Breaks in everyday life are important to keep you productive, relaxed, and focused. With these ideas, you can make your breaks relaxing while checking the pre-match lines.
It’s not always possible to take a relaxing break. Sometimes you may only take a break when you are already very exhausted. The break is already too late. Instead, you should consciously take breaks before you feel exhausted. This will increase your work performance in the long term. Therefore, a plan breaks into your everyday (working) life. Try to stick to them consistently to recover.
In this article, we also present two effective “break rules” from an organizational psychologist, as well as other scientific findings on the factors that make a break particularly relaxing.
Integrate short breaks into your working day
Try to relax during your break without your smartphone.
If you have been working hard mentally for around 60 minutes, your body needs a short breather. Get up from your desk and try to relax briefly without your smartphone or laptop.
To take a short break, you can try the following:
- Go to the toilet.
- Make yourself a cup of tea or coffee.
- Stretch your back
- Have a short chat with your colleagues.
- Try to think of positive experiences to interrupt your ruminations.
- Listen to your favorite song.
- Do a short meditation
Integrate long breaks into your daily routine
You can also do sports during the long break. According to employment law, employees are required to take a longer break of at least 30 minutes within a full working day after six hours. To benefit from your long break, make the most of your free time. Your body can adjust to the break by getting up from your desk and leaving the room.
You can organize your long break in different ways:
- Take time to consciously eat healthy food. Tip: Pre-cooking helps you to have a nutritious lunch ready even during a stressful working day.
- Go for a walk.
- Exercise if there is a gym right next to your work
- Try yoga in your home office.
- Consciously read a book, newspaper, or magazine.
- Take a power nap
- Make phone calls to people you like.
Have a creative session: For example, work a few rows on a knitting project like a simple hat.
2 rules for restorative breaks
If you take the wrong breaks, you can put yourself under additional stress or even lose the ability to regenerate. Mazda Adli, a doctor and stress researcher at Charité, explains this to Zeit Online.
Breaks should be relaxing – but they are not always. The industrial and organizational psychologist Hannes Zacher from the University of Leipzig presents the following “break rules” to Zeit Online:
Personal conversations and encounters are good for you, and short breaks are better than long ones.
The researcher particularly emphasizes “micro-breaks” (of three to five minutes). These time-limited interruptions are about doing something that provides distance from the demands of normal work: people who have to communicate a lot in their work can relax in silence. If you sit at a desk a lot, you can regenerate through exercise.
Above all, however, it is advisable to spend breaks with others. This is also confirmed by a study conducted by psychologists at the University of Mannheim. According to the study, the test subjects felt valued and accepted as part of a group when they took a lunch break with their colleagues. According to the researchers, such positive social interactions release “energetic resources”.
However, Zacher points out that this effect only occurs if people in the group do not argue or talk about problems at work and when no superiors are present. Otherwise, even during the break, people would ask themselves whether they had to perform.
