Volume #28: 🎯 Plan Timed, Screen-Free Breaks Into Your Day

 📬 Not a Flow State newsletter subscriber yet? Sign up for FREE here.

It’s time for our monthly Conscious Productivity #Goal!

Rest is the focus this month in The Flow State, and this week we share a simple tip for building a little more chill into busy days. This is your gentle reminder that it is totally possible to:

• Care for yourself and get things done

• Step away from it all for a while

• Do your best at less than 100% 

• Share the load with others

• Enter self-maintenance mode to stay in balance

Before we get into planning better breaks into your day, let us know what your current daily breaks look like below ⬇️

Conscious Productivity #Goals: Plan timed, screen-free breaks into your day.

This goal comes from a recent experience with the Pomodoro Technique, a time management method that can help you break projects and tasks down into more manageable chunks.

The formula is: 4 x (25 minutes of work + 5 minutes break) + (25 minutes of work + 30 minutes of break).

It was Monday, I had just come back from vacation, and I needed to break up the looooong eight hour workday ahead. So I set the timer on my phone to 25 minutes and got to work!

The timed working sessions flew by, and did help make the tasks of the day seem more do-able. But, surprisingly, I hit an un-expected roadblock when it came to the breaks.

After watering my herb garden, drinking a coffee, rolling through some neck exercises, pouring another coffee, and writing to my accountant…

I ran out of “things to do” and found myself turning back to my screens to help me pass the time 😵‍💫 

Feeling guilty and more stressed during the breaks than while working, I stopped taking the breaks altogether by mid-afternoon.

This is a good example of what not to do with your breaks 😂 

Maybe it’s relatable?

The thing is, I know that taking breaks is good for you. But in practice, pulling away from work can be much harder than plowing right on through if you’re not in the habit of hitting pause on a regular basis.

A few tips from someone who’s been there?

• Make a list of break-time activities at the beginning of your day

• Mix up your list of active, constructive, and passive break time activities

• Step away from all screens when you take breaks

• Schedule your breaks until you’re in the habit of stepping away

• Adjust the length of your breaks based on your needs as you go

When done right, taking regular, daily breaks away from your screens can help you to reclaim time for rest throughout your day.

Conscious Productivity #Goals: Plan timed, screen-free breaks into your day.

Want to steal our #productivitygoals? Please do!! Tag us on your social platform of choice @simplish, or @simplish.life to share the ❤️

Be well, take breaks, and do good work!