Not just any lunch will do, however. The most powerful lunch breaks have two key ingredients—autonomy and detachment.
Autonomy-exercising some control over what you do, how you do it, when you do it, and whom you do it with—is critical for high performance, especially on complex tasks. But it‘s equally crucial when we take breaks from complex tasks. "The extent to which employees can determine how they utilize their lunch breaks may bejust as important as what employees do during their lunch," says one set of researchers.
Naps, research shows, confer two key benefits:They improve cognitive performance and they boost mental and physical health.
While naps between thirty and ninety minutes can produce some long-term benefits, they come with steep costs. The ideal naps those that combine effectiveness with efficiency—are far shorter usually between ten and twenty minutes.