Take a Break!
No, seriously. Robert Pozen, author of Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours suggests taking a break every 75 and 90 minutes.
Working for 75 to 90 minutes takes advantage of the brain’s two modes:
a. The learning or focusing mode
b. The consolidation mode
Says Pozen. “When people do a task and then take a break for 15 minutes they help their brain consolidate information and retain it better,”
In addition to this, research conducted by Tony Schwartz, founder of the Energy Project, shows that humans naturally move from full focus and energy to physiological fatigue every 90 minutes.
It turns out that when we describe ourselves as mentally ‘drained’, we are actually being very accurate. We are losing real energy in the form of blood glucose stored (in finite quantities) in the brain, a phenomenon called ego depletion.
Our brains are energy efficient machines which, when low on glucose, limit further glucose expenditure. Cognitive tasks and logical decision-making consume a lot of energy, so can cause glucose depletion. And once the store of glucose in our brain is depleted, it becomes harder to perform these very tasks.
Once our glucose stores are depleted, we exercise less self-control, becoming irritable, easily distracted, unmindful of what we say and more likely to make mistakes. The average time to go from a full glucose tank to empty? Approx 90 minutes.
What that means is that even though you have successfully identified your MITs for the day, and you have figured out when you’re at your productive best according to your chronotype, you’ll still hit fatigue/saturation point 75 to 90 minutes into your task.
So, if you look at your schedule and see MITs and/or routine tasks stacked back to back for more 90 minutes at a time, then give yourself a break in between that MIT. Save yourself saturation and fatigue. This will help you be more productive.
