Chew on this: Benefits of multiple, short food breaks

Illustration: Ehsanur Raza Ronny

I have a small yet highly productive team. The amount of tasks they manage would normally require at least twice the people. Which partly explains their frequent suggestions to the rest to head to the canteen for a short break. Or head out for food. Or order in some food. Food plays a big role in our work. Management knows it's best to let these people do as they please or they might ask for the money they really deserve. But does it really help?

Boredom kills productivity

Sitting at a desk for long stretches slows you down. It is as painful as watching that ridiculously long episode in season three of Breaking Bad where they spend the entire episode trying to kill a fly that had flown into the meth lab.

What happens when you do monotonous work?

Focussing on one thing for too long often slowly shuts down your brain. More so when your stomach grumbles or the work feels the same as counting a single sheep jumping over a fence many times. Problem solving becomes a chore. Take a break to literally re-boot. Kind of like our Link3 internet service.

Kimberly Elsbach, a professor at the University of California, who studies workplace psychology says, "Staying inside, in the same location, is detrimental to creative thinking. It's also detrimental to doing the rumination that's needed for ideas to percolate and gestate and allows a person to arrive at an 'aha' moment."

Help retain information

Remember when you were in university and needed to cram all night for an exam? In the morning, during the exam, a lot of that information would elude you like the winning ticket of the national lottery. In oversimplified terms, information needs to sink in gently. Small breaks allow assimilated info to bounce around the insides of your head till it finds a place to settle.

DeskTime, a productivity app for tracking computer use showed the highest-performing 10 percent tended to work for 52 consecutive minutes followed by a 17-minute break.

Connect

Nothing helps better to bond than getting together over a cup of overly sweet coffee, meat-free chicken sandwich and jokes—terrible jokes that will make intellectuals curl up and die.

There you have it. When tired, get up, take along a co-worker and head for some munchies. And figure out how to get that raise you deserve.

The writer is Editor of the career, tech and automobile publications of The Daily Star. He is also an entrepreneur of a baby clothing business and previously worked in advertising as a Senior Copywriter