Don’t Take a Break Unless You Need One

Break

One area where I find myself disagreeing with many of the community gurus is the area of breaks and the taking of breaks. Many will say that one should work n minutes per hour and take a 60-n minute break, like clockwork. I disagree. Attempting to shoehorn humans into a robotic schedule when their work doesn’t dictate such a schedule is, in my opinion, counterproductive. After all, when you take a break, you’re no longer being productive (and, yes, I understand that “recharging” is important to overall productivity - I just don’t believe it to be something that should be scheduled).

We’ve all heard about “the zone” (though, perhaps by a different name). Those rare occasions when you’re completely focused on what you’re doing and you’re at the peak of productivity. The rest of the world has faded into the background and it’s just you and [your task]. For those of us who have been there, it’s a bit like a good night’s sleep: you don’t realize how awesome it was until it’s over. This is my main reason for not taking scheduled breaks.

As I’ve said many times before, I write software for a living. This affords me plenty of “alone time” with my current project, as my interaction with others is generally limited to specification clarification or requirements collection. Most of the time, it’s me, my iPod and my computer. Given the correct set of circumstances, I can work for 3-4 hours straight, without needing to take a break. Even if I do “come up for air”, so to speak (leave the zone), I still might not take a break. My mind is (almost) fully engulfed in the task at hand, and leaving my desk or looking at other things would do little more than drive my focus away from my work.

Obviously, I’m not saying you shouldn’t take a break - you definitely should. But please don’t feel like, in order to maintain your sanity and posture, that you must take scheduled breaks. My experience has been that they can definitely do more harm than good, especially if your work requires a great deal of thought and concentration to be done properly.

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July 18, 2007 | Filed Under GTD, Productivity, Work 

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7 Responses to “Don’t Take a Break Unless You Need One”

  1. CynicalGeek on July 18th, 2007

    I agree with you. It seems that many people are rewarding themselves for working. The paycheck is the reward.

  2. Andreas Hofmann on July 18th, 2007

    I agree with your statement that if you get into the “flow”, you should not interrupt yourself artificially. But the purpose behind the whole “work for x minutes, do a y minute break” concept is to overcome procrastination. If you are in the situation that you cannot work well because you feel overwhelmed, it can be helpful to tackle your task in small steps. Concentrating on work for only ten minutes appears doable for even the worst of procrastinators. It’s only to encourage you, to get you started. Once you really get going, you won’t need to take these artificial breaks anymore, nor should you.

  3. matt mcknight on July 19th, 2007

    In Merlin Mann’s podcast on “work the dash, take the break” he says that the “hack within the hack” is that when you do truly get into the zone you won’t end up taking the breaks. However, when you are doing something unpleasant that is subject to high procrastination risk the real win here is limiting the breaks to a short time slice.
    I have tried the (10 2)*5 occasionally, and it actually works pretty well in terms of getting things going.

  4. Max Leibman on July 22nd, 2007

    I agree, and I would add another risk: The compulsory, scheduled break is just another “to do,” and lose it’s regenerative effectiveness.

    If the break is something we feel we “have to do” or something that we’re “required to do,” we may be more likely to pass the time of the break more quickly and enjoy it less, to have anxiety about taking the break, and to spend the whole break thinking about and anticipating getting back to the “real work.” In the process, we miss out on the rest or relaxation or play that the break is supposed to give us; worse, we come back feeling like we’ve lost the time.

  5. Yummykind on August 1st, 2007

    What a great name for a band “The Shoe Horned Robots”…..add the word sound system and you’ve got, “The Shoe Horned Robots Soundsystem”

    Nothing but a global venue with that name.

  6. Bootstrapper » The GTD Resource Motherload: 100+ Links on January 2nd, 2008

    [...] Don’t Take a Break Unless You Need One: You’ll never get through your task lists if you keep breaking for a snack, a nap or a walk [...]

  7. » The GTD Resource Motherload: 100+ Links on January 3rd, 2008

    [...] Don’t Take a Break Unless You Need One: You’ll never get through your task lists if you keep breaking for a snack, a nap or a walk [...]

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