How to Take Effective Breaks When Working

Have you ever heard the phrase more is better? And if you have, would you consider that phrase to be always true? Well, expressions are rarely always true, and that applies to this one as well, especially when it comes to trying to be as productive as possible. When we continually work on something without a proper break, it can actually do us more harm than good. And when it comes to productivity, sometimes you need to know when it's time to take a break. Let's say you're trying to be productive and those tasks require mental effort.

Maybe whether you're studying, you're trying to learn something, you're reading, writing, emails, whatever that might be. It takes up energy and think about in relation to physical energy. Do you have unlimited physical energy to do certain tasks? Of course not. I could drop down right now and do a bunch of push ups. Eventually my muscles will get tired and I need to take a break to recharge before the next set. And the same goes for your brain. You need breaks. Counter intuitively, more is not always better.

Let's talk about the how to take effective breaks. One of the most common questions I get with this topic is how long should my break be? I get asked this question a lot. I work for the army as a contractor doing performance psychology, and I do a lot of academic performance training for young privates, young soldiers who are doing their advanced individual training in military intelligence, for example. And basically, the research shows that there's no perfect duration for a break. Some studies have shown effectiveness for a 90 minutes work session followed by a 20 minutes break, one study randomly.

I'm not sure why they did this, but they had a 52 minutes work session followed by a 17 minutes break. Random numbers, but that worked, too. So the key point here is it doesn't matter necessarily how long, but as long as you take them, they can be effective. The length of an optimal break varies per person, and it varies per the difficulty of the task that you're doing. So, for example, if you're studying for big tests, taking a lot of mental willpower, you probably need a longer break. Whereas if you're doing some low stakes tasks and it doesn't really require much mental effort, your break can probably be a little bit shorter.

The time isn't as important as long as you simply take that. For me, I usually use what's called the Pomodoro technique or the Pomodoro timer, and that's where you pretty much just take 25 minutes work session where you're locked in, no distractions. I usually put my phone in another room or away from me, out of reach. And then once that timer's up, you take a five minute, full fledged intentional break where you can do whatever you want. Aside from that task, I have it bookmarked on my laptop, so I use it all the time.

And that's just one example of what you could do. I also make sure to fully disengage when I'm taking a break, I want to be intentional about it being break time. Get out of the space you're working in and don't think about the tasks that you were just doing. For example, if you're sitting down, go for a walk, do a quick breathing exercise, wash a few dishes, whatever that might be, to get you up and moving. And it's often tempting to go on your phone during a break. And this can be tricky for two reasons.

Number one, it's easy to lose track of time. A five minute break can quickly turn into a 30 minutes one. Also, your brain is still active when it's looking at that screen. So especially if you were doing a task on technology like your laptop, you need to take a break from technology itself, and your phone might not be the best option for that break. All in all, if you want to increase your productivity, maybe you don't need to simply do more, but rather you need to be more efficient with your time and take a break.