Talking with a colleague about non-work related topics is one of many types of breaks that can refresh the mind. Confidential Client, Raleigh, NC. Photography Eric Laignel
By Mary Lee Duff, LEED AP, IIDA | IA Senior Director of Strategy &
Sally Augustin, PhD, Fellow, American Psychological Association
As designers and strategists, we create work environments that drive innovation, creativity, productivity, and wellbeing. Those objectives become even more vital as industries move toward machine learning that will take over rote tasks and free employees for more creative work, entailing greater intellectual effort that brings with it a different set of pressures—mental fatigue, anxiety, and burn-out.
Our understanding of how people work best, what inspires innovation, and what nurtures wellbeing to shape the workplace as a vibrant personal and shared experience is based on scientific research. From that vantage point many long-held assumptions about productive time versus unproductive time are patently wrong, even though they’ve been held for years and are firmly institutionalized. A plethora of maxims, including “If you’re gazing out the window, you aren’t working,” and “People who take a break or daydream aren’t working,” are no longer valid, in fact they lead us in the wrong direction. Here we dispel those myths, backed by scientific research, as well as consider the science supporting the effects of positivity and of awe.
Mind Wandering
Although surmised, immediate prior mind wandering (Mann and Cadman, 2014) has now been linked to enhanced creative thinking. Among others, Gable, Hopper, and Schooler (2019) found that mind wandering can be particularly useful for overcoming mental challenges: “Professional writers and physicists reported on their most creative idea of the day, what they were thinking about and doing when it occurred, whether the idea felt like an aha moment, and the quality of the idea. Participants reported that one fifth of their most significant ideas of the day were formed during spontaneous, task-independent, mind wandering—operationalized here as (a) engaging in an activity other than working and (b) thinking about something unrelated to the generated idea... ideas that occurred during mind wandering were more likely to be associated with overcoming an impasse on a problem and to be experienced as aha moments, compared with ideas generated while on task.”
The design and architectural features of a workspace can make it more likely that users will be able to restock cognitive energy through mind wandering activities. This supports the concept of creating spaces that offer flexibility and choice, where workers can let their minds seek other paths of thinking and let go of the challenges at hand for a while. Such spaces include quiet areas, outdoor spaces, game rooms, libraries, places of refuge, nooks, and nutrition intake/break areas, to name a few. Mind wandering activities can provide real benefits for both individual work and collaboration.
Breaks
Breaks can provide an opportunity for mind wandering, although they are positive in their own right. Research on recovery from work stress emphasizes the importance of within‐day work breaks (note the use of the plural). Zhu, Kuykendall, and Zhang (2019) report that “Within‐day work breaks are significantly associated with reduced fatigue and negative affect [mood] and increased positive affect, supporting the predicted recovery effect.” Enjoying a snack, talking with a colleague about non-work related topics, contemplating an upcoming vacation, or just relaxing for a moment are all break activities that reduce stress and prepare the mind to work productively.