If you’re a steel worker or in some other hard core labor intensive job I’ve got nothing for you except a lot of respect. If on the other hand you work in a white collar or knowledge worker position with your air conditioning and your Aeron chair I’ve got some shocking advice for you. In all likelihood what you’ve been told for your entire life about working and taking breaks is meant for steel workers and has precisely nothing to do with your biology.

Let’s talk about modes, bay-be

Math is hard and not just for Talking Barbie™. Even a simple addition problem of any real complexity causes you to have to think. Don’t believe me? Quick, without thinking what is 1234 + 4567? See you have to stop and think about it, remember the rules, and do the steps. That is L-mode thought. You can think L-mode as in “Left Brain” if that’s a paradigm you’re comfortable with even though it is bunk.¹ A more accurate description would be Linear Mode. Any linear, complex, or language oriented task; like company financials, computer code, blog posts, or anything else that requires you to think about it.

Anyone who showers on a regular basis will recognize that not all great thinking is L-mode. Having “Great Ideas” while bathing is a phenomenon that goes back to antiquity and the discovery of displacement by Archimedes. Hopefully you don’t go streaking through the streets screaming “I have it!” but even if not you’re now dripping wet and stark naked and trying to hold on to the grand plan that has just bestowed it’s glimmering beauty upon you. We want desperately for these, R-mode, ideas to come to us when we have a hope of acting on them but, they seem to have the perverse nature to only come when they want and that is why waterproof notepads exist.

There are plenty of other ways to describe L-mode/R-mode, left-brain/right-brain, d-mode/undermind, l-directed/r-directed. These are both global processes that happen all over the brain. While there are some interesting effects for neurology researchers when the hemispheres of your brain there is no single location where a given process is found. In fact consciousness may not be be a single process at all but a swarm of ideas and processes competing to be expressed in the world.² In mice trained to run a maze, they can continue to run the maze successfully even with parts of their brain removed.³

Did you ever notice that there’s a time every morning after you’ve started work that you’re interested in getting a cup of coffee or going for a walk? There’s an individual rhythm that you have that causes you to lose focus at predictable intervals.⁴ Your brain isn’t tired in the sleeping sense but more like your muscles get tired. You’ve burned off a good deal of available energy and your brain needs a quick breather and presto you get distracted or suddenly think going to the water cooler is the best idea ever.

Think of these rhythms like your sleep cycles. Most people are familiar at least with the idea of REM sleep as separate from “other” sleep. During the day you have the same thing, high states of arousal where it’s easy to get things done and low states where it’s easy to check Facebook cycling through at an individual frequency. Although there will be variation the consensus between sleep researchers and violinists is that 90 minutes is a good limit. Our sleep cycles are in the 90-120 minute range ⁵ and some of the worlds best violinists practice for no longer than 90 minutes at a time.⁶

We all have these rhythms and most Americans totally ignore their existence and keep chugging along like like steel workers on the line even though most of us are sitting in air-conditioned luxury trying to get our brains to create the “Next Big Thing”™

Let’s talk about you and me.

We all know that multi-tasking guy. The one who does the company financials while watching Judge Judy and talking on the phone. Now unless the hardcore multi-tasker has an extremely rare mutation (about 2.5% of the population⁷) they are not actually multi-tasking but in fact are context switching rapidly which drops their efficiency by 40% and their effective IQ by at least 10 points.⁸ The reason effectiveness drops so precipitously when we “multi-task” is because white collar or knowledge work engage L-mode thought. Any L-mode task is compromised by distractions and multi-tasking.

The awful truth; You (probably) can’t multi-task.

You have to focus on one task at a time. There’s no two ways about it and the thing that you are focusing on is likely going to make you tired. Remember, L-mode is hard. With all that focus you’ll get a lot done but the brilliant elegant solution will completely elude you in your Red Bull fueled spasmodic typing until you’re in the shower, or trying to get to sleep at night, or 4 scotches⁹ and 2 episodes of House of Cards into your weekend.

Let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that could be

Now that you see the biological hand we’ve been dealt as humans. Let’s cheat get hacking. Knowing that we need to focus on one thing at a time and we are going to get distracted every 90 to 120 minutes and that taking breaks is a necessary part of human cognition. You can hack those breaks to optimize not just for the L-mode but for those R-mode insights as well.

When will a break be most beneficial to you? The lowest point of your ultradian rhythm has some distinct advantages as a break time. Firstly, you’re already tired and distracted feeling. You could push yourself past those feelings but, it’s best to keep that kind of heroism for Triathlon training or playing Halo. Secondly, that tired low feeling might actually make you more creative.¹⁰

Move. Sitting there scrolling away at Twitter and Facebook might trigger some nice dopamine but, it won’t improve your brain or your thinking. Oxygen on the other hand is really good for your brain and your thinking. One of the cheapest easiest ways of oxygenating your brain is to just take a walk.¹¹¹² This is another idea that has it’s roots in antiquity. Socrates went walking with his students a lot and often taught and questioned them during these walks. If you’ve got some greenery nearby, go visit. Just being in the presence of plants (even houseplants) is restorative to the brain.¹³

Don’t start working on something else. This is not the time to work on your cold fusion side project, make trades to your fantasy football team, or try and fix someone else’s bug. If you were raised anything like I was you may feel guilty for doing “nothing”. It may help to consider that what you are “doing” is everything that you need to do to be your most effective during your next focus session.

Let’s talk about Tweaks

This is a starting place not the end. At this point you have a good way of restoring yourself in between periods of intense focus. This is a good basic framework but, your mileage will vary. Measure and tweak your experience. Some things you want to notice or measure; how tired do you feel at the end of the day? How much do you get done with various length breaks? When do you start to get “antsy” during the day?