What Happens When You Don’t Take a Break at Work?

What did you have for lunch yesterday? While you may not recall what was on your plate or in your lunchbox, if your answer is “nothing” because you never took a break, we need to talk. Of course, you need lunch to fuel your internal engine, but you also need to take a break at work to maintain your health and well-being. You too, remote workers. Even though you’re in the comfort of your own home and near a refrigerator, 72% of you aren’t breaking for lunch either!

If you’re one of 25% of all employees in the U.S. who never take lunch or other breaks at work during the day, put your work aside right now and read why you’re missing out.

Why Aren’t You Taking a Break From Working?

You either know or can probably guess why we’re not taking a break from work as much as we should. If we take a break at work, we think we’ll:

• look unproductive.
• not get enough work done.
• feel guilty
• be judged by our coworkers or boss
• be able to go home earlier.
• spend too much money because of “lunchflation,” where a week of takeout lunches can cost up to $50 a week

Why You Should Take a Break at Work?

You and 85% of your coworkers, know taking a break from work would be beneficial, even though you work eight hours straight every day. There are concrete benefits to taking a work break during the day.

1. You’ll Get More Done in Less Time

When you’re tired, stressed, or bored, you are less efficient and make more mistakes. You are more productive and creative when you come out of the gate refreshed. Even when you take a break at work for five minutes, it can increase your energy and sustain your brain power.

Think of what you hear from the Help Desk when your computer is acting up or running slow: “Have you tried rebooting it?” Turn it off, wait a couple of minutes, and turn it back on. Most of the time, that fixes the problem. Our brains are like computers—sometimes we just need to reboot.

2. Your Focus Will Improve

Try staring at a photo or a piece of art without a break and see how long it takes before it becomes blurry and the fine details get fuzzy. Look away for as little as a minute, then turn back to the picture, and it’s clear again. That’s how our eyes and brain are wired.

Take a break from working on that spreadsheet or report, and when you return to it, you may notice something new or something that needs to be corrected. You might think of a new method or goal for the project you’re working on.

3. A Routine of Daily Breaks Combats Workplace Burnout

Day after day, hour after hour of doing something stressful or tedious leads to burnout. Just as your arm muscles get tired after so many repetitions with free weights, your brain breaks down if you don’t know how to take a break. The idea of cross-training is to rotate through a series of different exercises. You may not be able to do 20 burpees one after another, but you can probably do even more when you take them just two at a time with a different type of movement in between.

4. Taking a Work Break Ignites Your Creativity

The brain is not capable of extended focus, especially on something difficult. A study in Science Daily shows how taking a break from working on something intense actually redirects the blood flow from the overworked part of the brain to a new area, refreshing cognitive functioning. Brain scans also show that daydreaming causes the problem-solving and creative areas of the brain to light up. This phenomenon is called diffuse-mode thinking. That breakthrough or sudden idea you had while in the shower or driving is an example.

5. Breaks at Work Help You Achieve Work-Life Balance

Do you drive home from work knowing you have a list of things to do before bedtime? Are your weekends a frantic stream of errands and details? You can get some of those small tasks done when you take a break at work. A phone call to refill a prescription, a couple of minutes to pay your bills, or a quick trip to the bank during a regular break can give you more free time after work.

6. Getting Away From Your Desk Boosts Morale

We’ve established that you feel better after you take a break at work. Getting up and seeing the other humans who work with you also helps you feel more connected.

How Long Is a Lunch Break According to the Law?

Here’s why you shouldn’t feel guilty about taking a break at work: Employers actually have to follow laws from the federal government, the state, and possibly their locality when it comes to employee breaks.

Federal Work Break Laws

Federal laws don’t stipulate whether employees are entitled to take a break at work. They do, however, regulate how much and when an employer must pay workers during breaks. Short breaks of up to 20 minutes are normal paid work time. Federal law allows employers to count meal breaks as time off. But many employers pay for the time employees are having a meal as a benefit.

State Work Break Laws

Each state may set its own employee break laws that can supersede the federal mandates. For example, Colorado’s state law says employees must be able to take a break at work for half an hour if they work longer than five consecutive hours. They must be allowed to take mealtime breaks and be paid for that time when the nature of their work “prevents relief from all duties.”

Local Work Break Laws

Some cities have break laws for employees working in that locality that are different from the state regulations. Other states have passed laws that don’t let localities have their own laws about breaks.

Be sure you look up your state and local laws around breaks and read up on your employer’s breaktime policies. If there isn’t a poster in the building explaining what to expect, be sure to ask your HR department.

How to Take a Break

If you’ve never taken breaks, the idea may leave you at a loss for what to do. You can take a lot of microbreaks of five minutes each several times a day, take a substantial lunch break, or take a break from working a couple of times per day plus lunch. How are you going to commit to a break routine and stick with it? It’s all in the timing. Some say you must schedule your breaks, otherwise 5:00 p.m. rolls around and you realize you haven’t left your desk all day.

Here are three popular methods for how to take a break at work.

1. Two 15-Minute Breaks Per Day

This might be the easiest method for a break beginner. Plan to take a break at work twice a day for 15 minutes each time, spaced out evenly. This can be in addition to lunch that you break for or eat at your desk. Or it can be your orientation into Breaktime 101. You can schedule these 15-minute breaks like appointments on your calendar. Take a break mid-morning and another mid-afternoon.

2. The Pomodoro Method

Working in small bursts suits some people, especially if you have a large project with many steps. You work for 25 minutes, then break for five to take a stretch, walk to the kitchen for a drink, or do an exercise at your desk. After four of these 25 on/5 off sessions, take a longer break of 30 minutes or more. What a perfect way to work in a lunch break!

Why Pomodoro? The inventor of this method is Italian consultant Francesco Cirillo. He used a kitchen timer to set the work and break intervals. The timer was tomato shaped, and pomodoro is Italian for tomato.

3. 90-Minute Work Blocks

If you’d like longer stretches of work time, you can work in 90-minute blocks of time. This can maximize productivity based on the science that shows our bodies work in natural rhythms of 90 minutes. Called ultradian rhythm, this mimics the sleep cycle that moves from higher to lower activity during a 90-minute time period.

Unless we suppress or ignore them, we get clear signals from our bodies telling us when we need to take a break at work. Every 90 minutes you are likely to feel fidgetiness, hunger, drowsiness, and loss of focus.

4. The 52-17 method

Yet another theory says that we are most productive in 52-minute chunks of time, with 17-minute breaks in between. This compromise between the Pomodoro and the 90-minute block schedule has shown that those who follow it work with more purpose.

What Can You Do When You Take a Break at Work?

You can simply sit at your desk, close your laptop and take a stretch that counts as a small work break. But if you really want to use your break to its fullest and recharge, here are some other ideas to try:

• Take your break outdoors. Twenty-nine minutes of fresh air can stimulate a 45% productivity increase.
• Spend that time outside walking for 20 minutes.
• Walk around inside. This is great for inclement weather.
• Talk with coworkers about non-work topics.
• Check your personal voicemail.
• Browse the internet for non-work content.
• Check your social media.
• Read a book.
• Grab a snack, coffee, or soda.
• Drawing repetitive patterns mimics meditation.
• Meditate, either by yourself, or with a guided recording.
• Listen to music.
• Look at adorable animal photos. Looking at puppies and kittens is found to release dopamine, your brain’s natural feel-good drug.
• Plan an ultimate break—your next vacation.
• Make a grocery list.
• Exercise, even in 10-minute spurts.

Think About Taking a Permanent Break From Your Job

Be honest. Do you need encouragement to take a break at work? Or do you feel like your manager doesn’t support you in taking breaks throughout the day? If the latter is the case, say “gimme a break!” Then, during that break, complete your Monster profile and walk your way into a new job. By joining Monster, recruiters and hiring managers will have instant access to your resume. We’ll also send job alerts to your inbox based on your career goals.