Mix it up with Brain Breaks

Mix it up
with Brain Breaks

Make your day into a series of short sprints rather than a marathon.

Take a Brain Break every 1.5 hours or so.

Hierarchy of Brain Breaks.

You can combine these. For example, take a walk around the block, and pick a path that passes some greenery.

1. Move

Take a walk around the office for just 5 minutes or take a 15-min stroll around the block.

2. Spend time in nature

3. Be around greenery

4. Have a light meal or snack to avoid desktop dining

5. Do a breathing exercise

6. Go social.

Drop by a college or call a friend

7. Work on a shallow work/admin task on your computer.

8. Check email

A brain break could be a great time for one of your clustered daily checks.

Make you day into a series of short sprints (1 to 1.5 hour is ideal), rather than a marathon that is not sustainable over the long run and lowers you ability to have focused attention and connect the dots in the short term. The whole idea is to give your brain a break. It will enable peak performance, and let you leave the office at 5 pm!

I have a friend who is an MIT professor, and his favorite

activity is matching socks, another friend likes to iron.

Ideas can incubate and then we come back to the hard work

and we see it with fresh eyes.

– Dr. Gloria Mark, interruption science researcher, UC Irvine