🏁 Productivity
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Nov 18, 2024
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6 min read
The Art of the Break: Ultradian Rhythms, Sprints, and Zoom Fatigue. If you also struggle to take a break now and then, this article is for you!
Rest assured, this article is not an apologia for laziness.
However, some numbers are alarming in France:
34% of employees feel they are in a state of burnout.
90% of French people believe their work impacts their mental health.
42% of employees took a sick leave in 2022, with an increase in psychological causes.
Despite this, taking breaks is sometimes taboo, associated with laziness.
Yet, far from being useless, breaks are necessary to reduce mental fatigue and maximize productivity.
When well thought out, breaks are one of the factors that allow for a combination of performance and mental health in the age of hyper-connectivity and “always available.”
🧠 The Physiology of Breaks: Why Take Them?
In Peak Performance, a book by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness, the authors highlight the equation “Stress + rest = growth” as the secret of the best performers.
They observe that the best in various fields, from sports to art to business, follow a common pattern towards continuous growth.
They work by stepping out of their comfort zone, then place a real emphasis on recovery.
It’s not about working much harder than others but working smartly.
The analogy of weight training is telling. 🏋️
How do you train a muscle to gain volume?
Find the ideal weight/tension for a set of repetitions.
Then recover for a few minutes before moving on to the next set.
Insufficient rest time between sets will reduce training effectiveness. In contrary, if it’s excessively long, it will slow down muscle development optimization.
Work is like a muscle. It’s by having a session of work at optimal intensity, followed by a real break, that you will progress and be able to perform even better during moments of focus.Pushing yourself beyond your limits, to excessive fatigue, and with poor recovery is counterproductive.
Beyond theory, let’s talk physiology. You’ve probably heard of the circadian rhythm, which is the human body’s internal clock, forming a cycle of about 24 hours.
A somewhat lesser-known but highly complementary rhythm is called the ultradian rhythm. 🕔 This rhythm has a high frequency of oscillation (number of highs and lows) and a short period, around 90 to 120 minutes.
During an ultradian cycle, various physiological measures, such as heart rate, hormonal levels, muscle tension, and brain wave activity, experience an initial increase, followed by a decrease towards the end.
In short, every 90 to 120 minutes, the brain goes through a period of high energy followed by a crash.
Our brain is thus programmed to alternate between moments of fatigue and bursts of energy.
A fascinating study was conducted by Anders Ericsson in 1993, aimed at discovering the key factors behind the success of the world’s best violinists.
What he found was surprising.
The majority of these top-level violinists structured their practice around three sessions of 90 minutes each, separated by breaks, thereby coinciding with their ultradian rhythm. Dr. Kristy Goodwin supports this idea by discussing hOS (human Operating System) and advises working in harmony with this natural cadence.
That’s still a few million years of R&D
Image from “Dear Digital, we need to talk,” by Dr. Kristy Goodwin
In the era of hyperconnectivity, which pushes us to an overwhelming pace, adjusting periods of intense work and recovery can improve productivity. The brain operates in sprints, not marathons. The idea is to take inspiration from the hare rather than the tortoise. But a hare that takes breaks.
💡 The Tip
Try to determine your “ultradian rhythm.” There are no hard and fast rules; science mentions 90 minutes, but it can be a bit more or a bit less.
Try to feel when distraction or mental fatigue sets in during the day.
Arrange your tasks according to the moments when you feel most focused. Schedule the most complicated/intense tasks for those times.
Take real breaks whenever you feel like you’re hitting a low point.
💻 The Experience of “Back-to-Back Zoom Meetings”
A symbol of hyperconnectivity that accelerated with the health crisis: the consecutive chaining of video meetings. That infamous moment when you finish one video call and instantly jump into another.
What are the impacts? The Human Factors Lab at Microsoft conducted a very revealing experiment. An electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures the brain’s electrical activity, was placed on 14 people during two sessions of two hours each.
First session: 4 consecutive meetings of 30 minutes each, without breaks.
Second session: 4 meetings of 30 minutes each with a 10-minute break in between.
If we should remember 3 things from this:
Breaks between meetings allow the brain to “reset,” thus reducing the progressive accumulation of stress over appointments.
Consecutive meetings reduce the ability to remain focused and engaged as time goes on.
Transition moments between consecutive meetings generate stress.
“Digital overload” has become a major issue in the new era of remote and hybrid work. In Microsoft’s Work Trend Index 2021: 54% of respondents reported feeling overloaded with work and 39% described themselves as “exhausted.”
💡 The Tip
To avoid back-to-back meetings.
Google Calendar: go to Settings, then Event Settings. Finally, check the “Shorten Meetings” box.
A 1-hour meeting will turn into 50 minutes, and a 30-minute meeting will become 25 minutes.
🎾 Break Well
It is crucial to take breaks. But how do you effectively recharge your batteries during them? According to several studies, you need to do something significantly different from your work. Change your environment. Digital distractions are numerous.
Staying in front of your screen or scrolling on your phone continues to stimulate your brain. So, you’re not resting it as it needs. The key is to listen to yourself and find something that feels restorative, ideally without a screen.
Otherwise, you’re not taking full advantage of what a break can offer you. Here’s a non-exhaustive list for inspiration, depending on where you work:
Go for a walk
Meditate (using an app like Petit Bambou, which I use)
Do a mini workout
Chat with colleagues about something other than work
Grab a coffee and look outside
Call a loved one
Make a micro-nap
Read
Personally, what has made a difference for me is walking. Whenever I want to take a real break, I go for a walk without my phone (or with Spotify on airplane mode).
💡 The Tip
Schedule breaks in your calendar, and commit to respecting them. Just like your meetings or tasks for the day.
Your challenge this week: take all your breaks without screens.
And to help you, you can use the Jomo app, available for free on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. With Jomo, you can schedule “Sessions.” These are blocking periods based on time intervals — for example, from 10 AM to 12 PM, my personal messaging apps are blocked (so I can stay more focused at work). You can also start a quick session, for instance, that blocks apps for just 30 minutes — simple as that!
The idea is to create a template called “0 Screen Break”. This will block all your social media and entertainment apps (streaming, games, etc.). The goal is to encourage screen-free breaks to connect more with others, explore your surroundings, and maybe even yourself.
This template will be useful for every break. When you stop working: boom, you start this short session. That way, you can’t use your phone and will have to find other ways to keep busy!
Glorifying days when you power through without stopping and feeling guilty for taking breaks is an outdated mentality. You should not confuse constant activity with efficiency.
