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1. Eat! (The right foods for better brain function)
OK, this one might seem obvious. But even if you’re trying to lose weight or run errands on your lunch break, don’t skip on eating a midday meal, or at least a snack. Your nutrition—particularly your glucose intake—will decide your productivity for the rest of the day.
(Want to eat healthier? Just eat one piece of fruit, and you’ll often find yourself inspired to make a healthy salad as well.)
2. Take a real break for greater concentration
Of all the ways to use your lunch break to set yourself up for a great afternoon, the most important might be, well, actually taking a break.
In many industries, lunch breaks are getting shorter and shorter, or even nonexistent. These days, only one in five office workers reports taking an actual lunch break away from their desk, according to a survey by workplace consulting group Right Management.
Yet taking a break—even for15 to20 minutes—is a proven way to sustain concentration and energy levels throughout the day.
All the little tasks and decisions we have to make every day as we work gradually deplete our psychological resources.
Taking a lunch break, or even multiple short breaks throughout the day, provides an opportunity for our brains to recuperate.
"Never taking a break from very careful thought work actually reduces your ability to be creative," says Kimberly Elsbach, a management professor at UC-Davis who studies the psychology of the workplace. It sort of exhausts your cognitive capacity and you’re not able to make the creative connections you can if your brain is more rested. If you’re skipping lunch to continue to push forward in a very intense cognitive capacity, then you’re probably not doing yourself any favors."
3. Get a dose of mindfulness: Do nothing but eat
We’ve talked before on the blog about the power of meditation, but you don’t need a long time or a mat to get started—even sitting quietly and focusing on your lunch can be a small act of mindfulness.
Here’s how one of Buffer’s resident meditators, COO Leo Widrich, puts it:
"It seems such a fitting experience to watch TV, work, read or do anything else but solely focusing on eating when we eat. Funnily enough, it almost appears to be a waste of time if we ‘just eat.’ But the latest research on multitasking reveals the exact opposite. Solely focusing on eating doesn’t just help you digest your food better, it also makes you a more efficient worker for any other tasks."
Even a few minutes of mindfulness can make a difference.
A study in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology found that assigning call-center workers20-minute "progressive relaxation" breaks, in which they participated in meditation-like activities, reduced their stress in the afternoon, compared to another group of workers who engaged in small talk with co-workers for20 minutes. The relaxation technique had a positive impact on blood pressure, sleep quality and more.
4. Take a nap to improve your memory
If you’ve been following the Buffer blog for a while, you’re probably sick of hearing me tout the benefits of napping. Here I go again, though, including napping in this post for an important reason: we’re naturally designed to have a second short sleep in the afternoon.
Our internal body clocks help us to regulate processes like sleeping into a regular cycle. The body clock is a group of cells called the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus, which are made up of specific "body clock" genes. These turn on and off to tell our body when to do certain things, like getting sleepy.
All of this is going on inside us all the time, but the important thing to know about our body clocks is that we have a natural dip in energy in the afternoon: right around2 p.m. This means if you’re having a late lunch break, that’s a perfect time to grab a quick nap.
Post-nap, (assuming you sleep for a maximum of around20 minutes, so you avoid that dreaded post-sleep grogginess called sleep inertia), you’ll have more room in your working memory for new information, since sleeping helps to clear out that holding area of any information picked up during the day. While a lot of it gets tossed out, anything important gets moved to long-term memory, so your memory performance should also improve after a nap.
5. Work out—the afternoon is the best time for exercise
Another thing determined by our body clocks is the best time to work out. You’ll want a late lunch break to fit this one in as well: physical performance is generally highest, and the risk of injury lowest, from3-6 p.m. Plus, from2-6 p.m., muscle strength is at its peak, and even your lungs perform better in the late afternoon than at midday.
Even a couple of hours after midday your performance will be better than in the morning. For runners, cyclists and other endurance athletes, the morning is the worst performance time all day, so going for a run at lunch is a better option than an early morning jog.
Of course, exercise has lots of benefits, including reducing stress, improving mood and increasing confidence and self-esteem. And another study showed that exercising can make you feel better about your body, even when you don’t see any physical changes.
If finding time for a workout during your lunch break seems impossible, give the scientific seven-minute workout a try. It really does take just seven minutes, but it’s high-intensity so you’ll still feel it.
6. Spend time in nature to refresh your attention span
To come back refreshed after a lunch break, spend some time in nature.
Studies have shown that a walk in a quiet park is sufficient to refresh our attention spans so we can return to work with renewed focus. (A walk down a city street, on the other hand, was found to require so much attention to complete that it didn’t let the brain relax fully.)
If you’re lucky enough to work close to green, natural spaces, you may notice long-term effects, as well. Research has found that people living in greener urban areas display fewer signs of depression or anxiety, and the low stress levels lasted over a sustained period.
7. Move to a café after lunch for improved creativity
There are a couple of reasons working from a café could be a good change for your afternoon work period. Firstly, the ambient sound of a café has been shown to be the most beneficial sound level for creativity. Moderate noise levels, unlike silence or a noisy environment, increase processing difficulty just enough to push us out of our comfort zones and into more creative thinking.
In fact, there are a few tools to bring that ambient café sound to your headphones, wherever you are:
The second benefit of working from a café after lunch is the change of location to renew your focus. I recently wrote about a process called "Workstation Popcorn." The idea is to plan your workday in blocks, spending each block of time at a new café or workspace. The new location can help you to knuckle down on your to do list more quickly than if you’re distracted by the tedium of the same old workspace all day.
8. Post to social media
One last thing that the lunch break is perfect for? Social media. Studies on the best times to post on social media often show a spike in click-through rate around lunchtime on weekdays as office workers click around to find something to occupy them while they eat.
Make a plan. “Don’t squander your lunch break because it’s ‘free time,’” Taylor says. Time is a non-renewable resource, wherever you are, whatever the time of day. Try your best to plan it out and make the most of it.
You should also plan your activities immediately after lunch, Kerr suggests. “Giving thought to how you prioritize and schedule events in the afternoon can maximize your productivity. For example, scheduling a meeting or conference call right after lunch may end up causing you stress over the lunch hour or you may end up squeezing the lunch break in order to get back in time and be ready for the meeting.”
Take a real break. Breaking from work for60 seconds to chow down your lunch at your desk doesn’t count. “In order to get a period of true respite, the time has to involve an actual break from work,” Levit says. Try not to check your e-mail, bring work with you or talk about work during lunch.
Decompress. The first thing you should do when your lunch break begins is take a deep breath and relax, Taylor suggests. “You’ve likely been on over-drive all morning, putting out fires. Before you decide how to spend that golden hour, take a couple minutes to clear your head. Take your break-neck pace to a halt; don’t automatically jump to the next ‘to do’ item. When you’re relaxed, you can better strategize your goals with a broader and wiser perspective.”
Get up from your desk or work space. “Staying at your desk is a big no-no in my book,” Kerr says. “There are more and more reports on the dangers of sitting too long, so even just getting up to walk to another room to eat is important, or better still, getting outside for some fresh air and a quick walk can do wonders for the body and spirit.”
Just take the lunch of your choice with ease. Forget about the work stress during lunch.
Relax, enjoy your lunch, talk to your coworkers, think of something good or at least not stressful and recharge your batteries for better results for the rest of the day.
I fully endorse your answer.................... thanks for your invitation...........
During lunch break spend more time with your inner self, have lunch, refresh yourself. Give a small break to your brain so that with renewed energy you will carry on your hectic activity scheduled for post lunch period.
Thank You all very much for your participation, i agree with you Sirs/Madams..
Make a plan.Time is a non-renewable resource.
Take a real break. Try not to check your e-mail, bring work with you or talk about work during lunch.
Decompress. Take a deep breath and relax, before you decide how to spend that golden hour, take a couple minutes to clear your head
Get up from your desk or work space. Even if you don’t sit at a desk, you should get away from your work space during lunch, as it will help you clear your mind.
Eat. Enjoy your food.
Do what you can’t do in the morning or evening.But be careful that you don’t cram too many personal errands into your lunch break
Use the time to connect with someone new.
Catch up with old friends
Have a system for dealing with your absence.This will allow people inside and outside the company to know when you will be back.
Engage in activities that will help you re-energize. Take a walk outside or meditate ext...
Network.Even if you’re perfectly happy in your job, and you’re not looking for a new one, it can’t hurt to continuously build and maintain your professional network.
Don’t get stuck in a routine.
Avoid all screens. Try to stay away from your iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and computer.
Regroup. take a few minutes to reassess where you’re at and re-prioritize the rest of your day depending on how the morning has unfolded
Don’t take too long or too short of a break.
Enjoy your lunch ! when you will take proper food then your mind will get refreshed.
I agree with Mr. George answer. Thank you
Take your lunch, enjoy it and refresh
