“Downtime is important for our health and our body, but also for our minds,” says Elissa Epel, a psychiatry department professor at the University of California at San Francisco’s School of Medicine, to The Washington Post.
This can come in the form of a long walk, or even a pause before entering the conference room for a meeting, says Robert Poynton, who literally wrote the book on the topic, called Do Pause: You Are Not a To-Do List.
Poynton, an associate fellow at the University of Oxford in England, explained to the paper that we need to give our brains a break from time to time. “[W]e feel that we need to be getting on with things.” However, “if we’re always getting on with things, we haven’t taken any time to decide or examine whether what we’re getting on with is the most interesting, important, fruitful, delightful, pleasurable or healthy thing,” he explains.
During the pandemic, when millions of workers were toiling away remotely, Microsoft amassed a trove of data on the subject, and noted that workers who took part in a study that mandated 10-minute breaks between tasks were more focused and engaged — and less stressed — than those who slogged through meetings back-to-back.
In short, their researchers noted, “Breaks between meetings allow the brain to ‘reset,’ reducing a cumulative buildup of stress across meetings.”
Methodology and results have not been verified or endorsed by ABC News or The Walt Disney Company.