Stress-busting Break

You have been sitting at your desk for longer than you care to remember. Your head is fuzzy, your body is aching. You know it's not good for you, but you also need to get that work done. Yet skipping breaks is the best way not only [blank] deplete energy reserves and increase stress, but also to depress productivity. When the Draugiem Group, an IT company based in Latvia, tracked the behaviour of its employees, the top 10 per cent most productive people worked the same hours as everyone else, [blank] took more breaks - on average a 17-minute break after 52 minutes of work. Organizational psychologist John Trougakos at the University of Toronto, Canada, says we should ideally stand up and move around for 30 to 60 seconds every 20 to 30 minutes, and focus on something more than 6 meters away to [blank] our eyes. We should take an extended break of 10 to 15 minutes every hour or so, because we have only a limited capacity to concentrate [blank] longer.