Short breaks: what 5 minutes away can and can’t do

Step away, then come back

On an ADHD day a break can go wrong in two ways. You go for hours without one, because starting again feels harder than carrying on. Or a 5-minute break turns into 40, because nothing tells you it’s over.

A micro-break is a pause of 10 minutes or less. You stop the task on purpose, do something else, then come back to it.

What the research found

A 2022 meta-analysis by Albulescu and colleagues pooled 22 groups of people, 2,335 in all. Most of the studies were done in a lab. Short breaks gave a small lift in vigour (the feeling of having energy) and a small drop in tiredness. The effect on performance was small overall and might have been chance. There were signs of it on routine office tasks and creative tasks, but none on demanding thinking tasks. Longer breaks helped performance more, and the authors suggest that very draining work may need more than 10 minutes.

A 2023 study from the University of Sydney is closer to studying. Ginns and colleagues gave 72 university students a hard spell of mental maths. Then one group went straight into a short lesson. A second group rested for 5 minutes first, with a countdown on the screen. A third watched a 5-minute video of a rainforest walk. Compared with the group that had no break, the resting group reported better attention. Both break groups also solved more problems on the test afterwards. The rainforest video wasn’t clearly better than plain rest, and the authors say the clearer evidence was for rest itself. It’s one small study with one kind of task.

Does it work with ADHD?

Neither of these was about ADHD, and research on ADHD and breaks is thin. So treat this as a reasonable bet rather than a proven fix.

With ADHD, the hard part can be the end of the break rather than the break itself. A break with a clear finish is easier to take, because you know something will call you back.

You don’t need a break after every run, either. If a run is going well, let it finish. A break belongs between runs, not in the middle of a good one.

How to take one

• Before you get up, note the next small step, so coming back is easy.
• Step away from the desk if you can: stand up, get water, look out a window.
• Keep it short: 5 minutes after a short run, 10 or 15 after a long, hard one.
• When the break ends, start the next run before anything else catches your eye.

Try this week

Pick two runs this week, of any length. After each one, take a 5-minute break away from your desk, without your phone if you can manage it. When the alarm goes, start the next run before you check anything else. Notice whether that run felt easier to begin. If you forget, or the break runs long, that’s fine. Try again next time.

An alarm you can hear from the next room

1. A break needs a stopped clock, so the Break row (5m, 10m and 15m, under the lengths) shows only when no run is going. That way a stray tap can’t end the run you’re in.
2. Press one. The disc turns orange and counts down, much like the countdown the resting group had in the Sydney study. A note headed On a break says none of it counts as focus.
3. Leave the desk. When the break is over, a loud alarm plays in four short bursts. Any key, click or tap stops it.
4. Back early? Press I’m back. Pressing Start focus also ends the break.

Every other sound on the timer is quiet, because you’re at the screen when it plays. The break alarm plays when you’re not. It carries by repeating rather than by blasting at full volume, so it reaches the next room without hurting through headphones. The ♪ button at the top right turns every sound off, the alarm included. Before you walk away, check it’s on and your device’s volume is up.

On a phone, leave the timer open on screen. Keep the screen on (Settings → Timer), on by default where the browser allows it, stops the phone sleeping during a break.

With Notifications on (Settings → Sound and alerts), you’ll also see Break over if you’re in another tab or app, as long as the timer is still open. Breaks are kept as rest and never added to your focus time. Your group never sees them. In the full layout, Balance shows focus and rest side by side for each day, with your rest per focused hour and no target to hit.

Your phone feels like a rest

Your phone is the easiest break there is. One study suggests it may not rest you much. In 2019, Kang and Kurtzberg had 414 university students solve word puzzles. Halfway through, most took a short break to do a shopping task: choosing items to buy. Some did it on a phone, some on paper and some on a computer. After the phone break, people came back more drained and solved fewer puzzles, more slowly, than people whose break used paper or a computer. It’s one study with a set task rather than your own feed, and it wasn’t about ADHD. Still, if your breaks leave you more tired, try one without your phone.