Lentil Salad

Chantal’s Sesame-dressed Black Bean and Lentil Salad. (Photo: Jade Mulvaney)