Keep your mind and body refreshed

At this time of year, we all need a good break, even if it doesn’t seem like we’re even doing as much as usual.  Being confined to our homes, by cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere and warm weather in the Southern one is draining because it often gets boring.

So, even if it doesn’t seem like you should need a break, you do need a break.  Particularly useful are micro-breaks, a little time here or there, 10 or 15 seconds or so, that refresh in the moment and keep us all percolating along.

There are two aspects of the environment that can be particularly useful for micro-breaks.  The first is green leafy nature in view, through a window or in a painting or photo, still, or moving in a video.  The absolute best, refreshment wise, is a look out over a meadow that’s liberally dotted with clumps of trees with green leafy canopies high enough off the ground so that someone could walk under them, with some sort of water feature, such as a burbling brook, in view.

This is not, however, what you may be able to see through your window—you may live above the arctic circle or beside a car park.  That’s why it’s so handy that looking at nature images can be so refreshing.  Everyone can look at nature in pictures, even if they decide to print our some pictures on their printer.

The other aspect of place that’s really important as you take a break, which design can do something about (unlike your taste in biscuits) is to make sure when you look up to take your micro-break you can see into the distance.  If you’ve taped a lovely nature picture to the wall a foot or so in front of your face, you can do better, refreshment-wise.  Research shows that about every 20 minutes, you should look 20 feet or so into the distance for around 20 seconds.   That looking and focusing flexes your eye muscles and leads to a refreshing change in how your brain processes information.  All this means you don’t want to set up a desk or anything similar so that you’re staring at a wall, if you must (we don’t all live in places as spacious as we’d like), make sure you can easily and regularly pivot in your seat to refresh.

Design micro-breaks into your life with nature views, real or art, moving or still, and looks into the mid-distance every so often.  You’ll feel more comfortable, and won’t be so mentally tired, even though it’s still winter.