1. Petting your pet reduces stress and improves team interactions
What if you could combine your right to a break from work with your pet's right to be petted?
There’s a reason why doggies are becoming more common in offices. Studies show that interacting with a dog or cat can lower your levels of cortisol (the stress hormone), improve your mood, and even boost your cognitive abilities!
According to japan business mailing list research from the University of Washington, petting a dog has a more beneficial effect on reducing stress and improving the ability to plan, concentrate, motivate and focus than traditional programs designed for this purpose. Just 10 minutes of petting a dog a day brings the desired results!
A study conducted by Columbia University showed that interaction with animals increases serotonin levels – the hormone of happiness. Higher serotonin levels mean better mood, and well-being is a key element of mental balance, necessary for maintaining healthy motivation, a sense of purpose and productivity.
And one more thing: scientists from the University of Michigan have proven that the presence of a dog in the work environment leads to a higher level of empathy and trust, and as a result, to better and more open cooperation between employees!
Taking a break with your beloved furry friend can result not only in messy clothes, but also in lower stress levels, greater productivity, and more satisfying team interactions!
2. Juggling – probably the best workout for your brain (especially if you work with text!)
Jim Kwik, a popular brain trainer and creator of the KwikBrain podcast , believes that one of the best ways to exercise your mental abilities is juggling and recommends using it during breaks while working.
Don't worry, you don't have to throw in flaming torches or razor-sharp knives right away - balled up socks will do just fine.
What's more, it doesn't matter if the thrown objects fly in your hands as if gravity didn't exist, or if you have to pick them up from the floor more often - the benefits are primarily... learning!
Research conducted at the University of Oxford has shown that juggling increases the density of white matter in the brain - this is where the axons (nerve fibers) are located, responsible for conducting signals between neurons (nerve cells).
The more white matter, the more connections, and therefore: more efficient thinking! Gray cells, or those areas of the brain responsible for processing transmitted signals, also gain.
But that's not the end of the benefits: it turns out that just a few minutes of tossing balls expands your peripheral vision, making juggling an ideal activity for people who deal with text in their work, such as translators, content writers, lawyers, scientists or programmers.
Wider peripheral vision means you can see larger sections of material at once, which means you can work faster!
Learning to juggle also improves concentration, spatial imagination, mathematical skills, and the detection of hidden patterns – after all, when juggling, we recreate nothing more than trajectory patterns in the air.
Many eminent mathematicians, theoretical physicists, programmers and other scientists devote themselves to this exercise in their free time (see also: TED, Alexander Leymann, The Beauty and Mathematics of Juggling ).
If you want to join them, take a few minutes of juggling break every 20-30 minutes (e.g. according to the pomodoro method ).
3. Regular meals = energy for longer
Do you forget to eat at your computer or eat only sweet rolls? That's a mistake! If you're not an AI robot, your body needs valuable food to function properly.
A bun or a candy bar will get you back on your feet, but only for a moment – you'll soon experience another sinking feeling in your stomach.
When your guts are playing a march, irritability appears, it is harder for you to stay focused and be productive. A drop in blood sugar level is responsible for these experiences. The first symptom is a characteristic, all-encompassing sleepiness - do you know that?
To counteract this, plan your lunch break in advance and don't skip it just because you have tasks waiting!
Many teams adopt a specific time slot without meetings so that everyone can take care of a proper meal during that time. Check how it is in your company and use it!
Mental abilities are influenced not only by the regularity of meals, but also by the quality and variety of your diet - if you do not regularly provide your body with the vitamins and nutrients it needs, you contribute to the deterioration of your results!
For example, the presence of omega-3 fatty acids in the diet is directly correlated with the ability to learn, concentrate and think creatively.
Healthy omega-3 fats can be found in vegetable oils (you can add them to salads), fish, avocados, chia seeds and walnuts.
To think efficiently, take care of regular meals, use the least processed products possible and eat a variety of foods!
4. A break from mental work turns on the subconscious
For most tasks, the conscious mind is quite effective, but like any tool, it has its limitations.
It has long been known that the most thorough analysis is not the path to creativity and no matter how hard we try, persistent intellectual effort will not lead to an innovative solution.
The best ideas and solutions can come to mind at the least expected moment – most often precisely when our conscious mind is… resting!
To use the creative power of intuition, you need a break from mental work – a few or a dozen minutes of seemingly doing nothing is enough for the subconscious to start working and “spit out” unexpected results.
But be careful: remember to work with the standard method first – without the database from your conscious mind, even your subconscious won’t come up with brilliant ideas!
Read also: How to find solutions with the help of your subconscious?
5. Dancing helps you think strategically (and keeps your mind sharp!)
Do you like crazy dancing around the room and your feet move on their own to new songs by Sanah or Nosowska?
How is that possible? Dancing, like any physical activity, improves blood flow, oxygenating the gray cells. But that's not all!
A study conducted by Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York on the impact of various activities on maintaining mental sharpness proved that the benefits of dancing go far beyond the benefits of other activities!
The study lasted 21 years and monitored dementia rates in older people, including Alzheimer's patients. It found that intellectual activities are overrated – they have little to medium impact on preserving cognitive abilities. For example, reading books reduces the risk of dementia by 35%, and regularly solving crossword puzzles by 47%.
Interestingly, engaging in writing or participating in discussion groups, as well as almost all the physical activities studied, including cycling, playing golf or swimming, turned out to be insignificant – they did not reduce the susceptibility to dementia in any way.
The only physical activity that turned out to have an impact (and a big one at that!) was dancing. Frequently dancing to music reduced the risk of dementia by a whopping 76%, the best result of all activities, including mental ones (Source: Leisure Activities and the Risk of Dementia in the Elderly )!
Why is this happening? Studies have shown that dance is the most effective at creating new neural pathways because (unlike activities that rely on repetitive movement or intellectual patterns), it requires constant decision-making and strategic thinking!