• Home
  • New? Start Here
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Real Mom Life

  • Purpose and Passion
    • Planners
    • Purpose and passion
    • Reinvention
    • Retirement
    • Starting a business
    • Volunteering
    • Working
    • Trying new things
    • Ageism
    • Giving back
    • Confidence
    • Encore careers
    • Encouragement
    • Gratitude
    • Happiness
    • Inspiration
    • Lifelong Learning
  • Adventure
    • Travel
    • Technology
    • Trying new things
    • Books and movies
    • Embracing change
    • Fun
    • Holidays
    • Pets
  • Relationships
    • Marriage
    • Friendships
    • Parenting
    • Painful parenting
    • Mothering
    • Grandparenting
    • Aging parents
    • Empty nest
    • Cancer caregiving
    • Child adoption
    • Homeschooling
    • Special needs kids
    • Life skills for kids
    • Activities for kids
  • Health and Beauty
    • Alternative health practices
    • Fashion
    • Hair care
    • Health insurance
    • Healthy aging
    • Healthy brain
    • Makeup
    • Medical issues
    • Mental health
    • Sexuality
    • Skin care
    • Sleep
    • Stress
    • Nutrition
    • Physical fitness
    • Self-care
  • Creativity and Spirituality
    • Faith
    • Crafts
    • Hobbies
    • Art journaling
    • Blogging
    • Journaling
    • Jewelry making
    • Writing
  • Home and Finances
    • Cleaning
    • Cooking and food
    • Declutter
    • Decor
    • DIY Home
    • Downsize
    • Gardening
    • Holidays
    • Organizing
    • Saving money
    • Simplify
  • Coffee Love
  • Rants, Raves and Reviews
  • Bucket List
  • Store

7 Advantages of Taking Breaks

August 17, 2018 By Christine Field

This post may contain affiliate links.

I had a moment of clarity a month or so ago about my need to take a break.

TAKING BREAKS

I looked at my schedule – jammed.

I looked at my possessions – jammed.

I looked at my to-do list – jammed.

I felt overwhelmed and it came to me that it was time for a break!

The Western world views breaks as a tool to promote laziness. But your effectiveness and efficiency will improve if you take regular breaks. You can work more intently and for more hours each day if you’ll give yourself a break at least once per hour. You won’t just get more done, you’ll be happier and less stressed, too.

Just as it is important to take breaks during the day, they are important during the month and the year!

Learn about the many advantages of taking breaks:

 

  1. You’ll get more done. Try a little experiment at work. First, spend a day attempting to do nothing but work for the entire day and note how much you accomplish. The following day, focus on your work for 30 minutes and then take a 5-minute break. Notice how much more you accomplish.

I noted that when I “powered through” the crazy busy days, sometimes I was actually less productive! Counter-intuitive, perhaps, but                taking breaks gives you perspective and actually allows you to get more done.

 

  1. You’ll feel much better at the end of the day. While performing the previous experiment, notice how you feel physically and mentally at the end of the day. You’ll feel nearly as good at the end of the day as you did at the beginning if you take breaks. Without breaks, you’ll feel exhausted.

On those days when I “power-through”, the fatigue at the end of the work day makes my too tired to enjoy my family at the end of the                day. When I reserve some energy during the day, I have some left to give my family at the end of the work day. Try it!

  1. The quality of your work is improved. The ability to focus is limited. Your mind begins to wander at some point. The quality of your work is compromised when your focus begins to wane.

 

  • Taking regular breaks is an effective way to ensure the quality of your work doesn’t suffer.

 

  1. Breaks provide opportunities for evaluation. It’s important to regularly assess if you’re working effectively. If you put your head down and never look up, you can find yourself lost in the weeds. A break is an opportunity to reevaluate the situation.
  2. Taking a break can lower your stress. It’s important to intermittently disengage from any activity that causes stress. Your ability to work is compromised as your stress rises beyond a certain level.
  3. Breaks help to prevent boredom. Studies suggest that it’s more effective to regularly disengage and reengage with goals rather than focusing on them for long periods of time. The same idea applies to your work. Avoid spending too much time on one task before taking a break. You’ll maintain a higher level of interest in your work.
  4. You can use your breaks to get other things done. Imagine how much you can accomplish with 8 or more 10-minute breaks each day. You could spend those 10 minutes performing an exercise or two, meditating, staying in contact with friends and family, tidying up, paying bills, or practicing the violin.

 

  • A break is a change in activity. Breaks don’t have to be spent daydreaming, though that’s not a bad way to spend a break.

 

You might be wondering how long a break should be and how frequently they should be taken. Science has an answer. For most people, the ideal break schedule is a 5-minute break every 30 minutes or a 10-minute break every 60 minutes. It can also be helpful to take a longer break every 2-3 hours.

 

Try a few different schedules and see what works for you. As a general rule, tasks that require more brainpower or muscle power require more frequent breaks.

 

Breaks are enjoyable way to add hours to your day. Your output will increase and you’ll also enjoy your free time more since you won’t be exhausted. Give yourself a break today and enjoy the many benefits taking regular breaks provides.

Filed Under: Working Tagged With: take a break, taking breaks

Previous Post: « Tell your stories!
Next Post: The Courage of Pink Pants »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Sue from Sizzling Towards 60 & Beyond

    August 22, 2018 at 1:03 am

    Hi Christine, thanks for joining us this week at #MLSTL with a very important reminder. It is so easy to get involved in a project and forget to take a break. I know that sometimes I’m sitting at the computer for hours because I’m writing blog posts, reading other blogs and commenting. Sitting for too long is not healthy! Taking a break from technology is important as well and I’ve been trying to get a couple of social media free days into my week – not easy!!! Have a great week, Christine. x

    • Christine Field

      August 22, 2018 at 6:56 am

      I hear ya! I’m a lawyer and I spend a lot of time in court. This consists of the occasional moment of high drama, punctuated by hours of crushing tedium. There is a lot of truth to the new phrase that sitting is the new smoking. Maybe I can convince the judges I appear in front of most often to coordinate recess aerobics. A gal can always dream.

  2. Leanne | www.crestingthehill.com.au

    August 22, 2018 at 8:02 am

    I’m more of a chunk-of-time break person. I try to plan one day a week when I’m home with no plans for the day. It’s my time to de-stress and renew and catch up on all the little leisure things I like to do. Then I can tackle just about anything else the rest of the week throws at me.

    • Christine Field

      August 22, 2018 at 11:44 am

      Ugh. If I have a week when I have no down time at home, I’m a wreck! I need that time to catch up on everything, like hand-washing my bras and panty hose. Yeah, that’s the glamorous life I’m living!

  3. Christie Hawkes

    August 24, 2018 at 5:43 pm

    I couldn’t agree more. When I’m working at my desk, I set a reminder on my computer to get up and walk around every hour. On those times when I’m intent on a project and ignore the reminder too many times, I always regret it–both for the quality of the work and for how I feel. I also believe in having a break from the computer once a week and a couple of small vacations (at least 4-5 days) from all work during the year. I appreciate that your post validates my beliefs about breaks! 🙂 #MLSTL

    • Christine Field

      August 25, 2018 at 6:09 pm

      A week without a computer? Gasp! You are a paragon of self-control!
      Thanks for the idea of setting a computer reminder to move about. I’m gonna do that.

Primary Sidebar

FacebookInstagrammailPinterestYouTubeTwitter

Hi, I’m Christine

Have you been a wholehearted mother, but time, toddlers and teenagers have moved on? If you are wondering what comes next for you, you’ll feel right at home here.

Or, are you a mom for whom family life has been non-Pinworthy and parenting has been downright painful? I hear ya. There are many of us around.

Are you looking for a life full of exploration and adventure after the nest empties, but maybe you have no idea how to go about doing that? Stick around! We’ll explore adventures together to help you gain more clarity for your own path.

After a couple decades of writing books and articles about parenting, homeschooling and adoption, speaking to homeschoolers and other parent groups, and reaching out to the mom in the trenches who was trying to make the best of it - my kids grew up. Some grew up and grew away. I was determined to find a way out of the pain, emptiness and lack of direction.

For many of us, the journey starts with something we moms are not accustomed to. After years of caring for and serving others, sometimes we forget the beauty and wonder of US. We need to spend some time getting to know the parts of ourselves that have lain dormant, and take the time to explore interests and passions that we set aside.

I’d like to invite you to get the “What’s Next for Mom” workbook and jump into this growing tribe of Moms who are emptying the nest and filling the life! Let’s reignite your Mojo after Mothering!
Read More…

Visit my Amazon Influencer Storefront

www.amazon.com/shop/christine.field.7505

Search the Blog

Want to Search For Something?

Disclosure and Privacy Policy

Real Mom Life is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

 

Cookie policy

This website will store some information about your preferences on your own computer inside a tiny file called a cookie.  A cookie is a small piece of data that a website asks your browser to store on your computer or mobile device. The cookie allows the website to remember your actions or preferences over time.

You can delete all cookies that are already on your computer, and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being placed. However, if you do this, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit a site, and some services and functionalities may not work.

Most browsers support cookies, but you can set your browser to decline them and can delete them whenever you like. You can find instructions here for how you can do that on various browsers.

This website uses cookies to

1) Identify you as a returning user and to count your visits in traffic statistics analysis

2) Remember your custom display preferences (such as whether you prefer comments to display all-collapsed or not)

3) Suggest any recent searches you’ve made on our site

4) Provide other usability features, including tracking whether you’ve already given your consent to cookies

Enabling cookies is not strictly necessary for the website to work but it will provide you with a better browsing experience.

The cookie-related information is not used to identify you personally and is not used for any purpose other than those described here.

There may also be other types of cookies created after you’ve visited this website. This site uses Google Analytics, a popular web analytics service that uses cookies to help to analyze how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of this website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of another website, compiling reports on website activity, and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google undertakes not to associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.

Third Party Advertising

This site has third-party advertising companies serving ads to you when you visit. These companies may store information about your visits here and to other websites in order to provide you with relevant advertisements about goods and services. For example, if they know what ads you are shown while visiting this site, they can be careful not to show you the same ones repeatedly.

These companies may employ cookies and other identifiers to gather information which measures advertising effectiveness. The information is generally not personally identifiable unless, for example, you provide personally identifiable information to them through an ad or an email message.

They do not associate your interaction with unaffiliated sites with your identity in providing you with interest-based ads.

This site does not provide any personal information to advertisers or to third party sites. Advertisers and other third-parties (including the ad networks, ad-serving companies, and other service providers they may use) may assume that users who interact with or click on a personalized ad or content are part of the group that the ad or content is directed towards (for example, readers in the Pacific Northwest who read certain types of articles). Also, some third-party cookies may provide them with information about you (such as the sites where you have been shown ads or demographic information) from offline and online sources that they may use to provide you more relevant and useful advertising.

To learn more about what options you have about limiting the gathering of information by third-party ad networks, you can consult the website of the Network Advertising Initiative.

You can opt out of participating in interest-based advertising networks, but opting out does not mean you will no longer receive online advertising. It does mean that the companies from which you opted out will no longer customize ads based on your interests and web usage patterns using cookie-based technology.

Sharing Information

This site does not sell, rent, or disclose to outside parties the information collected here, except as follows:

(a) Affiliated Service Providers: This site has agreements with various affiliated service providers to facilitate the functioning of the site. For example, the site may share your credit card information with the credit card service provider to process your purchase. All administrative service providers that this site uses are required to have the same level of privacy protection as this site does, and therefore your information will be handled with the same level of care. Additionally, for example, this site may use analytic or marketing services such as Google Analytics, Google Adsense, Taboola, or RevContent, to which collection you hereby unconditionally consent.

(b) Where required by law: This site may share the collected information where required by law, specifically in response to a demand from government authorities where such demand meets the legal requirements.

(c) Statistical Analysis: This site may share Non-Personal Information and aggregated information with third parties, including but not limited to for advertising or marketing purposes. No Personal Information will be shared in this manner.

(d) Transactions: In connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, financing or acquisition, or in any other situation where Personal Information may be disclosed or transferred as a business asset.

How To Opt Out Of Interest-Based Advertising


Opting Out of Interest-Based Advertising Services: This website is a member of the Network Advertising Initiative(NAI) and adheres to the NAI Codes of Conduct as described on the NAI website. This website also adheres to the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) Self-Regulatory Principles. For a description of the DAA Program, please visit the DAA website.

Opting Out of Interest-Based Advertising by Third Parties: To find out more about interest-based advertising on the internet and how to opt out of information collection for this purpose by companies that participate in the Network Advertising Initiative or the Digital Advertising Alliance, visit NAI’s opt-out page or DAA’s Consumer Choice Page.

 

Footer

About Christine

FacebookInstagrammailPinterestYouTubeTwitter

At Real Mom Life, my passion is to provide resources and reassurances for moms facing the surprising challenges of family life. In my writing and speaking, I explore solutions to unexpected issues in adoption, homeschooling, special needs, and more while encouraging moms to extract the maximum joy out of each day. Read More…

Real Mom Life

Real Mom Life

10339 S. Kostner Ave.

                              Oak Lawn, IL 60453

 

Copyright © 2023 Real Mom Life on the Foodie Pro Theme