Why quiet time is important

One quick and straightforward way to reduce stress is to carve out minutes regularly to sit quietly, meditate, listen to music, go for a peaceful walk, take a brief nap. If you have longer, perhaps on your lunch break, you can extend your quiet time.

A bonus is that you return to the task at hand at work, home or school energized and more focused. Healing takes time and the body needs complete rest to jumpstart this process. Emotional wounds from anxiety and depression similarly benefit from quiet time.

In a fast-pace world, stepping off the treadmill — as is necessary when sick or recuperating from serious illness — and allowing the quiet to envelope you are basic components in the overall healing process. Plus, a…. A meditation pillow is a firm yet comfortable cushion designed to help you sit comfortably for meditation.

Here are the top 12 meditation cushions of…. Mindful breathing is about taking time to slow down and bring a sense of awareness to your breath. Learn more about mindful breathing benefits and…. Do you think you're too busy for a mindfulness practice? Image Credit : weheartit. A study conducted by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, revealed that a typical office worker only gets an average of 11 minutes between each interruption, while it takes roughly 25 minutes to return to the original task after an unscheduled disruption.

These estimations give a good idea of how uncontrolled interactions experienced in open offices reduce productivity. A noisy work environment can also indirectly affect employees' performance by harming their health. Constant exposure to noise has been associated with high levels of cortisol, the body's main stress hormone. Just like bright light, noise is a signal to the body that there is something going on that it needs to be alert for. This type of stress triggers cortisol production, which raises blood pressure and blood sugar.

These changes help people survive short periods of stress, but can cause serious damage if they are constantly triggered by daily-life stressors like constant noise. Chronically high cortisol levels have been associated with hypertension, heart disease, insulin resistance, obesity and type 2 diabetes. A Cornell University study on office noise revealed that people working in loud environments can be less likely to ergonomically adjust their work stations for comfort, which can contribute to physical problems.

Exposure to constant tumult can also impact sleep quality by disrupting circadian rhythm. A poor health can obviously be detrimental to an employee's performance, and it is possible to think that many people are not at their best in buzzing, noisy workplaces. Some people dislike a silent environment, equating it with being isolated and lonely.

Many claim to be more productive when working with music or background noise. Having the chance to interact with colleagues when needed is also a great source of motivation for some employees.

Image Credit: Giphy. While ceaseless noise can harm work performance, absolute silence throughout the day may seem a little intimidating. Establishing a balance between complete silence and constant cacophony may possibly be the key to a harmonious work life. According to him, open-plan offices come with an implicit culture that can harm work quality. While Campbell values collaboration as a vital tool for effectiveness, he thinks that employees' ability to focus on their respective tasks should be considered as equally important.

In order to create a balance between isolation and loud chaos, his team agreed to divide each day in half, and to spend the first part in silence. During this quiet period, employees cannot talk to each other, answer phone calls or emails and attend meetings. In the afternoon, they get together as a team to share ideas and reflect on what has been done.

Campbell describes this schedule as a contract, a few hours a week where team members agree to work even if they do not feel like it. He noticed that since the introduction of quiet moments, staff members are less stressed and tend to produce better work. Because there are much less sources of distraction, employees have stopped avoiding the office when they have an important task to focus on. Silence first appeared in scientific research as a baseline, or control, against which scientists compare the effects of noise.

Researchers have often studied it by accident. In a study on the effects on sound, physician Luciano Bernardi investigated the efficacy of music in modulating stress. He used silence as a control between different music clips.

Bernardi thinks this soothing effect of silence is heightened by the contrast with noise. It can therefore be assumed that short periods of silence contrasted against other sounds can help people deal with stress. The reasons for moms and dads to make sure children get daily quiet time is easy to see: parents can have a few minutes to themselves to finally curl up with a good book or just catch up with streaming favorite shows.

Of course, you may feel even more guilty if your child is resistant to quiet time. But after you take a look at all the reasons why quiet time is important for children and even teens , it becomes clear that establishing the right routine for quiet time at home is a WIN-WIN. When it comes to the research-backed benefits of quiet time and solitude, the results are fairly clear.

As long as children are not consistently alone as in, going without proper care or attention or lonely as in, lacking proper social relationships , quiet time has benefits across the child development stages:. And not only does research point to broad benefits of being alone, but more studies point to the increasing need to gain these benefits. Does anything stand out to you in the quote I cited above? Notice that the age range is 6 to It is surprising that six-year-olds would even fall into the range of kids studied by the researchers.

It's even more concerning to consider that this group of youngsters is experiencing an increasing amount of anxiety. So the benefits of quiet time are clear, and the need for quiet time is growing - but what about the challenges of actually spending time alone?

Consider this recent study, which showed that people would prefer to receive an electrical shock than to be alone with our thoughts. Part of this, is the constant connection experienced in daily life because of increased smartphone usage. And, ideally, they could sustain that habit throughout childhood and even into adolescence. Quiet time is more than just a good suggestion for Christians, looking through scripture we can see the emphasis put on time spent with God and the fruits that come of this discipline.

When we spend intentional time with God we will be able to see the benefits because God will be drawing nearer to us in the process. By guarding it according to your word. One of the best examples we have in life is Jesus.

He lived on earth and suffered what we suffer through. While going around preaching during his three years of ministry there were many times when Jesus would go on his own and spend time in prayer.

While Jesus spent time with others and ministering to others, he still set a time to be alone with God. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. The repetition of his prayer time alone indicates the importance of quiet time both in his life and in ours today.

We can also observe from these two passages that he was alone both times and at specific times of the day. In Matthew , he went in the evening after be ministering to a crowd, and in Mark , he rose before there was even light outside to talk to his Father.

Even when Jesus was ministering to others he had intentional time set aside to be with his father. There are a lot of disciplines needed for prayer time alone. Remember the purpose is to deepen your relationship with God, not to check quiet time off your to do list for the day. Having time alone with God will strengthen our relationship with Him.