When I am working, I sometimes take a microbreak to maintain performance. These are very short pauses, often less than a minute, to refocus attention on something other than what I am doing. Many of the tasks I do take a lot of concentration, and so short recovery breaks are needed to avoid fatigue. Think of it like an interval workout. You work hard for a period of time, and then take a short recovery break before diving into the next hard interval. Although microbreaks are not as frequent as interval breaks in a workout, they can serve the same purpose. By resting for a few moments, you recover mental energy and can maintain peak performance.
What Is a Microbreak?
A microbreak is any activity that you do for a short time–usually one or two minutes–that is a break from the task at hand. If I am writing a blog article, it might be a moment to see if new emails came in. Or it could be a moment to do something physical, like stand and stretch. What makes a microbreak a microbreak is that you do not do it for a long time. It is a pause to catch your breath before diving back in. Rather that wasting work time, it is making work time more efficient, allowing greater productivity.
Take a Microbreak to Maintain Performance
A microbreak is a tool for maintaining effort over a long day. It is helpful in multiple ways.
- Reducing Fatigue. If you try to work without a break, over time you will become increasingly inefficient as fatigue builds. A human is not an AI. Our brains get tired and when they do, we slow down and make more mistakes. Our minds wander.
- Dealing with Tedious Tasks. Repetitive and tedious tasks can be difficult to maintain over a long time. As the tedium builds, we find our attention wanders. We have to reread something because we lost our train of thought. A microbreak can be helpful in breaking the monotony, enabling us to refocus.
- Reducing Stress. Over the day stress can build. Here a microbreak can be an effective way to break the tension and allow accumulated strain to release. The break needs to occupy your mind and distract you from whatever is stressful. People vary in what they choose, with some liking a funny video and others doing a quick yoga exercise.
- Consolidating an Idea. There are times that I am working on a difficult problem and I need to take a moment to let an idea sink in. Sometimes just clearing my mind for a moment is enough that I can attack the problem from a new angle.
Of course, there can be a fine line between a microbreak that maintains efficiency and wasting time at work. Watching an occasional funny cat video can reduce fatigue and stress, but too much of a good thing can wander into destructive cyberloafing. This is when employees waste time playing with technology to avoid work. To be effective, microbreaks should be short and occasional. How short and occasional depends on the nature of the situation. Tasks that are tedious, mentally challenging, or highly stressful require more frequent breaks, whereas interesting tasks of moderate effort and low stress require fewer. When you find yourself struggling to maintain focus on a task, perhaps having to repeat things due to errors, take a microbreak to maintain performance.
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