Danny Davis
“Research on naps, meditation, and nature walks reveals that mental breaks increase productivity, replenish attention, solidify memories, and encourage creativity.” – University Of Virginia, School Of Nursing Compassionate Care Initiative
Our frantic western lifestyle and drive towards accumulation and consumption, coupled with an ever evolving technological society, keeps us working hard and busy. Since the Industrial Revolution and the religious reforms of the Renaissance which led to a Puritanical religious mindset, hard work has been seen as a virtue, while idleness, or “sloth,” has been pronounced as nothing less than a Deadly Sin. It is time we reframed this version of taking it easy; rest and recuperation are vital for our mental health and our brain’s continuing functionality; idleness is there for a good reason: it keeps our brains and our minds fit and healthy.
Our tendency is to drive ourselves ever further to reach more goals: promotions, pay increases, recognition, awards. Stress levels are high and our health, including our mental health, suffers accordingly. Depression and chronic fatigue may be, according to studies, associated with adrenal burnout; this in turn is directly correlated to how hard we drive ourselves.
We are almost compulsive in our need to work; statistics show that Americans have one of the lowest number of vacation days, when compared to Europeans, and yet even when on holiday, Americans will not be able to resist checking their work emails and cell phones.
A Huffington Post article cites another article on “Why Germans Have Longer Vacation Times and More Productivity.” It states that, “Europeans have always seemed to take a different route when it comes to the work/life balance. Germans on average work around 1,436 hours per year, versus the 1,804 hours Americans work. With those numbers, it would be easy to conclude that Americans do more and are more productive in the workforce…But we aren’t. Studies show that Germans get roughly the same amount of stuff done in fewer hours each week, and with more vacation time.”
The Need To Cultivate Downtime
As a society, we are so ruthless with ourselves when it comes to work. Americans are known to waste their vacation days, preferring to work, work, work, in order to “get ahead,” get that promotion, and keep striving towards that ever-elusive carrot on a stick.
Studies today however are showing that idleness is a necessary “evil” or as already said, perhaps it’s even time we heralded it as a virtue!
Idleness, or downtime as we might more euphemistically call it, is being shown to have tremendous value in our capacity to form memories, pay attention, be more productive and more creative, and to achieve peak performance. Downtime can help us learn from the past and plan for the future.
Daydreaming Helps Us Problem Solve
The brain uses an astonishing 20% of the body’s entire available energy, and the brain is constantly working. Brain activity when people are at rest has been dubbed the Default Mode Network (DMN). In fact, no less than five different resting state networks have been identified, related to vision, hearing, movement attention, and memory. However, the DMN remains the best studied and perhaps the most important among them.
The DMN has been found to be more highly active in very creative types; studies show that daydreaming leads to problem solving. Our unconscious mental activity occurs during our downtime, our rest, and our idleness that produces those “Aha!” moments, those light bulb eurekas, and those sudden epiphanies.
The kind of distraction the DMN needs in order to integrate and process information can include relatively mindless tasks, such as washing the dishes or brushing one’s teeth. This may produce better results than arduously gnawing away at solving a problem.
One study showed that mind wandering is done over 46% of the time by most people. The only time when we are truly focused is during sex. Then we really know how to pay attention!
Jonathan Schooler Of UCSB, developed studies that demonstrate that mind-wandering is more useful when the mind wanderer is aware that their mind has wandered. Those who are less aware that they are daydreaming tend to be less creative, than those who can catch themselves.
Likely they are more able to retrieve their inspirational ideas which happen during mind wandering while those less aware tend to lose sight of their “brainwaves.”
Go Ahead And Take That Nap!
There have been many studies showing that naps help improve concentration and cognitive performance of people who are sleep-deprived and also those who have had healthy rest during all types of tasks.
According to Scientific American, “It seems that a 10-minute nap may be optimum. Long naps take a long time to recover from upon waking, as “sleep inertia” leaves a person feeling groggy and can take some time to wear off. In tests, 10 minutes was found to be just as helpful as naps of 20 or 30 minutes, mainly because there is no sleep inertia issue with the short nap. The brain has something called a “sleep/wake switch.”
Brain cells, which are called neurons in the wake circuit, become tired after a long day of firing, and this allows the neurons in the sleep circuit to activate and switch over to a state of sleep.
However, a long sleep is not required as only seven to ten minute power nap is all that is needed to restore the wake-circuit neurons to their alert and working condition. This is why power naps are so powerful!
This has major implications for productivity in the workplace, but rare is the employer who provides areas where staff can go to take advantage of these recharging naps.
Our North American lifestyle has most of us doing a 40-hour work week, sleeping for up to eight hours per night and staying awake and working continuously throughout the day, for eight hours or more. This may not however be the best way to manage our time or our mental health; historically, mediaeval Europeans enjoyed an hour of activity at dawn. They would then return to bed for a nap.
In Mediterranean countries, the siesta is common, since it is just way too hot to do anything in the early afternoon. According to some researchers, this is what the brain prefers in order to function optimally: a wake-sleep combo throughout the day is what it likes best and what it is wired for.
A thorough reshuffle of our standard work-week hours may be an idea whose time has come. With more work going online and working from home becoming an increasing option, the opportunity for employees to structure their workday according to their bodies’ own work/sleep rhythms is becoming a more realistic option.
The Restorative Powers Of Nature
Spending time in nature has been shown in studies to be highly restorative: restful, rejuvenating and calming for the mind. Marc Berman, a psychologist at the University of South Carolina has conducted eco-psychology experiments, which show that mental recall is stronger after time spent in nature rather than time spent in a city’s downtown hub.
Finding a few moments throughout your day to take mental breaks is very important. “It really makes a difference and, as part of your self-care regime, it is absolutely essential,” says clinical counsellor Ella Morelle, who takes daily walks in nature as part of her decompression routine.
Studies show that walks in nature lower blood pressure, calm the mind, and relax the body.
Meditation Helps You Pay Attention
One way to maximize on downtime is to use your time to meditate. A more disciplined and structured approach than merely daydreaming or zoning out, meditation teaches you to focus on present moment awareness.
It also teaches a certain detachment from your thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations. This allows the mind to let go of its habitual grasping, it’s trying to be in control; a softening and a relaxation of the mind occurs, and with this comes a greater freedom to process ideas and work through thorny issues.
Studies conclude that meditation has great benefits for mental health as it sharpens concentration skills and memory abilities.
Studies that have evaluated the differences between long-time meditators with those who do not meditate often find that the experts perform better on tests of mental acuity.
In one study, electroencephalogram tests showed that 90 days of meditation likely made the brain more efficient, so that it used up less available attention to successfully complete cognitive tests.
The amazing thing is that meditation literally transforms the very structure of the brain, and the way it behaves. Over time, consistent meditators may develop a more wrinkled cortex.
The cortex is the “grey matter,” the outer part of the brain, which does not start to develop until after a baby is born. The cortex is responsible for the more sophisticated of our mental processes like abstract thought and introspection. The more wrinkled it is, the better.
Meditation also appears to increase the volume and density of the hippocampus, that regulates memory, thickens areas of the frontal cortex that help us control emotions and helps sustain areas of the brain that control attention skills through aging.
Several studies show that shorter, consistent, daily meditation reaps better benefits than more hours spent meditating in a more erratic pattern.
“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day unless you’re too busy. Then you should sit for an hour.” Zen proverb
A 2011 study conducted by Amishi Jha and her colleague found that just twelve minutes of mindfulness meditation helped to prevent stress in thirty marines on active duty.
Life is a string of moments. If we are constantly stressed and focusing on the next task that needs to be accomplished, we tend to miss the valuable and restorative experience of being in the present moment; we miss the string of moments and before we know it, life has passed us by.
Life is happening now, in this moment, and paying attention to that helps us to not only live a richer and more fulfilled life but also to rest and replenish our minds so that we can be more productive for the next task that needs doing.
Mindfulness helps us become present to “what is.” Mindfulness helps our brains to relax and it helps us to have a deeper experience of life itself. Mindfulness allows the brain to rest, and the DMN to do its active job of processing and filtering information.
Good Sleep Helps Your Memory
Of course, this is obvious. Anyone who has ever been sleep deprived due to anything from a barking dog or young children, will know that the memory is quickly affected. Now though there are numerous studies, which show that a good working memory is dependent upon a good night’s sleep.
Taking Breaks Helps You Achieve More
According topsychologist K. Anders Ericsson of The Florida State University:
- Starting work early in the morning maximizes the brain’s energy and acuity
- Most people can only push themselves beyond their limits for about an hour before needing a rest
- Very talented people, including those in sports, writing and music rarely practice their craft more than four hours per day, or else they risk burnout
A wonderful example of this is exemplified in the Finnish school system. There, children do not start school until age seven; they get no homework and a lot of their learning is based around play and being outdoors.
They have shorter school days than North Americans do, and yet their kids are achieving some of the highest test scores in the world!
An Anatomy Of The Perfect Break
How Often Should You Take A Break?
The jury is still out on this one but there are various ideas, backed of course by various studies: You could take a break every 52 minutes, resuming work-based activity after 17 minutes of downtime. This is according to studies referred to in an article in The Atlantic.
The United States Army Research Institute found that ultradian rhythms have 90-minute cycles. Therefore, you could equally take a break every 90 minutes.
How Long Should You Break For?
The “Pomodoro” technique says take a five-minute break every 25 minutes for four cycles. Then take a 15-minute break. Peretz Lavie who studied ultradian rhythms discovered a 20 minute trough in the ultradian waveform; therefore is seems only logical to take a break for 20 minutes.
Figure out what works best for you, and then apply it!
Move Around During Your Breaks
Our bodies are not designed to sit still for eight hours a day. When you take your breaks, move around a bit, stretch, swing your arms, and breathe. This helps prevent the mind from becoming mentally stagnant. It increases the blood flow overall and allows more oxygen to be carried to the brain, which in turn helps us to feel more alert and ready for more work.
Breathe During Your Breaks
A great way to replenish and restore the nervous system, and enhance mental sharpness and focus is to do a yogic breathing exercise. It can be done in a few minutes and has been shown to increase sleep quality, mental clarity, and concentration. It boosts your energy levels and revitalizes the mind.
Vacations: Are They As Good As We Think?
Psychologists now know that vacations are involved in replenishing the body and mind by taking a break from the stresses of every day life. You have surely noticed that when you return from your vacation, your eyes are bright and sparkly, you feel rested and restored and ready to start again, able to face work with fresh motivation and energy. However, Jessica de Bloom, now at the University of Tampere, Finland, demonstrates the benefits of vacation to quickly fade upon return home. Again, you can probably relate.
Do you remember your last vacation? How long was it after you returned until it felt like you had never even been away? Probably not more than a week or two, right? Well, that is exactly what de Bloom has found in her own experiments. A short vacation is lovely at the time but doesn’t have any long-lasting benefits.
Time Off Makes You More Productive Overall
Studies show that regular, scheduled time off increases job retention, and productivity, with improvements in staff willingness and ability to work, as well as an increase in work-life contentment and pride in their work.
The Energy Project, headed by CEO Tony Schwartz, advises people to maximize on their rest and recuperation. Schwartz advocates that you should take all your vacation, all your breaks, power nap when you can, practice meditation and get seven to eight hours’ sleep every night. He also advises getting the hardest thing done in the first part of the day, when the brain has energy to tackle it.
The Energy Project has partnered with Google for the past five years, a sure sign that its strategies are working. It is common sense, but advice that many of us need to take, as we are still programmed into thinking that we must “work, work, work.”
Final Thoughts
Clearly, we already know most of this stuff; it is common sense. However, science is underwriting what we already know, and how important it is to take action on finding more moments of downtime throughout the day. Weaving little snatches of rest when we can throughout our day helps us to restore and replenish our mental acuity. Taking short breaks to breathe, stretch and move are beneficial in recharging the brain’s energy.
Consistent, shorter periods of meditation really pays off over time and reaps rewards such as improved memory and cognitive agility. Meditation literally helps build our grey matter, giving us greater capacity for abstract thought, emotional restraint, and memory and maintaining attention.
The default mode network (DMN) is the name for the brain’s activity when at rest. This has been connected with increased levels of creativity; daydreaming allows us to process information and come up with inspirational ideas we may not have had if we had not stopped to let the mind relax and drift. It is better if we are aware of the daydreaming than completely lost in our reveries.
Napping sharpens concentration and improves performance. Even 10 minutes is enough to charge up fatigued “wake-circuit” neurons to their regular capacity.
Nature walks have been found to replenish and calm the mind, as opposed to the frantic noise and pollution of a city stroll.
Meditation, good sleep, and taking time off and away from the stresses of every day life have all been found beneficial to replenishing our brain’s energy and helping us restore our brain’s optimum functioning.
Understanding the benefits is one thing; finding the discipline to apply the knowledge is another. However, it is what we need to do in order to keep ourselves mentally fit. Let’s face it: We can’t afford not to.
