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How Do Work Breaks Help Your Brain? 5 Surprising Answers
Good Breaks
A “good break” will give that goal-oriented Prefrontal Cortex of yours a good rest by switching brain activity to another area.
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Why You Should Take Breaks
- “Movement breaks” are essential for your physical and emotional health. A 5-minute walkabout break every hour can improve your health and well-being.
- Breaks can prevent “decision fatigue. Decision fatigue can lead to simplistic decision-making and procrastination.
- Breaks restore motivation, especially for long-term goals. "Deactivating and reactivating your goals allows you to stay focused."
- Breaks increase productivity and creativity. It refreshes the mind, replenishes your mental resources, and helps you become more creative.
- “Waking rest” helps consolidate memories and improve learning. During a rest period, it appears that the brain reviews and ingrains what it previously learned.
When Not to Take a Break
When you are in a state of “flow” it is not good to take a break.
“Flow” is characterized by complete absorption in the task, seemingly effortless concentration, and pleasure in the task itself.
Good Breaks
A “good break” will give that goal-oriented Prefrontal Cortex of yours a good rest by switching brain activity to another area.
Refresh and recharge your mind
- Walk or exercise.
- Connect with nature...or a streetscape.
- Change your environment.
- Have lunch or a healthy snack.
- Take a “power nap”.
- Take a few deep breaths.
- Daydream.
- Get creative like drawing or even doodling.
- Drink coffee (or tea). Sipping coffee can be a mindful pleasure in itself.
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Taking good breaks
This is important for your daily productivity. Good breaks can leave us feeling refreshed and energized. It can reduce mental fatigue, boost brain function and keep us on-task for extended periods....
The brain and goal management
The prefrontal cortex of the brain is mainly responsible for goal management. It orchestrates attention, working memory and other cognitive resources to help us get what we want.
For a challenging task, briefly taking our minds off the goal can renew and strengthen motivation. Doing activities that rely on different brain regions is best to restore focus.
Going Natural
Exposure to nature restores the mind. One study showed better working memory scores for people after a walk in a natural environment, but not in an urban setting.
If you are unable to go into nature, find plants, fresh air or a fish tank. Sit down, take a deep breath, and notice the details of nature. Research shows that even looking at some pictures of nature can work.
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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.
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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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