Not working can make you a better worker.
It's a mantra that is increasingly embraced by major employers who seek to attract top employees with generous vacation policies as well as those that are beginning to wonder if burnout from long hours is resulting in less productive employees.
In a recent experiment conducted on their own workforce, Draugiem Group, a social networking company, sought to effect of breaks on productivity. By using a work-tracking tool, DeskTime, the company monitored how often workers took breaks.
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The firm claims that the experiment showed that employees who got the most work done typically took a lot of breaks. Specifically, the top 10 percent of workers in terms of productivity averaged 17 minutes of break time for every 52 minutes they worked.
In fact, reports Julia Gifford, a blogger for Draugiem, the most productive employees don't even work eight-hour days. She compared the best workers to sprinters who run extremely fast for short periods of time.
"They make the most of those 52 minutes by working with intense purpose, but then rest up to be ready for the next burst. In other words, they work with purpose," she wrote.
The benefits of breaks, she posits, are psychological as well as physical. Focusing for too long on one subject can lead to you becoming disengaged from it — a fancy word for "bored" — and sitting for hours on end at a desk is not natural or comfortable for the body.
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