You can’t drive in a nail without lifting up the hammer.

Productivity depends on taking breaks. Granted, if the hammer stays up the nail will never get driven in. And if we don’t get back to work, the work won’t get done. But continuing non-stop doesn’t work either, and it’s actually counterproductive. Why?

• Fatigue—It makes us tired, and the more tired we get, the less we can do.
• Focus-drainage—It gets harder to concentrate after looking at the same thing too long. After a while we get bored with it, so we’re more easily distracted.
• Freshness-loss— Similar to the above, when we stare at the same issue or document so long, we can’t derive any fresh perspective from it anymore. At that point it’s hard to innovate, solve, and/or create because we’ve run out of ideas.
• Fear—The more we continuously stare at something the more problems, potential problems, and risk of failure and its fallout we see. That creates fear of failure, losing respect from others, losing our position, etc.

Solution? Take a break! Not so long that we forget what we were doing or don’t have enough time to finish or reach a good stopping point. But long enough to recharge for maximum focus and freshness physically and mentally.

This works for studying, content-writing, presentation preparation, building, etc. My tech-industry clients tell me it helps them with things like software development and issue-solutions as well.

For example: In college and grad school, I took breaks while studying for exams. And the more major the exam, the more breaks I took. Yes, that’s counterintuitive and doesn’t seem to make sense. But it (along with actually studying), produced the desired outcome—top grades. Why?

First, it gave me renewed energy. Whether it was a good walk/run, a good read, a good time of playing music on an instrument, a good chat with a friend, another activity, etc., it recharged me physically, emotionally, and mentally so I could tackle that studying again. That activity may even be sleep. Better to take a nap or get a good night’s sleep than feel sleepy while trying to learn or memorize things! Just as we can’t drive a vehicle on “E”, we can’t drive our minds or bodies when they’re devoid of energy—so “fill ‘er up with regular”!

Second, I found it easier to focus. What had become “same old, same old”, from which I was eager for a distraction from, could now keep my attention again. Taking a break is basically an intentional, targeted, distraction. Instead of our minds getting pulled away from something, we put our minds on something else. That gives us agency and power, versus being a passive victim of whatever passes by.

Third, the subject matter regained its freshness. Tied to the above, after my break, I was able to look at and understand the material in a fresh way. Besides finding something interesting in it, I could engage with it in ways that worked better. The less connected to our natural interests, natural “bent”, and abilities a subject is, the more difficult it is to learn, internalize, and work with. For these, we need to keep taking breaks and refreshing our minds and perspectives in order to get a handle on them. The easy stuff we can often get done “in one go”. Going back to the hammer-and-nail imagery— the harder the wood, the more hammer lifting and blows we need to drive the nail in. The same applies to areas where our brains are “denser”.

Finally, it reduced my anxiety. Instead of worrying about what I didn’t know well enough or might not remember, I could focus on pleasant, edifying, things. Things that put me in a better frame of mind to concentrate so I could learn and remember what I needed to. Brain science backs this up. Anxiety causes our adrenaline to move to our amygdala, which is the “fight-or-flight” part of our brain that causes gut-level, emotional reactions. That same adrenaline, in order to go there, has to leave our pre-frontal cortex—the part where we concentrate, think rationally, and solve problems that way. In other words, anxiety drains our mental energy, making us unable to learn, solve, think, memorize, or handle things the way we need to—such as hard stuff in subjects we’re preparing to take an exam on. Back then I didn’t know all this brain science, but I intuitively grasped how it helped to relax and come back to it a bit later!

Years later I advised my kids to do the same thing. At first they were skeptical, but they tried it and it worked for them too. And studying is just one example. Any time we’re tired, bored, stuck in a mental rut, and fearful of failing because we’re not “getting it” or we can’t find a way to make it work, take a break! Lift that hammer.

When we do, we “nail it” every time!

That is, after all, why the Lord rested and created the Sabbath (Gen. 2:2). Sabbaths that Jesus Himself practiced when He was on earth, besides “getting away” once in a while to recharge. (see Mk. 2:27)

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me…” Mat. 11:28-29.

Sometimes that “yoke” is a good break.