Best Results Organizing

If I asked what the single best thing you could do to improve your productivity was, what would you say? Would it be doing a brain dump of your tasks? Prioritizing what you need to do? Making a list? Avoiding multi-tasking? Eliminating interruptions?

What would you think if I told you that the best way to get the most out of everything you are doing is to stop doing it for a little while?

I know, it may sound counterintuitive, but taking a break instead of spending your day trying to power through is exactly what’s needed for your body, your brain, and your spirit, not to mention the actual work.

It may sound counterintuitive, but taking a break instead of spending your day trying to power through is exactly what's needed for your body, your brain, and your spirit, not to mention the actual work. Share on X

Let us not forget the trouble Alexander Hamilton found himself in when he failed to take a break. First, Eliza begged him to step away from his efforts to create a national banking system and pay attention to his son’s performance. (It’s a pity Lin-Manuel Miranda didn’t insert a verse from Cat’s In the Cradle!) Then his wife and sister-in-law begged him to “take a break,” and join them at their father’s place in upstate New York instead of struggling on in New York City.

(And, as fans of history and/or the musical Hamilton know, the failure to take a break from single-mindedly focusing on defeating Jefferson, et. al., and controlling the American economic future led, at least in part, to Hamilton making a poor personal decision (regarding Maria Reynolds), which led to others thinking he’d made a poor ethical and professional decision, which led to Hamilton blowing up his personal and professional lives. The whole second act is a testimonial for the vital importance of taking a break!)

But we don’t have to interpret musicals to know that taking breaks from our work or studying is essential for happy, productive lives. In “Give me a break!” A systematic review and meta-analysis on the efficacy of micro-breaks for increasing well-being and performance, researchers analyzed the results of 22 independent studies on the efficacy of work breaks for “enhancing well-being (vigor and fatigue) and performance.” They found that breaks were essential for replenishing mental and physical energy after work-related depletion, and that the more depleting a task is, the longer a duration of break is needed.  

And if neither musical arts nor academic research is enough to convince you, how about the effect, not only on workers, but on work? Eight years ago, an NPR piece, We’re Not Taking Enough Lunch Breaks. Why That’s Bad For Business, noted that only one in five people were stepping out of the office at lunchtime. The point wasn’t eating at work, but not stepping away from work. As we’ll see, that undermines our bodies, our minds, and the quality of the work we perform.

WHAT COUNTS AS A BREAK?

A break can be of varying durations for varying activities. How long does a break need to be to have a positive effect? That depends on the work you’re doing, how much energy it depletes, and the kind of break you’re taking.

How to Take Better Breaks at Work, According to Research from the Harvard Business Review, notes that shorter breaks can be effective but that the timing of breaks is also vital. For example, because fatigue intensifies as the day goes on, short (or at least shorter) breaks are more effective in the morning, but by late afternoon, longer breaks are necessary to yield positive results. 

So, what length breaks should we consider? 

20–20–20 Rule

This rule simply instructs that every twenty minutes of screen time, look away from the screen and focus on something at least twenty feet away for at least twenty seconds.

The 20–20–20 Rule is designed to prevent computer vision syndrome, particularly digitally-induced eye strain. Taking a break like this can also help reduce blurred vision, headaches, dry eyes, and neck and shoulder pain.

Eye Chart Photo by David Travis on Unsplash

Regular screen breaks of just one-third of a minute will give your baby blues (or browns or greens) much-needed rest, but maybe more. When something (like a phone alarm or alert on your screen telling you, “Look away! Look away!”) prompts you to take this momentary break for your vision, you’re likely to adjust more than your eyesight.

When you’ve been in flow, focused intently on what you’re reading on the screen, you’ve probably failed to pay attention to your posture (so you maybe slumped forward toward your screen) and your breathing. This super-quick break shakes everything loose.

Short Breaks 

A short break would be anything that takes less than 5 or ten minutes. Consider the break you might take when doing a series of Pomodoros, where you work for 25 minutes, then step away from the task at hand — and step away from your desk — to stretch, spend a few minutes on a puzzle, or play with your puppy.

Moderate Breaks

These are the kind we’ll be looking at in great detail over this post and the next one. There’s quite a bit of cross-over between the breaks that primarily help reset the body vs. the brain, but in broad strokes, these categories might include:

Breaks primarily for the body

• Meal and snack breaks — Working through lunch is so bad for your physical and mental health that France outlawed eating at your desk all the way back in 1894! It’s called la pause déjeuner, and granted, it was for hygienic reasons, but now it’s recognized as good mental hygiene to step away to eat lunch mid-day and onboard some healthy(ish) snacks to energize the body, concentration, and focus. 
• Nap breaks — Sure, not everyone is physically (or socially) able to take a power nap, but these mini-sleepytimes can pump up our energy and improve our ability to concentrate. In the US, this is more likely to be your jam if you work from home, unless your company has invested in nap pods, but there are many cultures where a nap break is considered part of the work day.
• Walk breaks — Personally, nothing allows me to refresh my brain as well as getting my 10,000+ steps. While the prescription for 10K steps was made up by a Japanese pedometer company (and your personal peak number of steps depends on age and health), there’s something magical about pounding the pavement (or the lawn or the forest). Each successive step seems to clear mental fog; if I take a walk break when I’m facing a work problem (like how to tackle a blog post), the solution comes to me by the time my walk break is over.
• Dance breaks — Pump up the jam! The advent of personal surround-sound means you can listen to music without Lloyd Dobbler standing outside your bedroom, hoisting a boom box playing “In Your Eyes” over his head. If you work alone, blast your tunes; otherwise, put on those Beats or Airpods, and play on your favorite song to make your own music video.

Find a conference room or classroom where nobody’s likely to disturb you, or head out behind the building, and shake your groove thang! Consider these suggestions for finding your go-do dance-along video:

• • 12 music videos with the most iconic dancing sequences
  • 25 of the Best Dance Videos of the Last Decade
  • Top 20 Choreographed Music Videos Of All Time

Breaks primarily for the brain

• Meditation and mindfulness breaks — An entire industry has popped up for helping people take breaks to be mindful and/or meditate. Some popular free apps include: 
  • Insight Timer
  • UCLA Mindful 
  • Healthy Minds Program 
  • Smiling Mind 
  • Mindfulness Coach (developed by the US Department of Veteran’s Affairs to help combat PTSD)

Additionally, there are a variety of guided meditations on YouTube. For example:

Whether you aim for more formal guided meditations or gentle mindfulness activities like deep breathing, you’ll find that this kind of break can reduce your stress when you feel like you’re constantly tumbling <bleep>-over-teakettle.

• Nature breaks — I’m probably the last person to think about communing with nature. I hate wind and rain and bugs and heat and the sound of frogs and crickets. I am generally an in-of-doors girl. But the Japanese practice of “forest bathing” (Shinrin-yoku) has been found to reduce blood pressure, alleviate depression, improve mental health, boost immune function, and more. Beyond that, getting away from your computer and focusing your eyeballs (and the rest of your sensory receptors) on something other than work will recharge the body and the brain, making the return to work more inviting.

And even I can find ways to enjoy nature! This past weekend, my friend and colleague Sara Skillen and I drove from our respective cities to meet at Sewanee — University of the South for lunch and a bit of a meander.

I love exploring college campus architecture, and we were both excited to walk the labyrinth in Abbo’s Alley, acres of campus with forest/woods, streams, stone bridges, a butterfly garden, gazebo, and other goodies. 

We spent over an hour in search of the labyrinth (not even shown in the calming video, above), ambling (and occasionally tripping) over tree roots and wobbly rocks. However, the combination of Sara’s stellar company, perfect temperatures, and the lack of bugs made our jaunt an ideal break from the typical workweek.

The intriguing thing is that taking a break to “touch grass” works even if you’re not walking or otherwise moving around enough to pump your blood; just sitting outside, even if your “outside” isn’t at all what most people would think of as “nature,” can still have a calming effect. 

• Creativity breaks — Even if your workday involves creating, a creativity break can blow that layer of dust off of your mental capacity. You can’t usually step away from work to spend half a day creating, but you can blend your lunch break with some time for painting, drawing, playing a musical instrument, or journaling (by hand, if possible).
• Appreciation breaks — Not every break requires producing something. Sometimes, when your brain is full of one thing, the solution is to fill it with something else, particularly something serene or delightful. Consider taking your lunch break at a nearby museum or art gallery, or just watch tiny humans playing in the park. Appreciate the elegance of ducks swimming on a pond or enjoy the colors and sounds of an open air market.
• Social breaks — While reading social media has downsides, being social does not. I’m an extrovert, and there’s nothing that pumps me up more than taking a break to socialize. Of course, if you’re an introvert, you may not want to wade into loud, involved conversations with colleagues (or, heaven-forbid, strangers), because it may drain you of the mental energy you’re aiming to refresh. 

Whatever kind of break you take from daily work, select types of activities that will use different aspects of your brain than you were using to write reports, design web sites, study economics, etc. This allows the “part” of the brain that was overworked to rest and re-set. 

Full-Length Breaks: Vacations

I could (and probably should) write a post about the mental, physical, and productivity benefits for taking a long break, whether that’s a real weekend without looking at email or a two-week immersive vacation. Of course, not everyone gets paid vacation, but vacation-length breaks are essential to our health and vigor, which in turn, keep us productive, whether that means making the widgets to building society by raising a family (or, as is often the case, both).

THE BENEFITS OF TAKING A BREAK

When we take breaks throughout the workday, we reap the benefits of better overall physical and mental health, enhanced cognitive function, and improved job performance, all of which will improve our productivity. Let’s look at some of the key advantages of incorporating regular breaks in your work routine.

Enhanced Physical Health

When we incorporate any breaks in our day that involve physical activity or movement, whether it’s stretching, walking, or exercise, it contributes to improved physical health. We improve the blood circulation throughout our bodies (including to our brains!) while reducing the muscle tension that leads to headaches, body strain, and repetitive stress disorders like carpal tunnel syndrome.

We also prevent the various negative health effects of prolonged sedentary behavior. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “Sitting is the new smoking.” As I explained in Paper Doll on The Truth(s) About Standing Desks, it’s not that standing desks are that much better. Sitting is bad because when you sit all day, your telomeres (the tiny caps on the ends of DNA strands) get shorter, and the rate at which the body ages and decays speeds up. However, standing all day (like at a standing desk) isn’t necessary all that much better. What is important is movement, and you generally have to take a break from work to get moving! 

Walking Photo by Arek Adeoye on Unsplash

Stress Reduction

Varying reports note that workplace-related stress affects up to 80% of American workers. That’s estimated to cost anywhere from $150 billion to $300 billion. That economy-busting stress isn’t going to disappear if we add a few extra breaks each day for mental clarity, but we can turn this around on a personal level.

Breaks in our workday give us the opportunity to reduce stress levels and alleviate the pressure of constantly being focused on work (and the related external expectations place on us). When we engage in any kind of activity that promotes relaxation, we can lower blood pressure (which is good for both the body and the psyche), improve mood, and enhance a sense of well-being. 

When we think about stress-reduction activities, we often focus on time-intensive tasks, like a yoga class or long hike, but short-term activities like mindfulness exercises, deep breathing, and brief walks (around the building or around the block) can have similar mental health benefits for reducing stress.

Take a Break Photo by Tara Winstead 

Increased Energy and Motivation

When we take breaks throughout the workday, the physical and mental health benefits described above will have a domino effect, knocking down (and out) other problems.

When we take stop what we’re working on to eat, nap, socialize, exercise, or just remove ourselves from hyper-focus on our work, we replenish our energy, both our physical capacity (with improved blood pressure and balanced blood glucose levels) but also our mental capacity.

Conversely, if we don’t take breaks, we’re more likely to suffer from burnout. A 2022 study from Aflac found that 59% of workers were experiencing burnout, and 86% of those reported experiencing anxiety, depression, and sleep difficulties in the prior year, so this is not a negligible concern.

Setting aside time for physical movement, relaxation, and self-care boosts our sense of well-being, which tops off our enthusiasm, and in turn, that improved motivation boosts our ability to perform and sustain our productivity. Whoohoo!

Improved Focus, Memory, Concentration

Contrary to our assumptions that we should always power through our work, our brains need novelty. Researchers at the University of Illinois found that the longer we focus on something, the more likely the occurrence of a “vigilance decrement,” where our “attentional resources” start to plummet. It’s like how we are aware of how cold the ocean is when we jump in, but the longer we’re exposed, the more we get used to it. Or, to use a clichéd metaphor, we’re the frog in the boiling water. 

Our brains respond to change, and the longer we go without change, the less efficient they are. Breaks don’t just rev us up; they help prevent the mental fatigue that sets in when we’ve tried to work too hard or too long. When we get lost in those mid-afternoon cobwebs, a break can enhance concentration, allowing the brain to rest and recharge.

Periods of mental rest, whether through mindfulness, activity, or sleep have the power to help us consolidate our memories and improve learning. And this is all as true for kids as for adults!

Short break periods jazz our bodies. We might imagine that a vigorous walk or dancing around to Taylor Swift would pump too much blood to our brains, making it hard to focus, but the opposite is true. Relaxation, whether it’s arrived at through calming activities like meditation or energizing ones like physical activity, will boost cognitive resources. In turn, it enables people to improve and maintain attention, allowing more effective and efficient focus on the work at hand!

Prevention of Decision Fatigue

Decision fatigue occurs when we are faced with too many overwhelming choices without adequate rest, whether for our bodies or our brains. However, breaks can play a crucial role in preventing decision fatigue; just a short pause for the right kind of physical or mental stimulation and/or relaxation can reset cognitive resources.

When we have decision fatigue, we may make poor choices, or procrastinate on making any choices at all. Breaks can give us the resilience to make better decisions and maintain a higher level of productivity, using those decisions to move our projects forward.

Enhanced Creativity and Problem-Solving

We all know what it feels like when our brains get stale. We cease coming up with fresh takes (or even fresh words), which turns into a vicious cycle. If we’re not feeling creative and can’t solve our problems, we’re going to feel bored, unenthusiastic, and stressed out!

Taking breaks fosters divergent thinking and spikes creativity, so we can approach tasks from fresh perspectives. Just stepping away from work for a short time — and focusing on the right energy-boosting replacement tasks — can stimulate more innovative ideas and solutions, improving our problem-solving skills and pumping up our creative mojo.

Per the NPR piece I quoted earlier, Kimberly Elsbach (a Professor Emerita Fellow, Academy of Management University at the California Davis Graduate School of Management), an expert in workplace psychology, noted that never leaving your office or your desk is “…really detrimental to creative thinking. It’s also detrimental to doing that rumination that’s needed for ideas to percolate and gestate and allow a person to arrive at an ‘aha’ moment.” Aha, indeed!

It’s essential to recognize the positive impact of breaks on physical, mental, and emotional well-being so that we can remember to prioritize these pauses and integrate them into our daily work routines. This is key to us fostering balanced, productive approaches to taking on our responsibilities.

Not all breaks are created equal

Pausing work to scroll through social media won’t have the same benefits as the kinds of breaks discussed earlier in this post. First, everything from the death-grip on our phones to the poor posture of arching necks over screens to the blue light of cell phones is bad for physical health; plus, you’re likely to remain just as stationary as when you were working! Beyond that, social media rarely reflects the kind of psychologically neutral or uplifting content that boosts mood or cognition.

Similarly, smoke breaks aren’t good breaks. While they may yield some social benefit, data on smoking’s physical devastation on the body and brain is clear. Moreover, research finds that smokers have thinner cerebral cortex than non-smokers. (The cerebral cortex is essential for learning and memory, so thicker tissue is better.) Smoking reduces the ability to learn and remember, key requirements for productivity!

TAKE A READING BREAK

For further reading on the importance of breaks for health and productivity, you may wish to read:

Breaks During the Workday (Michigan State University)

Give Us a Break (Compass Group)

How to Take Better Breaks at Work, According to Research (Harvard Business Review)

BETTER BREAKS AROUND THE WORLD

In full disclosure, this post started out as a look at how other cultures embrace taking breaks as part of coping with excessive workloads. Instead, this is the prequel, a what-and-why for improving your vitality and productivity with breaks. Next week’s follow-up post, Take a Break for Productivity: the International Perspective is where the real fun will be, as we look at fun and tasty examples of “take a break” culture around the world. 

Spoilers: the Swedes take the cake (figuratively and literally) and first place when it comes to taking breaks!