Microbreaks can make you feel better

Global – Often people are so busy with work that they don’t even have time for lunch. Are you familiar with such a situation? Then we should report that new research shows the benefit of short breaks. Researchers reviewed 22 studies over the past 30 years and determined that short breaks make workers feel better.

Eat, take a walk or scroll through social media: no matter how you spend it, micro-breaks of 10 minutes or less while working can increase energy and reduce fatigue, according to a meta-analysis.

Breaks during the work day are often viewed as laziness or unproductiveness of the worker, which can make people feel guilty. But short breaks are good for both employees and organizations.

The studies included in the analysis examined how breaks of 10 minutes or less affect students in a laboratory setting or employees in the workplace and were conducted in the United States, the Netherlands, China, Austria, Germany, Australia, Brazil, and Japan.

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It turned out that microbreaks only have a positive effect on workers. According to the report, study participants engaged in routine or creative work benefited from short breaks.

Routine tasks are activities performed with a high level of automation that do not require a person to use the full capabilities of the brain. This can lead to the mind wandering to other work or tasks unrelated to work. This increases the chance of error. According to the report, a break can reduce the risk of mistakes and redirect an employee’s attention to the work in progress.

According to the analysis, creative tasks require a person to search their brain for information relevant to what they are doing and suppress ideas that are not related to the topic.

The authors of the study found that short breaks allow a worker to focus on activities other than the one they are working on, which can increase flexibility and increase creative productivity.

However, according to the analysis, cognitively complex tasks, jobs that require a high level and amount of mental ability, did not show a significant improvement in performance with micro-breaks.