some breaks are just… different work
Last week, I wrote about how my version of a “break” used to be cleaning. I truly thought it was a good use of my time.
I’d hit that point where I couldn’t keep going the same way, and instead of stepping away, I would find something “useful” to do. Usually something in my immediate environment. Something I could control.
At the time, it felt like a break, sure. I wasn’t sitting at my computer anymore. HOORAY! I was moving. LOOK AT ME! I was doing something different. WOW IMPRESSIVE!
But it never actually made the work easier to come back to.
Sometimes it wasn’t cleaning, it was OPTIMIZING my calendar (tbh: just moving blocks around in 15 minute increments until it looked just right). Using Google Cal’s color coding has had a chokehold on me since 2006. And the power of those 15 minute blocks (I even include drive time) is my kryptonite. But once I finished that type of task, sat back down, I realized I was feeling the same resistance I felt before I got up. Sometimes more, because now I had spent even more energy.
That was the part that confused me for a long time. If I wasn’t working, why didn’t it feel like a break?
What I eventually started to notice is that cleaning (and a lot of the things I used to do in those moments) required the same kind of effort as the work I was trying to step away from. It still asked for focus, control, and a certain level of precision. It just looked different on the surface.
So even though I had technically “taken a break,” my brain never really got a break from that mode of operating.
Once I started paying attention to that, a few other patterns showed up.
Noticing a backlog of emails and deciding now was the time to respond to all of them.
Organizing my calendar like it was going to earn me an award.
Polishing something I had already finished instead of submitting.
Easier tasks that felt good to check off but didn’t actually help me reset.
All of it looked productive. None of it actually helped me reset.
I needed something that felt (and was!) different enough to interrupt the pattern I was in.
That has looked like a lot of different things depending on the day, and none of them are particularly impressive. But they have one thing in common: they are playful.
Yeeting myself out of my chair and into a different room (bonus if you holler YEET as you do it).
Engaging in something small—doodling, bouncing the stress ball against the wall, dancing to one song.
Playing with Mondrian blocks (or your favorite puzzle) for a minute.
That difference is what actually allows me to come back with more energy instead of less.
If you read last week’s email and recognized yourself in the “productive break” pattern, it might be worth noticing what your version of that looks like. Not to fix it, just to see it more clearly.
If this feels familiar, it’s probably not just you. Entire teams do this… just with better color-coded calendars. Might be worth bringing this up in your ERG or next team meeting and seeing what people notice. (I can help, let’s bring a workshop to you!)