A Guide to Taking Better Breaks at Work

Sabbaticals can be life-changing opportunities. They offer the chance to explore the world, reconnect with family, or tackle that long-dreamed-of project. However, for many people, such extended departures aren’t possible due to employers’ policies or economic circumstances. In such cases strategic short breaks can help. While a longer sabbatical offers the promise of a transformative reset, short breaks can also deliver substantial returns, boosting focus, energy, and ultimately performance.

In this article, we’ll explore the hidden costs of chronic overwork, how to reclaim time for effective breaks, and the vital role leaders play in shaping recovery-friendly cultures. It’s time that breaks of any length are both accepted and celebrated as a cornerstone of success in a competitive world.

Why We Need Breaks

The human body and brain are not designed for relentless, uninterrupted effort. Like any high-performance system, we need periodic downtime to recharge, recalibrate, and maintain peak functioning.

Physiologically, breaks are crucial to preventing and mitigating fatigue. Glucose, a fuel for brain activity, gets used up during heavy cognitive activity, and breaks allow for its restoration. They also calm the stress response systems, including those that regulate cortisol, helping to lower sympathetic nervous system (“fight or flight”) activity. This not only mitigates immediate stress but also wards off chronic stress, which is linked to cardiovascular and immune system dysfunction. Finally, breaks enable a special pattern of brain activity known as the default mode network, which leads to introspection, creative ideation, and information integration.

Psychologically, breaks also address a common barrier to productivity: the mental load of unfinished personal tasks that distract us during the workday and can escalate into emergencies when neglected. Breaks to handle these responsibilities can help tidy up mental clutter and prevent crises, allowing employees to return to their tasks with clear heads.

Consider the results of a study on animal-shelter workers — a profession in which employees notoriously self-sacrifice to the point of burnout and annual turnover can exceed 100%. The only people who remained in the career for a decade and rose into organizational and national leadership roles were those who described taking breaks as a strength, not a weakness.

Because breaks allow people to reset, reduce stress, and regain perspective and focus, they also benefit teams and organizations. Social interactions during breaks can strengthen relationships and foster community, building trust and psychological safety and improving collaboration, morale, resilience, adaptability, engagement, motivation, and innovation across the group.

The Barriers to Breaks

Despite their clear benefits, most people struggle to take effective breaks from work due to cultural, organizational, and personal barriers. Some of these are well-known: Technology has afforded 24/7 availability, blurring the boundaries between people’s work and home lives. “Hustle cultures” embraced in certain industries glorify overwork as a badge of honor. And, at the individual level, viewing work primarily as a ladder for personal success and accomplishment, or as a duty to make a positive difference in the world, can make breaks seem like a waste of time — or even a moral failing.

Our ongoing research shows that early-career professionals, under pressure to prove themselves, often resort to hiding their breaks. They scroll on social media in the restroom, pretend to work, or shop online during virtual meetings. But these “hidden breaks” (which should sound familiar regardless of your tenure) are usually ineffective for true recovery because they’re accompanied by guilt over violating organizational norms, fear of being caught, and general paranoia. They are essentially tainted fruit: necessary but not nourishing.

Getting Breaks Right

Knowing that there’s tremendous value in breaks — and that people will find a way to take them in some form — how can you prioritize the most effective versions for yourself and your employees? Start by tapping into the following evidence-based attributes that make breaks successful:

Duration and timing.

While people often assume that only drastic change — taking a sabbatical, using all that accumulated PTO, or hitting the gym every day at lunch — will do, that’s not true. Even microbreaks lasting as little as a few minutes can significantly reduce fatigue and improve attention. Slightly longer breaks may yield even greater benefits. Overall, many short breaks or a few longer ones tend to have similar effects, and both are better than only a few short breaks. More important than length, however, is timing. For example, morning breaks improve resource recovery over the rest of the day. Those taken shortly after a cognitively demanding task can sustain energy and focus, while ones taken right after a meeting can help improve its outcomes. Tailor breaks to your workload rather than following a rigid schedule.

Physical activity.

Breaks that involve physical activity, such as taking a short walk or using a stationary bicycle, give you the best chance of recovering and returning to an energetic, productive state. Employers can encourage such activities by providing walking paths, ergonomic stretching areas, or even encouraging team participation in short physical activities that are accessible to all.

Cognitive recovery.

Cognitive relaxation is vital for resetting mental focus, clarity, and creativity. Progressive muscle relaxation (which involves systematically tensing and then relaxing muscle groups throughout the body) or mindfulness exercises are particularly effective. Organizations might offer quiet spaces for reflection or access to guided relaxation tools to empower people to integrate these techniques into their daily routines.

Social interaction.

Appropriate socialization (think bonding with someone over a shared interest, not interrupting lunch to ask for help with an urgent client request) can also play a vital role in recovery. For example, positive interactions during lunch breaks enhance mood and contribute to better afternoon performance, creating ripple effects that improve team cohesion and collaboration. Workplaces can incorporate communal spaces, such as inviting break rooms or outdoor seating areas that promote connection. For remote teams, consider hosting a Zoom room for anyone to pop in and out of or play a virtual round of a game. Depending on the size of the team and organization, one regular, all-purpose meetup or an infrastructure for members to self-organize around preferences will work best.

Creativity.

Recovery does not require all cognitive efforts to cease — only those that are draining. Breaks can be leveraged as opportunities for reflection, brainstorming, or engaging in mentorship, creating value for both the individual and the organization. The most famous example of this may be Pixar colleagues who found that an informal 1994 lunch meeting yielded casual conversation that spawned four movies. Similarly, advising a peer or planning a corporate volunteer event can be restorative.

Autonomy.

Research shows that when employees choose how to spend their breaks, the energizing potential of these pauses increases. For example, working parents may prefer to skip morning and midday breaks so that they can leave earlier or be fully off on the weekends. Pet owners are likely to build their work schedule around their animal’s needs, such as a walk at lunchtime. And an employee who opts to spend time alone outside over a mandatory group activity is more likely to return feeling refreshed. Employers should provide diverse recovery options and trust their people to self-direct — especially given early evidence that Gen Z workers increasingly value jobs that respect their off-time and prioritize work-life balance.

Time for personal tasks.

Finally, this is a good place to reiterate the legitimacy of chore-related breaks, such as managing personal errands. Taking time off to attend to family, go to the doctor, or do the dishes alleviates mental load, allowing people to return to work more focused and productive.

How to Shape Social Norms Around Breaks

Leaders play a key role in creating a culture of sustainable break-taking. To them, we offer the following practical guidance.

Shift your mindset.

First, ditch the myopic view of breaks as time when work is not getting done in favor of one where breaks are time invested into future work and the people who enable it. Instead of counting lost minutes, appreciate the broad returns: employees who perform better after short breaks and, longer term, are less likely to burn out or quit.

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Easing up on your work duties for a limited time can give you the energy you’ll need to flourish later.

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Such benefits may be less tangible and harder to account for than hours not billed, but good managers are not bound by what fits into a spreadsheet. Even leaders who do not fully buy into the benefits of breaks should at least appreciate that attempts to eliminate them are at best a waste of time. Anti-break cultures do not prevent breaks, but they do destroy much of the value that can be gained from them.

Normalize and support breaks.

Explicitly encourage people to openly take breaks and to use their PTO without hesitation, fear, or guilt. You might signal that taking time off is approved of at every level, including by offering or recognizing time off to care for pets or visit a new grandchild. Transparent policies and clear communication are important in an era when employees have become increasingly cynical about organizations’ intentions, such as offering unlimited time off as a backdoor way to claw back benefits. So, say it and mean it. If you see the junior associates consistently eating lunch at their desks, invite them to join you for a meal or suggest that they leave early. Model taking breaks, too. Let others know when you are taking a breather or going home for the day. Out-of-office messages are becoming a subtle (but direct and effective) tool to set clear boundaries in a nice way.

Discourage “face time.”

Protect employees from the pressure to always be on. This might necessitate a careful review (and possibly changes) to performance metrics that incentivize performative work habits. Ask: When, why, and how are employees required to attend meetings (and keep their cameras on), be in the office, or update their status on Slack? Take a critical look at whether well-intentioned policies are achieving their expected outcome or indirectly harming productivity by promoting break-taking subterfuge.

You may also need to assess customer expectations and interface with demanding clients, particularly in professions such as consulting or law, where deliverables are few and far between and productivity is measured in visibility. With strong team communication and collaboration that allows colleagues to cover for one another, evidence suggests that strategic break-taking is possible in most contexts.

Embrace trust.

Of course, all this requires trust in your team members. We can offer reason for optimism here: In our research, when left to their own devices, workers seem perfectly capable of balancing their work obligations with necessary time off. Indeed, during crunch time, we find that employees prioritize work, frontloading tasks and delaying breaks, but still come back more restored because they had agency. Trust them to know when to take a break and when not to, and most will do their jobs without burning out.

. . .

The future of work demands a shift in mindset. Breaks are not obstacles to greatness. They are part of its foundation. When individuals get the downtime they need, they return sharper, more creative, and more engaged. When teams normalize breaks, they collaborate more effectively and sustain their performance. And when organizations embed recovery into their culture, they unlock long-term resilience, innovation, and retention.