Rules of lunch, or Why to take a break

A few years ago I had a client who was a senior member of a large real estate development firm. During one lunchtime conversation he looked back over a career that spanned 40 years and talked about a few of the things he had accomplished of which he was proud. One of them, curiously, was his “lunch policy”. He has lunch almost every day in the office with colleagues of all levels. At lunch he has two rules. First, if you are busy with something or have other plans you take care of lunch yourself and don’t disrupt the lunch of others. Second, at the lunch table no discussion of work is allowed.

In the past, when I worked at a traditional management consulting firm I found that to many colleagues, lunch was just a time of day when you happened to eat while working. The idea of leaving the office to eat somewhere else while not working was foreign and the perception of having done so was to be avoided. I could never understand why people could think that being seen working through lunch would make them more effective or raise their perceived value to the firm. Eventually I came to eat lunch with the colleagues who felt the same way I did or with clients who never even heard of the issue.

I never could figure out what kept the others so busy. In fact, I came to believe that they were always working because they were less efficient due to the fact that they were, you guessed it, always working.

My recommendation is to take a break, go out, walk around, refresh your mind and be more productive.