How to Have a Break of Your Life (and Improve Your Workflow)
Ideas on making the most of your much-needed break.
It’s been an hour of (insert your focused mental activity) and you’re spent. You can barely lift your eyelids, your attention span is shorter than a 3 year’s old in a candy store, and most of what you produced (or consumed) barely registers.
Yep, time for a break.
So you turn off the music, refill the chamomille tea that must have evaporated from the intense mental focus, and cozy up to watch some videos Youtube or check the ‘Gram.
Fast forward half an hour and you:
- Don’t feel like starting any mental activity at all
- Feel like you haven’t rested your brain whatsoever
- Have a problem disengaging the dopamine-fueled activity designed to suck up your time, energy, and attention. Oh look, another climbing video!
Bummer. And a nuisance.
What you need, then, is a better way to have a break. One that’s going to help you to go back to your task not away from it. Because after having spent so much effort writing the report or studying for the exam, you’re weak. And that’s exactly when your biggest struggles saunter in uninvited, ready to invade your mind. They suck you in, destroy your workflow, and leave you with the grandest sense of unfulfillment.
Environmental design — the hero we all need?
So what can you do? I mean, you have to take a break, but you also can’t give in to your dirty pleasures (not now that is). Thus, you need to take the right kind of break. And this is where environmental design comes into play.
Ever since the story of Adam and Eve, we all know we’re really bad in resisting temptation. But I bet the story would look different had someone put the damn snake in the tank where it belongs, and placed the silly tree somewhere it can’t be reached. And that’s exactly what we’re doing right now — setting up our environment so it works for us and not against us.
A couple of ideas to get you started having the break of your life
1. Set a timer
No matter what activity you choose to do as your break (see paragraph below for ideas), it needs to have a clear deadline. Why? Because without it, we weasel out. “One more video, one more message”, etc. Sound familiar? One more my ass. By setting a timer, we’re making it more difficult for us to do what we do best — rationalize.*
*(by the way, the smarter you are, the better you are at rationalizing)
2. Disengage
What you must do then is to take a step back. Literally. Get up from the computer (too much of a temptation) and walk away to another room. Only then decide what to do. Some activities include:
- Taking a nap
- Take a walk around the block
- Meditate for 10 mins
- Stretch a bit
You can go a step further (pun not intended) and include what exactly you’ll do during your break in your daily planning. That way you’re not thinking at all, only executing.
After disengaging, you need to engage again. Slowly. And for that, you…
3. Get motivated!
There is a period of resistance after you’ve disengaged, especially if the activity is something you don’t enjoy. To overcome that, you need to pump yourself up again. You must get motivated again to sit down and study or write.
What I do to motivate myself is simple. I read an article, an essay, or a story. Sometimes it’s here on Medium (something easy like Slackjaw, or for the extra kick — Nicolas Cole), sometimes it’s from brainpickings.org or Aeon.co.
I suspect this works because of something I call “activity congruency”. The rationale is that a switch to a not so demanding activity that is similar (studying, writing ~ reading) tricks your mind into a continuous flow. And our minds are designed to keep the flow up.
The break of your life in 30 seconds or less
I encourage you to try this workflow technique. Instead of taking a break watching videos or scrolling on social media, take a nap and read an article that motivates you or an essay that spurs your thinking. You won’t flake and you come back invigorated, ready to tackle the stupid statistics course again…
Oh well, here I go…
1. Set a timer — to rein in your inner weasel.
2. Disengage — take a step back and relax.
3. Motivate — read an article or a story to get the juices flowing again.
