Everyone knows that you can’t work non-stop without breaks and remain productive. You accomplish far less in a marathon 16-hour day than you do in two separate 8-hour days. Recent studies indicate that for knowledge workers, the ideal work day is somewhere between 4 and 6 hours. To get the most productivity out of your day, you need to take strategic breaks. But the best way to take breaks will depend on your personal work and living rhythms.
Morning, Noon, or Afternoon?
Each of us has an innate rhythm of when we are most productive, a 4-hour window when we’re in the zone. The windows are from 6:00 – 10:00, from 10:00 – 2:00, and from 2:00 – 6:00. You get two of these windows each day, one that starts in the AM and one that starts in the PM.
This is beyond the difference between being an early bird or a night owl. Someone with the 10:00 – 2:00 window could be an early bird who likes to get into the office at 6 AM when there are no distractions because they have trouble focusing in the morning. They get a few hours of solid work in before their coworkers arrive. They have some meetings. Then they finish strong, with their most productive time of the day. Or they could be a night owl, like many of the programmers I worked with. They prefer to wait until everything is dark and quiet before their brain lights up with creativity.
The key to knowing your most productive window is that you can schedule non-productive activities, such as status meetings, outside of that window. Schedule your big bursts of productive activity during your window. Save routine email correspondence, paperwork, and other low-productivity tasks for the time outside your window.
Take Breaks During the Day
Research has shown that we work best in bursts of 90 – 120 minutes. That allows us to get deeply into a problem or solution, but not spend so much time that we burn out. There are three major methods of breaking up your work time into smaller amounts, to keep you sharp. Which method you choose will depend on your work style, as well as the type of work you do.
Two large breaks
The first method is to schedule two large breaks of 15 – 20 minutes. The first breaks up your morning activities. The second breaks up your afternoon activities. This is the classic morning and afternoon coffee break style. It works well for people who have morning and afternoon work sessions of approximately the same duration. If you start at 8am and take lunch at 11am, your afternoon will drag. You’ll be working 2 – 3 hours without a break.
Pomodoros
Named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer, this method calls for half-hour chunks called pomodoros. You work non-stop for the first 25 minutes, then take a 5-minute break. After completing four pomodoros, you take a longer break. This style works well for people who are able to work on a single task for 25 minutes. If your work activities take significantly more or less time than that, the stress of trying to fit your work into the time limit will offset the productivity gains from increased focus.
Blocks
This method calls for 90-minute blocks of focused activity, followed by a 20-minute rest period. Each 90-minute block should consist of a single task, to which you can devote all of your attention. Not all of the tasks need to be high-productivity tasks. For example, you can designate one block for dealing with your email and voice mail messages. But during the other blocks, you do not answer the phone or check your mail.
There are other styles of when and how to take breaks. However, these are the top three. What method of taking breaks works best for you?
