Research on naps, meditation, nature walks and the habits of exceptional artists and athletes reveals how mental breaks increase productivity, replenish attention, solidify memories and encourage creativity.

Naps, Meditation and Nature Walks

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Research on naps, meditation, nature walks and the habits of exceptional artists and athletes reveals how mental breaks increase productivity, replenish attention, solidify memories and encourage creativity

<ul><li><div>By <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/ferris-jabr/">Ferris Jabr </a>  on October 15, 2013 </div> </li> </ul>

Every now and then during the workweek—usually around three in the afternoon—a familiar ache begins to saturate my forehead and pool in my temples. The glare of my computer screen appears to suddenly intensify. My eyes trace the contour of the same sentence two or three times, yet I fail to extract its meaning. Even if I began the day undaunted, getting through my ever growing list of stories to write and edit, e-mails to send and respond to, and documents to read now seems as futile as scaling a mountain that continuously thrusts new stone skyward. There is so much more to do—so much work I genuinely enjoy—but my brain is telling me to stop. It's full. It needs some downtime.

Freelance writer and meditation teacher<a href="http://deconstructingyourself.com/about/michael-w-taft">Michael Taft </a>has experienced <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-taft/downtime-for-the-stone-ag_b_889446.html">his own version </a>of cerebral congestion. “In a normal working day in modern America, there’s a sense of so much coming at you at once, so much to process that you just can’t deal with it all,” Taft says. In 2011, while finalizing plans to move from Los Angeles to San Francisco, he decided to take an especially long recess from work and the usual frenzy of life. After selling his home and packing all his belongings in storage, he traveled to the small rural community of Barre, Mass., about 100 kilometers west of Boston, where every year people congregate for a three-month-long “meditation marathon.”

"When people in the military have a gym they will work out in the gym. When they are on the side of a mountain they will make do with what they have and do push-ups to stay in shape,” Jha says. “Mindfulness training may offer something similar for the mind. It's low-tech and easy to implement." In her own life, Jha looks for any and all existing opportunities to practice mindfulness, such as her 15-minute trip to and from work each day. Likewise, Michael Taft advocates deliberate mental breaks during "all the in-between moments" in an average day—a subway ride, lunch, a walk to the bodega. He stresses, though, that there's a big difference between admiring the idea of more downtime and committing to it in practice. "Getting out into nature on the weekends, meditating, putting away our computers now and then—a lot of it is stuff we already know we should probably do," he says. "But we have to be a lot more diligent about it. Because it really does matter."

Editor's Note: This article originally stated that researchers sometimes implant electrodes in the brains of epilepsy patients undergoing surgery. In fact, doctors implant these electrodes as part of the surgery and researchers record from them. The text has been edited to reflect this distinction.

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Naps, Meditation and Nature Walks

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