How to Take a Real Break at Work (10 Minutes, No Phone)

By Antonio Neves

To take a real break at work, decide when it happens before the day starts, write one line about where you're stopping, then leave every screen for 10 minutes, phone included. Walk, stretch, look out a window, or do nothing at all. When you sit back down, read your one line before you open anything else. A break where you scroll your phone or knock out "one quick email" is just more work in a different chair.

In The 1-Day Method this is called Tech Free. It's one of the Top 5, the five things that make a day count: Sweat, Connect, Grow, Tech Free and Finish. Tech Free is 10 minutes off screens, every day.

Think about the last time you "took a break" at work. Odds are you stood up, grabbed your phone, and read the news or answered a text or checked the same app you'd been staring at all morning. Then you sat back down just as tired as before, maybe more.

Your eyes never left a screen. Your brain never stopped taking things in. You changed what you were looking at, and that's about it.

Microsoft's Human Factors Lab tested this with 14 people wearing EEG caps. On one day they sat through four 30 minute meetings back to back. On another day they had the same four meetings with 10 minute breaks between them, spent meditating with an app. Without breaks, beta wave activity, which is linked to stress, kept climbing from meeting to meeting. With breaks, it stayed roughly level. There were also spikes right at the switch from one meeting to the next.

Michael Bohan, who oversaw the study, put it plainly: "Try not to use that five or 10 minutes to squeeze in some other kind of work." It's a small study, so don't treat it like the last word. But it lines up with something you already know if you've ever worked through lunch and felt cooked by 3 PM. (You can read Microsoft's write up of the study here.)

In January 2025 my family lost our home in the Los Angeles wildfires. When I say we lost our home, I mean it doesn't exist. The chimney and the mailbox were all that was left.

After that, every morning I asked myself one question: What will make today a success? Not the year, not the month, not the week. Just this day.

The 1-Day Method grew out of that question. One question, 3 priorities, and the Top 5. Tech Free looks like the easiest of the five on paper. Ten minutes. But try it with yesterday. Count the 10 minute stretches during your workday when you weren't looking at a laptop, a monitor or a phone. If that number is zero, you're in good company.

If you want somewhere to write it down, the free 1-Day Method Starter Kit has the question, a spot for your 3 priorities, the daily acts and your end of day wins. Print it and write tomorrow's 10 minute break on it before you open email.

If you wait for a good moment to take a break, there's always one more message. So decide in the morning, right after you answer "What will make today a success?" Look at your calendar and put one real 10 minute break at a specific time. 10:45. 2:30. Whatever fits.

Write it down like a meeting, because it is one. If your day is stacked with calls, use the gap between two of them. My post on how to refocus after back to back meetings walks through setting your calendar so those gaps exist in the first place.

Part of why breaks don't work is that you bring the task with you. You're walking around the block still writing the email in your head.

Researchers Sophie Leroy and Theresa Glomb found that a quick "ready to resume" plan, written before you switch away from an unfinished task, cuts down that leftover attention. So before you get up, write one line. Where you stopped, and the next move. "Finish the pricing slide, then send it to Dana." Now the task has a parking spot and you don't have to hold it.

I'll say this one plainly. Your phone stays at your desk. Face down, in a drawer, in your bag. Tech Free means 10 minutes off screens, and your phone is a screen.

Ten minutes without it can feel weird at first. That's fine. Nobody's asking you to be a monk. It's 10 minutes where your eyes and your attention get a rest from the stuff they've been taking in since you woke up.

Walk around the block. Take the stairs. Stretch. Refill your water and drink it standing at a window. Or sit outside and do nothing at all. Nothing counts.

A 2022 review out of West University of Timișoara in Romania pulled together 22 studies on breaks of 10 minutes or less. Across those studies, short breaks gave people more energy and less fatigue. The breaks themselves ranged from physical activity to relaxing to watching videos, so the kind of break matters a lot less than actually stopping.

When you sit back down, the inbox will be waiting with that little number on it. Don't open it yet. Read the line you wrote in step 2 and do that next move first.

If the thing you're coming back to is the task you've been dreading, the 10 minute first move from how to stop procrastinating on a task you dread fits right here.

Start with 10 minutes. It's short enough that you'll actually take it and long enough to get off the screen and move.

That same 2022 review, published in PLOS ONE by Patricia Albulescu and colleagues, found that breaks of 10 minutes or less helped with energy and fatigue, but they didn't move overall performance much. Longer breaks did more for performance, and the authors noted that really draining work may need more than 10 minutes to recover from. (Here's the full paper if you want it.)

On a normal day, that means one planned 10 minute Tech Free break, plus short gaps between meetings when you can get them.

On a heavy day, like a long stretch of hard thinking or a run of tough conversations, take a longer one. Twenty or 30 minutes, outside if you can, with a real lunch.

And at the end of the day, stop on purpose. The end of day shutdown ritual is the longest break you take, and it deserves its own plan.

One more thing. If you're taking breaks and still feel wiped out every day, or the tired doesn't lift on weekends, that may be more than a busy season. Talk to a doctor or a therapist about it.

Ten minutes is a good place to start. A 2022 review of 22 studies found that breaks of 10 minutes or less gave people more energy and less fatigue. The same review found longer breaks helped performance more, and that really draining work may need more than 10 minutes.

Not in The 1-Day Method. Tech Free, one of the Top 5, means 10 minutes off screens, and your phone is a screen. Scrolling keeps your eyes and your attention on the same kind of input you were taking in at your desk.

There's no single number that fits every job. Start with one real 10 minute break that you plan in the morning, then add short gaps between meetings when you can. Microsoft's brain study found that 10 minute breaks between back to back meetings kept the stress signal from building up.

Yes. When you're behind, the break feels like the first thing to cut. Before you stand up, write one line about exactly where you're stopping and what comes next. That line makes it faster to pick the work back up.

Anything that gets you off a screen. Walk around the block, stretch, refill your water, look out a window, or sit and do nothing. Leave your phone at your desk and don't use the time to squeeze in other work.

The 1-Day Method Planner is the paper version of the question I asked every morning after the fire. Each day has room for your answer to the question, the Essential 3, up to five focused tasks, the Top 5 and your wins, and it takes under 5 minutes.

Tech Free is one of the Top 5, so it's sitting right there every morning while you plan. That's step 1 of this post: when you see it, give it a time. At night you'll know whether those 10 minutes happened. It's undated, it covers 90 days, and it's $29.99.

If you'd rather start with the idea behind it, the book is short on purpose. It walks through the question, the Essential 3 and the Top 5.

Not ready to buy anything? Grab the free Starter Kit and write tomorrow's 10 minute break on it tonight.

Antonio Neves is an author, keynote speaker, and former journalist for NBC, PBS, and MTV Networks. He's delivered more than 400 keynotes for companies like Google, McDonald's, and Visa. After his family lost their home in the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, he created The 1-Day Method to rebuild his life one day at a time.