A break only helps if it is a break. Five minutes spent on messages or news keeps your attention busy and your eyes on a screen. The best short breaks are physical, screen-free and need no planning, so there is nothing to decide when the timer ends.
Five breaks that take no planning
These are the five suggestions Tomette rotates through, one per break:
- Stand up and stretch. Shoulders, neck, wrists, back. A minute of stretching after sitting still is the easiest break there is.
- Look at something far away. Out of a window, across the room. Your eyes spend focus sessions at screen distance; give them something else to settle on.
- Walk for a minute. To the kitchen, around the room, down the hall. Moving is one of the most refreshing ways to spend a break.
- Drink some water. Refill your glass. It gets you up, and it is easy to forget while you focus.
- Breathe slowly. A few slow breaths with your eyes closed. It is a clear line between one session and the next.
More ideas for longer breaks
When you have 15 to 30 minutes after a set of focus sessions:
- Go outside, even briefly.
- Make tea or coffee, and drink it away from your desk.
- Talk to someone about something other than work.
- Tidy one small thing: your desk, a shelf, the dishes.
- Read a few pages of a paper book.
What research on short breaks found
A 2022 meta-analysis by Albulescu and colleagues pooled 22 study samples with 2,335 participants on breaks of ten minutes or less. It found:
- Small but reliable gains in vigor and reductions in fatigue from short breaks.
- Performance effects depended on the task: clear for clerical and creative work, not significant for demanding thinking work.
- Longer breaks helped performance more. For cognitively heavy work, recovery may need more than ten minutes.
That is a good reason to keep the long break after every few focus sessions, and to make short breaks real.
What not to do in a break
- Checking messages or email. It is work in a different window.
- Scrolling a feed. It keeps your eyes on a screen and your attention busy.
- Starting a small task “while you’re at it”. The break becomes a second shift.
Break suggestions in Tomette
Each break in Tomette suggests one screen-free way to recover, chosen from the list above, so there is nothing to decide. Breaks start on their own when a focus ends, and the next focus waits until you are back. See choosing a focus rhythm for how long breaks can be.