October 16, 2024
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Americans tend to feel like they always have to be 'on,' but it is essential for certain types of mental processing, including moral reasoning and self-reflection, to take brain breaks, research shows.
Do you get anxious when you aren't checking your phone, social media and emails? Do you feel like you always have to be producing, that you always have to be "on?"
You are not alone.
The Harvard Business Review conducted a series of studies to try to understand why Americans are "so impressed by busyness" and found that the "more we believe that one has the opportunity for success based on hard work, the more we tend to think that people who skip leisure and work all the time are of higher standing." And that was in 2016.
"So many of us define ourselves by what we do," Cleveland Clinic emeritus staff psychologist Scott Bea said in 2020. "So we overdo, overwork and overproduce. In our culture, 'downtime' can sound like a dirty word."
Even when people have free time, modern technology swamps the brain with information. More than half of people responding to a 2023 survey said they were addicted to their cell phones, and 75% of people said they felt uneasy leaving their phones at home, checked their phones within 5 minutes of a notification and used their phones on the toilet. A 2018 Nielsen report found that Americans spend half their days – more than 11 hours – watching, listening to, reading and interacting with the media.
But it is important for overall health and well-being to switch off your brain and give it downtime on a regular basis, according to health experts. Letting the mind wander, daydreaming – known scientifically as the default mode – is essential "for the brain to make sense of what it has recently learned, to surface fundamental unresolved tensions in our lives and to swivel its powers of reflection away from the external world toward itself," according to a 2013 Scientific American story that analyzed research about the benefits of resting the brain.
Brain breaks are important for psychological mental processing, such as recalling memories, envisioning the future, conducting moral reasoning and solving problems. Environmental factors that impede the mind's ability to drift negatively impact mental health and cognitive functions such as reading comprehension and divergent thinking, according to a review of research about the default mode. A recent analysis of scientific literature found that data supported the positive impact of short or "micro" breaks on well-being by "enhancing vigor" and reducing fatigue. More extended breaks were associated with enhanced performance.
Finding, or even allowing oneself, the time to take these breaks is difficult, Amber Childs, a psychologist and associate professor at Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry, told the Washington Post earlier this year. "There's not a place where it's built in to say this is a normative, expected, appreciated part of what it means to be alive, what it means to be well, what it means to be whole and what it means to be thriving," she said.
Childs, Bea and other health experts offer the following tips for giving your brain a break:
• Downtime is not the same as leisure time and should not be confused with scrolling through social media. To allow your mind to wander, try sitting outside, taking a nature walk, weeding, vacuuming – just staring into space.
• Start slowly: Letting your mind wander may be counterintuitive and difficult at first, so try for a few minutes at a time and gradually build up to a point where you can sit still and space-out for a more extended period. You may even want to schedule short brain breaks to get into the habit.
• Avoid keeping busy with small tasks –such as checking email on your phone – during a commute on the subway or standing in line. Try allowing yourself to be still instead.
• When you are feeling stressed, sprawl out on the grass or lie down on the floor, which will help your mind and body relax.
• Try not to fill your brain break with worries. Make a separate time for dealing with anxieties, so that you can set them aside while you are giving your mind freedom to rest.
