The Lifelong Learner         by Stanley Kubasek | About Me |

Do you want to be more productive at work? Use breaks to your advantage! (Good advice, right? ;-))

Seriously, I heard this a number of times already (I talked about it as part of the review for The Power Of Full Engagement book). I actually started taking brakes every 90 to 120 minutes at work and I think they're helping me. I know that sometimes I don't take them because something that I'm working on is urgent (ie, I have a bug to fix), but I suffer as a result, because it takes me longer to find the bug (fatigue almost always kicks in).

Breaks really work. Take a 5-10 minute break at least every two hours.

There is even more support for breaks now, I just discovered. Researchers at MIT found that regular breaks are key to better memory. While testing rats, they found that your brain will replay the information that it recently gathered during break time. "This repeated rewind gives other parts of the brain time to process and store the information."

Reference
Coffee Break Brain, ScienCentral News