You know that taking frequent breaks is good for your productivity, focus, and creativity, but you just never seem to get around to it.
Our brains have a limited pool of psychological energy. All efforts to control behavior, to perform and to focus draw on that pool of psychological energy. Once that energy source is depleted, we become less effective at everything that we do.
The secret to retaining the highest level of productivity over the span of a workday is not working longer—but working smarter with frequent breaks. Employees with the highest levels of productivity worked for 52 minutes with intense purpose, then rested up, allowing their brains time to rejuvenate and prepare for the next work period.
Our brains simply weren’t built to focus for eight-full hours a day. The best way to refresh your focus is to step away and take a break.
Follow these tips to ensure you’re getting enough breaks in your day:
- Schedule breaks into your daily calendar. Ideally every 52 minutes.
- Set a timer to remind you when to take your break and when to return to work.
- Make realistic to-do lists. We often bog down our to-do lists and make them not feasible for us to accomplish , and we underestimate how long it’s going to take us to do something.
- Prioritize tasks. Choose three major tasks to focus on for the day and add other tasks as they pop up throughout the day to a separate list, readjusting your priorities throughout the day if required. It’s a lot easier to look at a list of three tasks than 30. Once you knock off the first three items, choose your next three priorities from your lengthier list.
Summing-up: A person can’t be 100% productive all day. As much as you want to make the most of every minute, to get stuff done, to hustle, it’s just not humanly possible. Concentration is like a muscle: It needs to rest to be able to function, and it shouldn’t be overworked. Otherwise it’ll simply burn out and take longer to get back into the swing of things.
