5 Reasons to Prioritize Breaks at Work (And Creative Break Methods to Try)

Sep 08, 2021

To be a successful solopreneur, you must make a lot of sacrifices in your life to carefully manage your small business. That involves using your free time and ignoring the desire to do leisure activities for office work.

But that doesn’t mean that you should do everything on autopilot. Doing so will affect your physical, emotional, and mental health to some degree. So what should you do to stay happy as you make yourself busy in the office? Take breaks.

These are the five reasons why you must never forget to have your downtime and ten creative ways you can take a break.

1. Having breaks reduces your overall stress

At work, we tend to be overwhelmed by the multitude of tasks we need to complete. Some get stressed thinking about the things to be done and others are stressed by being too focused on the job at hand. There are also those who feel both.

This makes our workplaces a stressful environment. By taking breaks, we interrupt the cycle of stress making it more easily manageable and less problematic to our personal lives.

2. Having breaks help you process and retain more information

At one point in our lives, we’ve all reasoned out that we were too busy that we forgot an important event or task. We still even do so without us noticing it. Taking breaks resets our attention and this helps us remember, process, and concentrate more once we go back to work mode. Solopreneurs with digitized businesses benefit a lot from this.

3. Having breaks improves your health

The beauty of taking breaks is that it allows us to do a lot of things that improve our health. Two good examples are walking outside the office for a while and watching a comedy video online. The former improves our cholesterol levels while the latter decreases our stress hormones for the increased production of antibodies and immune cells.

4. Having breaks increases productivity

Aside from being too busy, fatigue also decreases our performance at work. Taking a break by having a power nap recharges our body so that we can do more physical tasks at high efficiency. This is essential for solopreneurs who manage their physical stores or own businesses that rely more on muscle rather than brains.

5. Having breaks make you more mindful and creative

Not taking a break exhausts our cognitive capacity to make creative connections. In short, tired solopreneurs will find it hard to make new and successful marketing or product ideas. So if your responsibilities in your venture are more about innovation and creation, make time to pause everything and meditate or relax for a while. Do the same if your business is in the art sector.

Creative Break Ideas You Should Try:

Take a nap in the backyard using a hammock. (If you work at home)
Go for a coffee break or offer to buy a cup for your spouse by walking to the nearest shop.
Watch a short Ted Talk video. (If you work at home)
Do yoga in your office.
Do push-ups.
Talk to a friend over the phone.
Snack on some nuts or no-cook leafy greens. (These are brain-boosting foods)
Jam to your favorite music.
Do some chores. (If you work at home.)
Juggle a ball may it be a tennis ball with your hand or a soccer ball with your feet.

Taking breaks is absolutely necessary to be an efficient solopreneur. But there is a problem with it. If you’re not mindful of your downtimes, they can turn into procrastinators and distract you from achieving your goals. The best advice I can give is to set an alarm to remind you that breaktime is already over.

Discover more productivity and creativity boosting tips here!