“The answer to this question may lie in DeskTime, a software application that meticulously tracks employees’ time use throughout the day. When the makers of this software looked at the most productive 10 percent of their 36,000-employee user base, they made some surprising discoveries. What the most productive people have in common is an ability to take effective breaks. These elite 10 percent work for 52 minutes at a time, then take a 17-minute break before diving back into their work.

According to Julia Gifford, who works with DeskTime and wrote the report, the reason this pattern helps productivity is that the top 10 percent treat the periods of working time like a sprint. ‘They make the most of those 52 minutes by working with intense purpose, but then rest up to be ready for the next burst,’ Gifford wrote. She also noted that during the 17 minutes of break, the group was more likely to go for a walk or tune out rather than checking email or Facebook.”

—Tom Rath from Are You Fully Charged?
Rituals
That’s from a mini-chapter called “Focus for 45, break for 15” in which Tom talks about the Finnish educational system where, for every 45 minutes in the classroom they are given a 15-minute unstructured break.

Apparently the results are astonishing so Tom wondered if the same results would apply to adults. Short answer: It does.

We talk about this a lot. Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr describe it as “making waves”—honoring our natural “ultradian” rhythms and alternating intense bursts (/sprints!) of work activity with equally intense periods of rest.

ON and OFF.

Rhythmically expanding the amplitudes of the waves me make throughout the day.

How’re you doing with that?

What’s ONE thing you could do today to get a little better with it?

P.S. Later in the book, Tom talks about K. Anders Ericsson’s classic research on elite performance. We all know about the 10,000 hour rule at this point. A less known fact from that data is that the best performers RESTED more than the sub-elite. A lot more. They slept more and they napped more—after working in intense bursts like we discussed above.