You know you want to keep moving forward, but you can only do so if you refuel and recharge consistently to avoid fatigue, burnout, and mental illnesses. With the immense change happening in the world right now and the added stress of working from home and trying to help your children stay on track with remote learning, the mental load is exponentially higher.
When you feel like you can’t catch a break, you just have to give yourself one. Here are five kinds of breaks that you can intentionally schedule into your life to stay focused, motivated, and energized throughout your day.
Morning Break
When possible, it is advisable to devote the very first part of the day to self-care. That could include doodling, reading, journaling, meditating, exercising, eating, or simply enjoying a cup of coffee.
By starting slowly, you’re giving yourself the opportunity to prime your mind for the day, acknowledging your own needs, and getting a sense of perspective that there is a world outside of your job.
When you stop checking work email or other work messages until you’re actually starting your workday instead of right when you wake up, you are compressing how long it “feels” like you’re working, potentially by hours.
WORK BREAK
You had a lot of natural breaks built-in of walking to your desk after a meeting to chatting with your colleague to office social activities during your workday in the office.
Now, if you work from home or have a lot of restrictions on what you do in the office, your day can feel like one long slog. To keep yourself alert and engaged, you’ll need to discover new kinds of breaks. You can use the method where you set a timer for 25 minutes of focused work and then give yourself 5 minutes of downtime.
During these breaks, you can get water, put dishes in the dishwasher, take a quick stretch, return a few texts, or check in on your kids to make sure they’re on track.
By giving yourself intended breaks, you’re providing little rests throughout the day to your mind and body so that you do not feel completely worn out by the end of the day.
Intentionally taking breaks also helps you overcome the temptation to take unintentional breaks where you surf the internet and get lost in social media because your brain is too tired to focus anymore.
Lunch Break
By starting slowly, you’re giving yourself the opportunity to prime your mind for the day, acknowledging your own needs, and getting a sense of perspective that there is a world outside of your job.
When you stop checking work email or other work messages until you’re actually starting your workday instead of right when you wake up, you are compressing how long it “feels” like you’re working, potentially by hours.
WORK BREAK
You had a lot of natural breaks built-in of walking to your desk after a meeting to chatting with your colleague to office social activities during your workday in the office.
Now, if you work from home or have a lot of restrictions on what you do in the office, your day can feel like one long slog. To keep yourself alert and engaged, you’ll need to discover new kinds of breaks. You can use the method where you set a timer for 25 minutes of focused work and then give yourself 5 minutes of downtime.
During these breaks, you can get water, put dishes in the dishwasher, take a quick stretch, return a few texts, or check in on your kids to make sure they’re on track.
By giving yourself intended breaks, you’re providing little rests throughout the day to your mind and body so that you do not feel completely worn out by the end of the day.
Intentionally taking breaks also helps you overcome the temptation to take unintentional breaks where you surf the internet and get lost in social media because your brain is too tired to focus anymore.
Lunch Break
To get a sense of spaciousness to your day, an opportunity to reset, and gain perspective, taking a mental break at lunch will help.
During this break, you could connect with anyone in your home, read a book, go on a walk, or simply think which will enable your mind to have a chance to relax, recharge, and if needed, process.
It can also be an ideal time to think through things that might be bothering you or to ponder a challenge you might be facing. By consciously giving yourself time for these mental activities, there’s less burden on your 'mental background' throughout the day.
Afternoon Break
This is that time in the afternoon when you can hardly keep your eyelids open no matter how hard you try.
You may find that you experience this at a consistent time each afternoon, or it may vary depending on when you eat lunch. But inevitably, you’ll hit that time when getting almost anything done seems impossible.
Instead of fighting that truth, give your body the break it deserves. Have a cup of coffee, and then take a power nap for 25 minutes or less. The caffeine doesn’t kick in for about 25 minutes, so you should wake up without mental fog because the nap was short, and the warm beverage is doing its magic.
If taking a nap isn’t quite in the cards, you could at least take a coffee break, go on a walk, check-in with a colleague, or with your kids.
Evening Break
Reducing the time frame during your work makes you feel like you’re working less. But if wrapping up completely before dinner isn’t possible because of the level of your workload, it is recommended to take some kind sort of evening break.
You could be stopping to eat dinner, exercising, going to the park with your kids, watching a TV show, tidying up the house, or doing anything that gives you some space to refresh and recharge. It will help your brain avoid pushing itself intensely so that it can have some recovery time before moving forward again.
You can make it through 2020, and you can finish strong. The solution is to take voluntary breaks throughout the day, every day, and you can make it across the finish line.
Written by - Anusha Vajha
Edited by - Adrija Saha
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