Maximizing Your Productivity by Taking Better Breaks

Maybe you’re the kind of person who can’t take a break. Either you’re in the zone or you’ve got your back against a big deadline, so you push through and keep grinding all day (and sometimes all night too). Or maybe you’re the one who always seems to get distracted, whether it’s by your phone, your coworkers, or your stomach, and you constantly find yourself taking another short break. Whichever camp you fall into, something has to change. And whether you need to take more breaks or take fewer, if you want to maximize your productivity, you need to start taking better breaks.

Why You Should Take Breaks

Why is taking breaks so important? The answer is pretty simple – you’re only human. It’s true that learning how to expand your capacity can help you boost your productivity, but it’s just as important to learn your limits and learn to respect them. The people who keep running on empty are the ones who run themselves into the ground, and the people who keep burning the candle at both ends are the ones who end up burning out. Resting at the end of the work day is good, but it’s not enough to reach your full productivity potential. Taking effective, renewing breaks is a skill, and if you want to do better work, it’s a skill that you will need. 

In a Harvard Business Review article, author Tony Schwartz shares about his productivity in the books he has written. For his first three books, he would try to write for 12 hours a day, and each of the books he wrote this way took him a year to finish. The later books, however, he was able to complete in half the time. Why? Because he took a cue from the habits of great violinists. Instead of forcing himself to stay at his desk for hours upon hours, trying to write, Schwartz would work for no longer than 90 minutes without taking a break to renew his energy. Working in three of these work/break cycles each day, he doubled his productivity. 

Schwartz writes this key insight in his article: “Human beings are designed to pulse rhythmically between spending and renewing energy. That’s how we operate at our best. Maintaining a steady reservoir of energy — physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually — requires refueling it intermittently.” This is why taking breaks is so important. Hitting pause and unplugging from your work is how your body and mind recharge so that we can do our best work when we get back to it!

How You Should Take Breaks

Now that we know the why, we need to figure out the how of taking better breaks. You might already know that breaks are important and try to take them, but you don’t come back to work feeling any more energized than you did before. Sure, some types of breaks are good for you, but other breaks only leave you more drained and distracted. So how do you take these recharging breaks so you can boost your productivity? Here are two tips for getting started: make a plan and make two lists.

Make a Plan

The first step of figuring out how to take better breaks is making a plan. Breaks should be built into your schedule and ideally at a consistent time. There are lots of different strategies for work/break rhythms, so experiment and find what works best for you! You could try Schwartz’s schedule that he picked up from professional violinists and work for three 90 minute sessions with breaks in between each one. Or, you could work in three-hour blocks and take longer breaks between them. Some articles encourage people to take breaks as often as every half hour, while others recommend you wait a little longer. Everyone is different, and you’ll probably have to play around with your schedule a bit to find when you’re in flow with your work (and shouldn’t take a break yet) and when you start to drag (and should take one).

Make Two Lists

The second step in figuring out how to take better breaks comes from licensed therapist and coach Tati Garcia, who specializes in helping people with anxiety. Garcia hosts the Calmly Coping podcast, and, in the episode How to Take Breaks That Are Actually Recharging, she suggests that you start improving your breaks by making two lists. First, make a list of things that refresh you, give you energy, and boost your happiness. This could be going for a walk, reading a novel, watching a show, doing something creative, or playing the New York Times Connections. Once you’ve made this list, then make another list of things that drain you. Maybe your instinct on a break is to take out your phone and start scrolling, but try to notice if you actually come away from that time feeling better or worse as you get back to work. With your two lists in hand, aim to fill your breaks with the things that are life-giving and avoid the activities or habits that bring you down.

Conclusion

You have to take breaks, and that is a have to. If you don’t take breaks, your body and mind will start to actually break, so get ahead of it! A few extra tips from Garcia’s podcast include getting enough sleep (you can learn more about the importance of good sleep for productivity here), detaching yourself from your phone, eating a good snack or meal, and using the computer app Be Focused to keep track of times and rhythms for your work and breaks. 

It might seem odd for one of the biggest keys to doing better work is sometimes doing less work, but it really is true. You can’t get it all done if you never know when to stop, and the people in your life – family, friends, and coworkers – will all benefit when you find the work/break balance that works best for you!

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