Add Breaks to Your Day

Quick Win

Temporarily taking your mind off a task may help you refocus when you get back to work.

Try This Today

• Write out tomorrow’s schedule tonight, including work-related appointments and household obligations.
• Find places in the schedule to work in breaks that recharge you. Take five minutes between meetings to stand and stretch or meditate. Take 10 minutes to call a friend, daydream or go for a quick walk.
• Set an alert on your phone to remind you when it’s break time.

Why

Focusing for long periods of time can reduce your ability to concentrate, weakening your performance in the process. But research has found that letting your mind wander can refuel your focus, spark creativity and strengthen critical thinking skills. People who allowed their minds to wander performed better at remembering the “big picture” of what they saw in a study involving two experiments, one with 75 participants (mean age 37) and the other with 74 participants (mean age 41) published in Memory & Cognition in 2024. Another study of 27 health care workers (mean age of about 50) found that taking 10-minute activity breaks every four hours improved attention and thinking skills. That study was published in the Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology in 2024.