Work Relaxation:

Lunch Break

Sometimes, especially during our busy and often times stressful hours we spend at work, it can be really hard to maintain a strong sense of perspective and not get lost in the chaos and stress. Making a mindful effort to monitor and mitigate your stress-levels at work can help increase your quality of life tremendously.

Lunch Breaks

For most of us, our lunch break will be our biggest break during the workday. Often times this break comes at the midpoint of our day. The best part about this break is that it's literally designed for you to get your mind off work...but often times many of us still struggle to relax during this time.

Pre-Lunch Preparation

Relaxation should start before lunch in preparation for a real break during your lunch hour. Some helpful tips to "pre-game" your relaxation include:

Intentionally not starting any "major" new task within 1 hour prior to taking your lunch break. This way you won't have to stop midway and feel stressed having not finished your project before lunch
Try to take care of some "easy" or relatively more "mindless" tasks immediately before your lunch hour. This will help you feel good and "accomplished" just before lunch and has a low chance to increase stress levels or not be completed prior to lunch.
Block off your calendar 30-minutes prior to lunch (and for the full lunch hour itself as well). Signal to everyone that you are unavailable and claim that precious time for yourself.

Lunch Break

During Lunch you should:

Take your work phone with you (if you have one) but silence it and not check it. Only look if you get a call that comes through. Same goes for your personal phone if you have your work email added on that phone.
Eat something that brings you joy. Carve out this time for yourself and let it re-energize you for the second half of your day.
Limit personal phone use for social media or internet use if possible. You stare at your computer all day, you want to give your eyes and your mind a break! Have lunch with a friend, or eat alone in peace while drawing. It's ok to call or text friends or even go on social media, but you want to try to give your eyes at least a 15 minute break from screen time.

Most importantly sanctify your lunch hour as a legitimate break time and don't let anyone take that away from you. Create a rule that you don't "talk work" during your lunch hour, and if someone tries to, simply inform them of your personal rule and ask if you can continue the conversation after lunch.

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