Help! It turns out breaks make you more productive
When I started reading Mithu Storoni’s Hyperefficient: Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work, I was hoping to find out how to attain a permanent state of maximum productivity. Never again would I waste 30 minutes researching barrel leg pants or combing through the Instagram pages of friends of friends of friends. I would become a machine, tirelessly churning out work, unburdened by human frailty.
Imagine my disappointment when Storoni, a Cambridge-trained eye surgeon and neuroscience researcher, reminds readers that humans are not machines. In fact, she argues against the “linear, continuous, assembly line configuration of work” that the industrial revolution ushered in. In this digital age, she says, human efficiency should “no longer be defined by the quantity of output, but by its quality”.
In order to improve the quality of our work, we need to respect the natural cycles of our minds and bodies. “Mental performance can soar to exceptional heights if instead of imposing the rhythm of assembly-line work on your brain, you impose the rhythm of your brain on your work,” she writes.
I don’t have the greatest faith in my brain. Too often it wanders when I need it to stay focused and freezes when I need it to generate ideas. Also it can never remember what spices I have in the kitchen. But in order to soar to hyperefficient heights, I decided to let it take the reins for a week.
Tip No 1: Early mornings and late evenings are prime creative time
I ask Storoni for some guidance with my experiment and she agrees to hop on a video call. She suggests the first thing I do is rework my schedule. Typically, I get up at 6am. Then I exercise, walk the dog and get ready to log in to work at 9am.
But early morning (from waking until 9am or 10am) and late evening (around 8pm to 10pm until bedtime) are the periods most suited to creative thinking, Storoni writes in Hyperefficient – and I’m squandering them. During these windows, our brains shift between being “gently aware” and “brightly alert”, allowing us to “float and forage for ideas” and to “narrow your focus” in order to sift through these ideas.
Storoni used to follow a schedule similar to mine, but now wakes up and lets her mind wander instead. “I sit at my desk, I watch the sunrise and then I just let my brain write and produce the things it wants to produce,” she says. Within moments, she says, “it starts coming up with new ideas and new ways of seeing things”.
You should avoid anything that might jolt you out of the soft flow of inspiration during these hours: no bright lights or screechy morning shows, and no email or social media. “It should all be kind of warm and slow,” Storoni says. She has a cup of tea, but holds off on coffee.
I tell my editor I will log on two hours earlier every day this week, and take two hour-long breaks during the day – one at 10 am, and one after lunch, as Storoni suggests.
The first morning, I roll out of bed, turn on my softest lamp and put on mellow music. Then, for the next hour, I dutifully forgo my usual cup of light roast and allow my mind to float and forage.
“Need coffee,” I write. And later: “Head hurts. Coffee withdrawal?”
Around 7am, I pour myself coffee and start working. Writing does come more easily, in part because I’m not checking my email every five minutes. At 10am, a time when my brain often becomes sluggish, I exercise.
Tip No 2: Work in 90-minute chunks
In Hyperefficient, Storoni recommends working in stretches of 60 to 90 minutes, with breaks in between. Working longer than that “feels tiring for most of us”, and performance starts to deteriorate.
Ideally, one structures each 90-minute block by tackling the most difficult tasks in the first 20 minutes, using the remaining time for easier tasks and then taking a 10-minute break at the end, Storoni writes.
I adapt this by doing a version of the Pomodoro technique – working intensely on a single task for 25 minutes, usually something more mentally demanding like writing or research – then shifting to admin-type work, like responding to emails and scheduling calls.
That’s the idea, at least. The 90-minute stretches are occasionally interrupted by meetings or by my partner insisting I come see how cute the dog looks. Sometimes I get in a flow, working for more than 25 minutes. But working in smaller time increments helps keep me focused. I feel less tempted to scroll through social media or to online shop when I know I have less than half an hour of work to power through.
Tip No 3: When you hit a wall, walk
Even if you carefully manage your brain power, you will inevitably hit a wall. Historically, when this happens, I push through, churning out paragraphs I know I will inevitably discard.
It turns out that’s neither hyperefficient or even slightly efficient. If you are struggling to work, Storoni says, go for a walk.
Walking creates a unique mental state in which you are alert but your attention can still float, she explains in Hyperefficient. On our call, she elaborates: “Clear your mind and listen to a story while you’re walking.” Gentle fiction, she clarifies – no suspense, and no murder.
This is disappointing, as I’m halfway through a murder mystery audiobook. But the next time I find myself staring at the same three lines on a page, I lace up my shoes and turn on a podcast where a woman quietly reads classic novels to help people fall asleep. I select The Wind in the Willows and trudge around my neighborhood, listening to a gentle description of Mr Mole’s springtime perambulations.
When I return to my computer, I’m not exactly of a fount of ideas, but I feel more energized and manage to eke out a few more usable paragraphs.
Tip No 4: Embrace the afternoon nap
I think afternoon naps are great. Luckily, Storoni agrees.
Some research suggests that the body has a biorhythm that prompts us to want to sleep every 12 hours – “though the urge is stronger at midnight than at noon”, she writes. This could explain the post-lunch dip in energy so many people feel.
Instead of fighting this dip, Storoni suggests leaning into it with a 20-minute nap.
After lunch, I set a timer for 20 minutes and I doze, interrupted only occasionally by car alarms and construction. Afterwards, I feel briefly groggy, but otherwise don’t experience my usual afternoon energy slump. The only thing more annoying than lifestyle advice that doesn’t work is lifestyle advice that does, I think.
Verdict: can these tips really help you become more efficient?
At the end of the week, I do feel more productive and less harried than usual. I wonder how practicable these tips are, though. I work from home most days and can move my schedule around easily. But it’s hard to take an afternoon nap if you are in the office every day, or to rework your morning routine if you have strict work hours.
Storoni acknowledges this: “If I could stand on a roof and wave a flag and say: ‘Change how you work, everyone!’ – that would be great.”
Related: Big, beautiful goals – but can’t be bothered? 11 great productivity tips for lazy people
While this sea change isn’t going to happen overnight, she hopes organizations and individuals will start to reconsider their approach. At a managerial level, there needs to be a shift from focusing on quantity of output to quality, she argues. Rather than enforcing the same schedule for everyone on their team, managers could help employees set schedules that would be most efficient for them and their work.
Even within the constraints of a traditional workplace, individuals can make some changes. “You can flip your routines ever so slightly,” Storoni says. Try softening the light and sounds in your home in the morning and evening to help nurture your creative mind, for instance.
The week after my experiment, I decide to keep logging on at 7am. My brain is more focused in the early morning, and it feels nice to complete a solid chunk of work before the day has begun. I let myself have coffee right away, though.
Hyperefficient: Optimize Your Brain to Transform the Way You Work by Mithu Storoni is out from Little, Brown Spark on 17 September
