The Benefits of Taking Breaks and Switching Off
Being able to take a break and switch off from our responsibilities can be hugely beneficial for our wellbeing. However, for many of us, our work hours have become blurred with an expectation that we are constantly available. Additionally, the pressure of a cost of living crisis and our desire to be a good employee, partner, parent, and friend can leave us feeling pressured to cram more and more into each day with less and less energy to tackle anything. So what can we do?
Taking microbreaks throughout the day, being able to truly disconnect when we are away from our responsibilities, and prioritising annual leave or school breaks etc, are possible tools we can employ to relax and reduce the chances of burnout. Building breaks into our lives can have significant benefits for our health and wellbeing, and studies also show it is ultimately beneficial for businesses.
When we are able to switch off and recharge, creativity and productivity increase. Our physical health improves, with studies showing that employees who take their full allocation of annual leave have a 28% reduced risk of time off sick. Other health benefits can include a stronger immune system, reduced stress, better cardiac health, and reduced rates of anxiety and depression and burnout. People generally feel happier, feel increased job satisfaction, leading to a happier workplace culture and reduced turnover.
In Japan, the government has introduced strategies to combat overwork and to encourage people to take time off. Innovations like Premium Friday, (a campaign where employees are encouraged to leave work early on the last Friday of the month) and no overtime days have been deployed to try to improve work/life balance. Annual stress checks were introduced in 2015 for businesses employing more than 50 employees, and there is also legislation requiring people to take a minimum of 5 days of annual leave each year. However, a 2023 study found that only 18.8% of Japanese employees take their full allocation of annual leave each year, with 42.5% of respondents taking less than 40% of that full allocation.
So why is taking a break so difficult? There are a lot of reasons why it can be challenging. A slow job market and the current cost of living crisis create pressure and anxiety – leading to a culture of presenteeism. It can also be really hard to consider ever taking a complete break as we may fear that if we were to stop, we would just not have enough energy to start again, ensuring we keep trying to push on, creating more exhaustion, anxiety and the potential for total burnout.
The demands on our time are not limited to work however. The idea that we leave work and then have completely free, blissful relaxing hours ahead of us until we are next on the clock is unrealistic for almost everyone. Outside of work, many of us are also juggling study commitments, caring responsibilities, other demands such as housework, helping with homework, coordinating life admin like appointments etc. We might have dedicated time to volunteering, or even have second or third jobs to make ends meet. All this before we even start thinking about time for our interests, exercise, and even sleep!
Having all this on our plates can make it incredibly hard to stop and set time aside to take a rest or do something we enjoy. For many of us, as we get busy and life demands become hectic, the first things we sacrifice are self care and time doing things we enjoy.
There is also no annual leave allocation from caring responsibilities. When we are looking after others, it can feel incredibly hard to say we need a break. Often, we can feel guilty that needing time off means we don’t care enough, are failing, or are “bad people”. But when we keep pushing ourselves to the point of exhaustion and burnout, no one wins.
Trying to ensure we have even a very short microbreak to ourselves every day can be incredibly beneficial. While it can feel counterintuitive, especially with the amount of things we know we have to get done overall, taking this time for ourselves can help us decompress, decrease stress and improve our mood. Some strategies to consider could be microbreaks during our day and putting boundaries around our time off.
Micro breaks:
Short pauses during our day can be incredibly helpful for our productivity and benefit our wellbeing, without taking too much of our time away from our tasks. Some possible ways we can try to introduce these pauses are:
- Movement
- Standing up and walking around for 5 minutes every hour helps improve health and wellbeing. Taking a short walk to get a coffee to get some sunlight can help our minds “reset” and improve creativity.
- Simple stretches can alleviate the health impacts of sitting for long periods and also reduce tension and stress.
- If it’s more your vibe, take a 2 minute dance break to one of your favourite songs
- Change environment
- Changing our surroundings, (depending on the environment we are moving from and to), has the potential to help us feel calmer or to give us more energy, sometimes both!
- A short walk, whether around our office or home, a turn around the block or a trip to the park or a shop, can help our brain rest and change our state of mind and mood.
- Taking a break from a task or problem we are working on and just doing something different can really make a difference to our mood and energy levels.
- Meditation and mindfulness
- Taking a short break to practice a breathing exercise or short meditation can reduce stress and lower anxiety. It can also lead to increased creativity and productivity. See our self care toolkit for a range of different activities and practices you could try. (https://bit.ly/selfcare-tell)
- Be creative
- Switching into our creative right brain can be a really good way to re-energise and take a break. Write, draw or doodle for a few minutes. Whatever you make doesn’t have to be perfect or even good – just a chance for your brain to switch channels
- Daydream
- Freeing up our mind to wander and daydream for a few minutes can also make a big difference to our productivity and creativity. Studies show that letting our minds go wherever they choose lowers stress, helps us feel more engaged and satisfied, and improves productivity.
Protecting our time off
It’s not always possible to have total breaks from some jobs. We might need to stay contactable, or even set some time aside each day to respond to emails and inquiries. Other responsibilities like caring for others do not come with allotted annual leave. However, putting some boundaries in place to protect the time we do have can help us benefit as much as possible from the breaks we do get.
- Turn off notifications on your phone and other devices or mute any work related group chats
- If this is possible for work, or we feel comfortable to trust whoever is caring for our child/parent/pet while we take a short (or longer) break, removing the temptation to see every notification can give us more of a chance to switch off and relax. If this is more stressful, muting or setting a do not disturb for all but the most urgent calls/messages can help us get off the hamster wheel of being terminally online and available.
- Set an out of office reply:
- This gives people clear expectations about when you will and won’t be available and when they can expect regular service to resume. Potentially you can also give the details for someone to contact during your absence so they are not left waiting, and you don’t have to feel the pressure to deal with any issues that have arisen. If you want to, there is nothing to stop you keeping an eye on what is happening and even dealing with some tasks, but it removes the obligation to respond immediately.
- Put your phone in another room when you sleep:
- Many of us use our phones as our alarm clocks and end up sleeping with them in the same room or even right by our heads. Putting them in another room gives us time to wind down, may enhance sleep, and prevents us from being disturbed unnecessarily by the arrival of emails, messages and calls during the night, and also removes the temptation to scroll if we do wake up overnight.
- Remove work related apps from your phone:
- If this is allowable, removing work related apps from your devices for the duration of your leave can help remove the temptation/pressure to stay connected to your work responsibilities.
- Commit to a regular activity:
- Making a commitment to do something you are interested in or enjoy on a regular basis can help us get into a routine where we have set time aside to do something pleasurable. Making a date with someone else so they can act as an accountability partner can also help us ensure we protect this time and are less likely to drop it as our responsibilities build up and life gets hectic.
- Take your annual leave:
- In Japan, only 18.8% of workers take their full allocation of annual leave. 42.5% of survey respondents took less than 40% of their full allocation – leaving things tilted firmly towards work in work/life balance seesaw.
- There are real risks to not taking all your annual leave. A UK study found that 81% of workers agree that not having a day off for months leaves them with burnout, exhaustion and poor mental health.
- When taking leave, if possible, don’t use the break to catch up with work.
- Look for support with caring responsibilities:
- If we have the financial wherewithal, finding trusted services that can support us with childcare or caring for our families can give us time to recharge and ultimately help us be better carers. Being able to spend money on a problem is not available to us all though, so looking to our communities to see if there may be after school activities or care available through schools or community centres may be one option. Searching for people we trust in our support network who might be able to step in, even if just for 30 minutes, so we can take that uninterrupted shower or take a break, even nap, can make a big difference.
- There may also be day centres available or clubs that older children or adults could participate in on a regular or one off basis to give us a chance to take a much needed break.
- Try to avoid using break time to complete other to-do list tasks
- Often we can feel that if we have a break from work or other responsibilities, we need to use that “spare” time to cram in other productive activities. Maybe we can prepare dinner, run to the post office to send that parcel, send those emails we didn’t get to before the meeting etc. While this can help us knock some things off our never ending to-do lists and lower stress in the short term , constantly being “on” can harm us in the long run, leading to burnout.