Taking breaks is good for us on many levels
Summary
- Taking breaks has multiple benefits.
Details
- Even a short break helps us to maintain passion and reduce fatigue.
- Breaks allow our brains to come up with new ideas
- Breaks help our brain to improve recall
References
Quotes
It turns out that taking breaks has at least three benefits. First, timeaway from practice helps to sustain harmonious passion. Research indicates that even micro-breaks of five to ten minutes are enough to reduce fatigue and raise energy. It’s not just about preventing burnout: research reveals that when we work nights and weekends, our interest and enjoyment in our tasks drops
Second, breaks unlock fresh ideas. In my own research with Jihae Shin, I’ve found that taking breaks boosts creativity when you feel harmonious passion toward a task. Your interest keeps the problem active in the back of your mind, and you’re more likely to incubate new ways of framing it and unexpected ways of solving it.
Third, breaks deepen learning. In one experiment, taking a ten-minute break after learning something improved recall for students by 10 to 30 percent—and even more for stroke and Alzheimer’s patients. Once about 24 hours have passed, information starts to fade from our memories—we fall down a forgetting curve. It’s well established that we can avoid that forgetting curve with spaced repetition—interspersing breaks into practice. At first, you might practice once an hour, and then start taking longer breaks until you’re practicing once a day.