It’s 2 p.m. You’re working at your desk, and you haven’t taken a break all day except to use the bathroom and grab that turkey sandwich out of the fridge to nibble on while you respond to emails. What’s wrong with this picture? While it may seem more productive to power through your projects, it actually strains your ability to get high-quality work done — and burns you out along the way.
With more people clocking in from home than ever before, it’s easy to fall into the trap of sitting at your workspace for hours on end with no team lunches to traipse off to and zero coworkers to hold watercooler court with next to the office snacks. On a busy workday, pressing pause on the task in front of you may seem like an especially ludicrous idea when you’re in the zone or on a deadline.
“If we have any sense of obligation or responsibility, we feel driven to try to meet as many of those demands as we can,” says Joel Mausner, a business, leadership, and career psychologist at Workplace Psychology. “We start to feel guilty, potentially, about taking a break even though we may know or have been told that if you give yourself some breaks during the day, you’re going to be refreshed and rebalanced, and then you could actually deliver more.”
A 2015 paper in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health found that purposeful breaks over the course of your day help maintain performance throughout the day, prevent and lower stress, and reduce the need for a long recovery when you end your workday. Getting stressed out frequently and over too long a period of time leads to burnout, which intentional pauses can curb.
“While it may feel challenging or even counterproductive to step away from a long to-do list or urgent deadline and take a moment for yourself, setting these boundaries and sticking to them can be a helpful tool to avoid burnout and incorporate self-care into your workday,” says Dr. Anisha Patel-Dunn, a psychologist and the chief medical officer at LifeStance Health, a provider of outpatient virtual and in-person mental healthcare.
What’s the key to better work breaks?
Mausner says the first step to creating more impactful workday breaks is to identify what type of break you actually need. If you are feeling overwhelmed or stressed out, he suggests engaging in a brief activity that calms, grounds, or pacifies you to “provide some sense of holding or containment that we can then bring back to our work tasks.” If you’re struggling with feeling tired or depleted, you should participate in an activity that will activate, refresh, or refuel you. “The main thing,” Mausner says, “is to customize it for yourself.”
Taking just five minutes throughout the day to reset and refocus your mind will allow you to be more productive overall. You can steal a page from the Pomodoro Technique, developed by business consultant and author Francesco Cirillo, where you break your workday into 25-minute chunks separated by five-minute breaks — or develop your own time-centric system. However you choose to organize your time, here are a handful of ways to take effective, meaningful breaks no matter your work environment.
Take a splash
If you’re starting to feel weighed down by a heavy workload, a physiological shortcut to de-stressing is splashing your face with cold water. “It’s quick, easy, and can help you decompress in an instant,” says Dr. Brian Mangum, an associate professor of medicine and associate dean at University of Health Sciences Antigua.
Mangum explains that in response to immersion of the nose and mouth in cold water, the body slows down its heart rate and breathing. “In an instant, you can have the same effect of spending 20 minutes doing deep-breathing exercises or yoga,” he says. “The effects don’t last as long, but they are enough to help you get through the next video call or meeting with an annoying coworker when you don’t have time for downward dog.” Just head to the bathroom, hold your breath, and soothe your face and nose with a little H20. Repeat a few times to enact the full effect.
Go on a micro walk
When workdays purely meant commuting to a shared workspace, you could walk up stairs to get to meetings, flit around to chat with colleagues, and step outside to grab lunch. Now, many workers roll out of bed, walk a few feet to their desks, and fire up their laptops. “As life has become more sedentary, our joints have stiffened, our weight has increased, and our overall health has taken a hit,” says Dr. Adam Brown, founder of health-care solutions provider Adam Brown Impact Group.
If this hits close to home, active breaks might be the lift you need — and you don’t even need to head to a gym or hit a nearby hiking trail to feel the benefits. Brown recommends jogging in place, a few jumping jacks, or taking short, three- to five-minute walks around your abode to get your body moving and mimic days at the office. Bonus points if you step outside for some fresh air. “Just five minutes helps reset the brain, give energy, and increase vitamin D levels,” Brown says of natural sunlight.
Zone out
If the idea of meditating overwhelms you, think of it as zoning out with benefits. For those in need of a steadying moment, set a timer for five minutes, sit on the floor or lie across your bed comfortably, and focus on your breath rising and falling. If you’re more of a visual person but still need pacification, Mausner suggests a calming tactic called visualization. Rather than focusing on your breath, close your eyes and imagine an environment that has helped you feel at peace, whether it’s a beach you visited on vacay, a house in the mountains, or your favorite swing in the park. Conjuring up feelings of safety with imagery does wonders for your stress levels.
On the flip side, if you’re feeling burned out because of your work, it’s helpful to think up exciting images — or simply look at them if you’re not feeling too creative. “Sometimes I like to turn on the television,” Mausner says. Whether you watch five minutes of an old episode of Parks and Recreation or Girlfriends or put on a YouTube video about a topic that is fascinating or inspiring, briefly engaging in a totally different topic or world can give your brain a break while also jump-starting it again. Beware: Getting back to work after five minutes requires willpower.
Make a stretch routine
“Stretching is probably one of the best and most effective methods to include some well-being in your day without sacrificing time,” Mangum says. “Those who perform a few simple stretch exercises on a daily basis, even if they are not making it to the gym regularly, report increased feelings of wellness, better mobility, and a greater overall sense of calm that they do not feel when they forgo their daily stretches.”
Three simple stretches that increase ease of movement in everyday life — especially for those glued to their desks and screens most of the day — include neck rolls, arm stretches, and cat-cows. For neck rolls, Mangum recommends starting in a lotus position, closing your eyes, and moving your head in a circular pattern while concentrating on breathing in and out. Start at your chest, rolling to the right as close to the shoulder as you can get, then lean your neck backward before resting on the chest again and doing the stretch in the other direction.
While in this position with your back straight, move on to arm stretches by interlocking your fingers and stretching your limbs away from your body in front of you, then up above your head until you feel the stretch. End with three to five cat-cows, a yoga pose that targets mobility of the hips and back and reduces compression pressure associated with stress. With practice, you’ll notice that your neck, arms, and back will feel much better throughout the day.
Reach out to someone
Working remotely can be quite isolating, and studies have consistently shown that humans are inherently social creatures. While it’s tempting to stay completely focused on work so daily tasks are completed, setting aside time to briefly connect with friends and colleagues is crucial to social health. In fact, conversational breaks have been found to return mental and physical functional systems to their baseline.
“Whether chatting with a coworker or calling a friend, talking about a totally unrelated topic to what you are working on can help you come back to it with a fresh mind,” Patel-Dunn says. It doesn’t need to be a long conversation and can be as simple as sending them a text, leaving them a voice memo, or calling them to tell them how much you appreciate them.
“Talking with others can also help you open your mind to other perspectives that you may not have thought of and help you think more creatively about your work tasks when you come back to them,” Patel-Dunn adds. “Taking short breaks like this throughout the day can help you be more present and, ultimately, productive at work while still prioritizing your mental health.”
Mia Brabham is a staff writer at Shondaland. Follow her on Twitter at @hotmessmia.
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