How to Lessen Stress at Work by Taking Good Breaks

Take a moment to think about your workday. What emotions do you feel? 

If you’re like 83% of people in the US, your job makes you feel stressed. Our culture is notorious for placing our productivity above everything else – including our wellbeing. When we have a lot of things to do and therefore a lot of work stress, we often avoid taking breaks. We make this choice when we should be doing the exact opposite. When we’re stressed and busy, it’s even more important to take breaks. These breaks help lessen stress at work. 

As a helping professional, you probably face a number of challenges when it comes to breaks. Maybe you see clients back-to-back. Maybe you travel to several different schools a day. It’s possible that you have to be strategic about your bathroom breaks, not to even mention your lunch breaks. And, when you do end up having a few seconds to yourself, maybe your breaks are scrolling your phone or handling other tasks.

This blog post is meant to help you make the most of the time you can find for yourself. It’ll also include some ideas for refreshing breaks to lessen your stress at work. And, for any readers who struggle with feelings of guilt around resting, I have a section for you, too.

Why is it important to take breaks at work?

Think about how you feel when you do hard physical exercise. For the purpose of this example, let’s use running. Even if you’re an accomplished marathoner, can you run forever? Can you do it at your top speed? Probably not – at some point, you’d need to slow down or take a break.

Your brain works the same way! It can’t keep working forever, especially at high levels of focus.

Even though your mental wellbeing is more important than your productivity, taking breaks at work will help you focus better and complete your tasks more easily. The longer you make your brain focus on a task, the more energy you expend trying to get it done. When you take a break, you’re giving your brain a chance to get some rest before doing it again. This, in turn, lessens stress at work.

However, you need to be taking the right kind of breaks.

Scrolling your phone is likely to leave you feeling more stressed and more anxious. If you work from home, doing chores is still a task and isn’t a good break. A good break recharges and refreshes you. A good break leaves you feeling more like yourself, less stressed at work, and ready to return to your important tasks. 

Work break options to lessen stress at work

What you should choose for your breaks depends on what recharges you and what you have time for. If you’re not sure what you need, you can use the formula below, or try a few different options until you find what lessens your work stress.

• I feel restless → Try some meditation or deep breathing
• I feel tired → Go for a walk, get some movement, or listen to some fast-paced music
• I feel a strong negative emotion (anger, sadness) → Write or voice journal your feelings to let them go
• I feel scattered → Write out your to-do list. If it’s still overwhelming, choose one item on your list and break it down further. Keep breaking down the task until you reach a point where the steps feel doable.
• I feel tightness in my body → Do some yoga or gentle stretching

Here are some more options:

• Do something creative (doodle, use an adult coloring book, create a mood/vision board wallpaper for your phone or computer)
• Sit outside in nature for a few minutes
• Take a power nap, if you’re able to
• Grab a healthy snack and eat it away from your workstation
• Do 5 minutes of yoga
• Perform box breathing for 30 seconds (breathe in for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts, breathe out for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts and repeat)
• Call a friend 
• Listen to music
• Walk up and down the stairs

How to add breaks into your work day

There are a few different ways you could go about adding work breaks into your day and lessen your stress at work. The best option is to have consistent, regular, and scheduled times for your breaks. If you can control your schedule, I highly recommend you plan breaks into your day. However, I know that’s not always possible. If you can’t schedule your breaks, you can try the options below.

Option 1: Lean into the natural pauses in your workday

Are your meetings always at the same time during the day or week? If so, work a break around them. Do you always have a gap at noon for lunch? In addition to eating (away from your desk, please!), take a few minutes to practice one of the break options. If one of your meetings tends to get out early, use the time for a break instead of using it for extra work.

Here are more ideas for working with pauses:

• Listen to a relaxing playlist on your commute to different locations
• Use the fifteen minutes you have in between clients to do a muscle relaxation practice
• Use the few minutes between classes to write down how you’re feeling at that moment, and how you plan to care for any emotional needs at the end of the day

Option 2: Go with the flow

If your day is more unpredictable, choose to take your stress-relieving breaks whenever you find a pause between tasks. Be careful with this strategy, though. It can be easy to skip breaks when you don’t plan them. If you go with this option, you should check in with yourself at regular points throughout the day to make sure you’re not prioritizing your work tasks too strongly over your need for a break.

When it comes to how much of a break you take, it’s up to you, your needs, and your schedule. You can start small if taking breaks is hard for you. Pausing for even a few minutes allows your brain to recover and can lessen your stress at work.

How to avoid feeling guilty about taking breaks during work

To get the most out of your work breaks, it’s important to avoid feeling guilty about resting. You can’t lessen your work stress if you’re worried about your responsibilities while you’re taking a break. Doing so means that your work breaks will be unhelpful. They may even make you feel worse. 

I know – it’s easier said than done. 

The way around this is to change your view of rest. The goal is to see rest as, in itself, productive. You need rest in order to function at your best and lessen your stress. Remember that when you take breaks, you’re actually better at focusing and being productive. It really does help.

It’s our nature to automatically think the worst. We also have a tendency to think things won’t work before we try them, especially if we’re stressed or overwhelmed. It’s important to give stress relief methods an honest shot before dismissing them. To help you do that, you can work through some negative thoughts about rest. 

Here are some potential negative thoughts:

• I don’t have time for a break.
• This won’t help me.
• This takes away from my time to get things done.
• This is a waste of my time.

Here are some truths to help you reframe:

• I don’t have time for a break → Even 30 seconds of a break can be effective.
• This won’t help me → Stress relief methods take time to be effective. You will get better and notice a change with time and practice.
• This takes away from my time to get things done →  Taking a break can actually help you focus better and be more efficient. 
• This is a waste of my time → Your mental health is just as important (actually, more important) than your productivity.

Here are some healthy coping statements:

• I don’t have time for a break → I can step away for a couple minutes to breathe and recenter myself.
• This won’t help me → I might need to practice these techniques a few times before I notice a difference in my stress.
• This takes away from my time to get things done → Rest is productive. It’s just as important as my other tasks.
• This is a waste of my time → Rest is allowing me to recharge my body so I can keep going for the rest of the day.

Thanks for making it to the end of this post. Do you have any types of breaks that work well for you? Drop them down below so we can all benefit!