A friend of mine manages the training department of a Midwestern insurance agency. Recently, he made a rather unusual request of his staff. He asked them to turn away from their computers and look out the window for at least ten minutes a day and think about anything but their work.

He’s a wise boss. We can get so bogged down in what we do during our working hours that we start spinning our mental wheels, spending more time on tasks than we’d need to – and not doing them as well as we might – because our brains are simply overtaxed and over-focused.

I’m guilty of that sometimes. My wife Arlene, who is a landscape designer here in southern California, knows this. So sometimes she drags me away from my office to see her more natural, more colorful world.