The importance of coffee breaks

MANILA, Philippines - The body needs a break, and so does the brain. This is why it is important to get a quick time off, say a 15-minute break after two to three hours of intensive work, to give the brain a breather.

Fifteen minutes don’t look like there’s much an employee can do —maybe a quick trip to the washroom, a quick bite of sandwich, some stretching, a walk in the corridor, a short chat with a colleague or a sip of coffee.

And yes, there’s that cup of coffee —that 15-minute break popularly referred to as a “coffee break.” Drinking coffee does help a lot in relieving you from work exhaustion.

According to positivelycoffee.org, in fact, coffee helps “counter such factors as depression and boredom associated with tiredness and which impair performance.”

“A coffee break really is a breather from work. It helps clear your mind of clutter,” says Ebet Santos, an account manager from a software company.

De-cluttering is especially necessary for employees like Santos who do repetitive tasks. Studies show that performing the same tasks on extended hours can be counterproductive because it increases the occurrence of errors.

“When you’re doing the same thing and looking at the same data for hours, you don’t see any difference — not even the mistakes”, Santos says.

According to positivelycoffee.org, repetitive work leads your attention adrift, causing you to commit mistakes — a fact that administrative assistant Bernadette Cruz has experienced.

“There was a week when I didn’t take my coffee break because we were working on a number of reports. It felt like a month’s worth of work. Worse, my boss called my attention the Monday after that week. I needed to redo a number of reports that had a lot of errors. These were mostly the ones I worked on the last two days of the previous week. Obviously, I was already exhausted by then and so physically tired that I wasn’t able to properly perform my tasks,” she relates.

Cruz adds that this the reason why she values her coffee breaks. “Coffee breaks give me a real break. I get to look at something else while enjoying my coffee. This is my everyday inexpensive treat to myself,” she says.

Even to non-regular coffee drinkers, the smell of coffee already offers a quick treat.

“I’m not really a coffee drinker,” says Joel Antonio, a reports analyst, “but I enjoy the delicious smell of my colleagues’ coffee during coffee breaks. It manages to lighten my mood.”

Indeed, that 15-minute coffee break is highly essential to anyone assigned to the office. Coffee breaks give the brain (and the body) a quick break and the senses a well-deserved treat.