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Scientific Facts That Support Taking Breaks at Work
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Maintain Optimal Stress Levels
The optimal stress level for people to reach peak productivity is when they’re under some stress but not overloaded.
If stress levels are entering the red-zone, taking breaks has been found to be an incredible regulator in maintaining, or reducing, stress levels.
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Quit Overthinking and Move On
When you stop fully concentrating on one thing and take a break from the problematic task, your subconscious mind is still working away in the background finding a solution.
Higher levels of stress often correlate with overthinking a particular subject, so if you want to make concrete logical connections without even trying – simply move on and it’ll likely come to you.
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Better Regulate Your Emotions
Human beings are naturally emotional and must stay self-critical in order to feel a full range of emotions to be healthy and productive.
To stay emotionally well, it has been found that pre-emptively taking breaks before they are needed can be an effective method to strike the perfect balance at work.
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Exercise The 'Focus Muscles'
After hours of intense concentration on a particular subject, puzzle or problem, we need to give our “focus muscles” enough time to rest and re-cooperate.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Get an early start on the day
Early hours are important because they tend to be free of most distractions and give you an opportunity to get focused.
An early start will allow you to squeeze in more time...
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
- Balanced blood sugar levels, which helps maintain your energy throughout the day
- Improved short-term memory and mood
- Faster recovery and renewed energy after workouts
Better use of the commute to work
Some of the ways you can be productive during your commute include:
- Catching up on podcasts or listening to business-related audio books
- Hands-free calling to get a head start on critical or time-sensitive issues
- Reading and responding to emails (for those who use public transit)
- Researching and preparing for presentations
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We Need Breaks
Take A Break Every 52 Minutes
After analyzing 5.5 million daily records of how office workers are using their computer (based on what the user self-identified as “productive” work), they found that the top 10% of productive workers all worked an average of 52 minutes before taking a 17 minute break.
Distract Yourself To Recharge Your Focus
Intense focus actually makes us less focused in the long run. Instead of thinking about the problem without stop, we need to create distractions that take our attention away from the task at hand so we can come back at it with a fresh mind.
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Breaks keep us from getting bored
The human brain just wasn’t built for the extended focus we ask of it these days.
The fix for this unfocused condition is simple—all we need is a brief interruption (aka a break) to ge...
Breaks and brain connections
Our brains have two modes:
- focused mode, which we use when we’re doing things like learning something new, writing or working) and
- diffuse mode, which is our more relaxed, daydreamy mode when we’re not thinking so hard.
The mind solves its stickiest problems while daydreaming—something you may have experienced while driving or taking a shower.
Breaks help us reevaluate our goals
When you work on a task continuously, it’s easy to lose focus and get lost in the weeds. In contrast, following a brief intermission, picking up where you left off forces you to take a few seconds to think globally about what you’re ultimately trying to achieve.