WHY THEIR TIMING MATTERS

How Micro-Breaks Help You At Work

I don’t always do better when I try to ‘push through’ a challenging task, and research backs up my experience

Janice Harayda
Lit Life
Published in
4 min readSep 23, 2024

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Zen Chung on Pexels

Every day, in the late afternoon, I go to the dogs.

I step away from my laptop, pause the writing or editing I’ve been doing, and hit a walking trail along Mobile Bay that attracts the four-footed.

The dogs their owners amble or relax on benches and watch the sun sink over the bay as the rest of us enjoy their company. My neighbors and I joke that it’s a canine tea party, and that’s not far from the truth, given how many treats the passers-by hand out to the spaniels and retrievers.

I try to allow at least a half hour for my late-afternoon break, which lets me take an energizing walk after socializing briefly with the dogs and their owners. But even a much shorter time away from my desk can be a welcome reprieve from deadlines and other pressures.

A pause in my work lets me return to it with a refreshed perspective. The dogs are so happy to receive their Snausages or Milk-Bone biscuits that no matter how glum I’m feeling about a stalled draft, I’m cheerier when I go back to it.

Breaks offer ‘psychological…

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Janice Harayda
Lit Life

Critic, novelist, award-winning journalist. Former book editor of the Plain Dealer and book columnist for Glamour. Words in NYT, WSJ, and other major media.