Are People Who Take Frequent Breaks More Productive? (qz.com)

Dr. Travis Bradberry has a PhD in industrial-organizational psychology, and argues that "The eight-hour workday is an outdated and ineffective approach to work." A study recently conducted by the Draugiem Group used a computer application to track employees' work habits. Specifically, the application measured how much time people spent on various tasks and compared this to their productivity levels. In the process of measuring people's activity, they stumbled upon a fascinating finding: the length of the workday didn't matter much; what mattered was how people structured their day. In particular, people who were religious about taking short breaks were far more productive than those who worked longer hours.

The ideal work-to-break ratio was 52 minutes of work, followed by 17 minutes of rest. People who maintained this schedule had a unique level of focus in their work. For roughly an hour at a time, they were 100% dedicated to the task they needed to accomplish. They didn't check Facebook "real quick" or get distracted by e-mails. When they felt fatigue (again, after about an hour), they took short breaks, during which they completely separated themselves from their work. This helped them to dive back in refreshed for another productive hour of work.

People who have discovered this magic productivity ratio crush their competition because they tap into a fundamental need of the human mind: the brain naturally functions in spurts of high energy (roughly an hour) followed by spurts of low energy (15 - 20 minutes).
He suggests breaking your day into rough hourly intervals, followed by "real" rest. "Getting away from your computer, your phone, and your to-do list is essential to boosting your productivity. Breaks such as walking, reading, and chatting are the most effective forms of recharging because they take you away from your work..."

"If you wait until you feel tired to take a break, it's too late -- you've already missed the window of peak productivity."

Comments

it's called the "Ballmer Peak"

[v1]

"If you wait until you feel tired to take a break, it's too late -- you've already missed the window of peak productivity."

Unsurprisingly, XKCD has a take on this: https://xkcd.com/323/

averages are just that, it's not precise

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way this is 100% identical for everyone -- meaning 52 minutes for all? Pffft. And there's zero validation from a psychologist over deep brain chemistry, and how long glucose remains high / other factors.

But that said, of course there is a factor. And I bet 52 minutes was an average of some sort, with outliers excluded. Of what use is someone in the study that can only work 5 minutes... and of course there are such people, and they'd be excluded from the graph.

Same goes for people working for 4 hours without pause.

And of course, how much sleep did you get the night before? Are you coming down with a cold (but don't really feel it, other than a big less energetic)?

All said and done, I've worked at home for decades. And I tend to work a few hours.. then take a nap, have some food, and go back to it... and I do believe my productivity is higher.. because all I do is work. No IM, personal email, SMS, phone calls, browsing, etc...

But for me? It's a 'few hours'. Of course, waking up fresh from a nap probably helps a lot there too.

Yes, this works - and it's how I do it too...

[MindPrison]

...I work at a large corporation with 150K+ coworkers, and albeit we have a time span where we're expected to be on the clock so to speak, out managers look more at the net results (KPI) of what we do and achieve rather than how many breaks we took. They're perfectly aware of it though, they will often say, well - these break interwall's could be you going to the bathroom, taking a break, or helping a colleague etc, we can't know for sure why you have so many breaks (I actually asked my manager this out of pure curiosity), and that's how he reasoned with it - because at our monthly development talks, he never mentions that I'm taking too many breaks, just how happy he is about my performance.

So I think Bradberry is onto something there.

But "breaks" takes on many shapes, for example - it might not count as a break when we talk with out colleagues during work about the new house, car, their kids, their gaming, my ideas or theirs - but they're actually breaks too. Our break layout is split into 3 parts, one small 15 minute break between morning and lunch, then lunch, and then another 15 minutes before we end our shift.

However, every person is different, and we have those who take "smoke breaks" for 5 minutes each hour, those don't take the longer 15 minute breaks, and prefer to do that instead.

I try to keep the 15 minutes, but admittedly sometimes it's 20+ minutes, 30 minutes and I get a really bad conscience and work like mad to get the work done, but then again - I have the energy to do so. But even despite this, I have some of our teams top performance numbers. We have overseas partners within the company, that literally get "whipped" if they don't put in 1 hour overtime, and skip breaks, but their "error" ratio on their tickets is through the roof, whereas we who have the "luxury" of many breaks. have some of the lowest error rates.

 

Re:Yes, this works - and it's how I do it too...

[apoc.famine]

At the opposite end of the spectrum, I once worked at a small shop where the dev team numbered under 20 where management had instituted a break policy after too many of the staff were having migraine and RSI issues. 20 minute walks one mid-morning and one mid-afternoon was the requirement. That became the culture, and twice a day someone would get to a good stopping point and ask if anyone wanted to take a walk. Generally everyone else would get to a stopping point in the next 5 minutes, and the whole office then got up and walked 5 minutes down the road to a pond, hung out there for 5-10 minutes, and then walked back.

The two hours following a walk were the most productive hours in everyone's day.

Some fresh air, sunshine, staring off into the distance, and small talk were all everyone needed. That loosened up stiff muscles, got the blood moving, and let everyone's minds subconsciously wrestle with the issue of the day, while relaxing enough to let it happen. Sometimes work got talked about, but most of the time it was random shit or nothing at all.

That's what made me realize how misguided the hyper-focus on hours-at-the-desk really is. It's quality of hours-at-the-desk, not quantity. It's just easier to measure quantity, so that's what everyone does.

Re:Yes, this works - and it's how I do it too...

[MindPrison]

>>The two hours following a walk were the most productive hours in everyone's day.

I agree, we have those walks too, mostly during spring/summer and autumn, usually initiated by co-workers though that likes to do it, and then others follows - inspired by their feelings of wellness and energy after the walks. I can highly recommend those walks you're referring to.

Depends on the job.

[RyanFenton]

One-size-fits-all rules like this are basically bullshit statistical naval gazing. True that you can find a pattern if you glom together enough folks from enough jobs - but false that you can make a rule that will map back on to even a large portion of them.

The rule shouldn't be that enforced breaks will let you squeeze that last drop of productivity out of a beleagered employee drone - but rather, employees that figure out of their own limits and are given leeway to take whatever breaks allow themselves to be optimal can end up becoming more efficient.

Moreover, the goal shouldn't even be some mythical optimal output level - that itself is largely bullshit outside pure robotic-style activity. Sure - efficiency per dollar is important part of an overall evaluation - but the real issue is morale from employees in roles they have no full stake in other than punishment and fear of loss.

The whole employer-employee balance goes around in cycles - but that cycle is itself falling prey to the shifting waves of HR manipulation and political manipulation. Raises are increasingly something that never beat inflation except in extreme cases.

The political system is squeezing the legal system into cutting off all avenues for labor organization or preventing contracts from becoming absolutely insane. The whole idea of employment is shifting to more manipulative realms in more and more places.

So yeah - folks have to play motivational games with themselves to step out of the manipulation and unstable framework of their jobs, in order to perform better at their often perceptibly worthless tasks assigned to them. They often have almost no say at making their tasks themselves better.

The 'fix' in most cases isn't playing more of those motivational games - it's making the role itself less stagnant, in terms of outcome for the employee, and let them make the role more efficient as they go.

But that's not really the fashion of the day - so, go ahead with your enforced company synchronized dancing or whatever comes next.

Ryan Fenton

I am.

[Qbertino]

I am more productive if I take deliberate frequent breaks and choose not to feel guilty about it. Measurably so. I also see huge benefits in completely seperating fun and work, such as *not* listening to music when I'm coding but simply leaving the headphones on for some silence.

Or conversly...

[tomhath]

FTFA:

The ideal work-to-break ratio was 52 minutes of work, followed by 17 minutes of rest. People who maintained this schedule had a unique level of focus in their work.

Based on my experience he has it backwards. People who have a unique level of focus are very good at budgeting their time and know how to pace themselves.

LOL good luck!

[p51d007]

In our office, the "boss's wife" is the one who actually runs things. Pretty much the entire office is scared to death of her. Not me...don't care...she wants me gone, then I'll take my talent elsewhere. She had a meeting with the administration staff a few weeks ago. One of the first things I heard that she said was "I want your butts in those chairs at 8am and except for lunch...I want them IN those chairs until exactly 5pm! Apparently, she didn't like the fact that one or two of the women admin staff were "changing clothes" (they like to work out after work), would get up at 4 minutes til 5pm, to change clothes. Like I said...she is the "ice princess"

Take up vaping

[vegabook]

I vape. I find that vaping requires a more regular "hit" than actual cigarettes, so roughly every hour as opposed to every 1.,5-2 hours or so. I find that the act of walking down and back up the stairs, and getting some "fresh" air, not only helps my productivity through brain rest, but also because somehow, complex coding problems sometimes "come together" better when I'm not in front of the code. Not suggesting anyone addict themselves to nicotine, because you could achieve this without smoking/vaping, but the act of doing something completely different does seem to allow my brain to subconsciously put stuff together somehow.

Re:I wonder where the "hour" came from.

[dryeo]

Interesting idea, but it does seem like a coincidence. Egyptians first split the night into 12 chunks, likely based on the 12 month lunar calendar (zodiac is likewise split into 12). Later they also split the day the same way. Being a 12th of a night or day, the length of hours varied during the seasons too. Even in Europe, early clocks needed daily adjustments (pendula lengthend or shortened) to be accurate to the varying hours at first.
China started out by dividing the day into a hundred chunks, SE Asia, it was quarters. India it was 30ths or 60ths.
So hour is a western idea and it was fairly recently that it was standardized as 1/24th of a full day rather then a 1/12th of the daytime and the Church split the day into quarters as well.
BTW, hour seems to be descended from the word for year and originally just meant a unit of time, so could be a season or year.
All above cribbed from wiki, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

My old body...

[antdude]

... doesn't like to idle for so long, so I must move around. Also, it likes to pee and poop a lot these days. :(

Old News. Swedish University has (45 w+15b) setup

[xpiotr]

When I studied in Sweden, there was a 45 min lecture, followed by 15 min break.
Then back at it again.
This was done in the 1980s when a study showed that students lost focus after roughly 45-1 hour.
Not surprising that it also applies to work...