How often to take study breaks? A practical starting point is a planned break of about 5 minutes after every 25 to 50 minutes of study. In one study, students on a fixed break schedule felt less tired and more focused than students who chose their own breaks, and finished just as much work.
A 2023 study led by researchers at Maastricht University tested breaks during real study sessions. Eighty-seven students at a Dutch university studied for one day in one of three ways:
Taking breaks whenever they decided to.
Taking a 6-minute break after every 24-minute study block, close to the popular Pomodoro technique.
Taking a 3-minute break after every 12-minute study block.
Students who chose their own breaks studied in longer stretches and took longer breaks. They also reported more fatigue and distraction, and lower concentration and motivation, than the students on fixed schedules. There was no difference in task completion. The authors concluded that planned breaks had mood benefits and seemed more efficient, with similar work done in less time.
The study did not single out one perfect interval. Its main lesson is simple: decide your breaks before you start, instead of waiting until you feel worn out.
A 2022 review in the journal PLOS ONE pooled 22 study samples with 2,335 people to look at micro-breaks, defined as breaks of no more than 10 minutes. Here is what it found:
Micro-breaks gave a small but real boost to energy (vigor) and reduced fatigue.
The overall effect on performance was small and not statistically significant.
Performance gains showed up only for less mentally demanding tasks.
Longer breaks went with bigger performance gains.
The authors suggested that recovering from very demanding tasks may take breaks longer than 10 minutes. For students, that points to a mix: short breaks to keep your energy up, plus an occasional longer break, say 15 to 30 minutes, after a long or hard stretch of problem sets or dense reading.
What you do on a break may matter as much as when you take it. In a 2018 McMaster University study, first-year psychology students watched a 50-minute video lecture with three 5-minute breaks. One group did simple calisthenics during the breaks, another played a computer game, and a third group had no breaks.
The exercise group stayed more attentive than both other groups and learned more, based on tests taken right after the lecture and again later. It was one small study, so treat it as a promising hint, but it fits a simple rule: get up, move and look away from the screen.
Good break ideas:
Walk to refill your water bottle.
Climb a flight of stairs, or do a few jumping jacks.
Stretch your neck, shoulders and back.
Step outside or look out a window.
Grab a snack away from your desk.
Phone scrolling is tempting, but it keeps your eyes on a screen and can easily turn a 5-minute break into 30.
Breaks within a session are only half of it. A well-known review in Psychological Science in the Public Interest rated distributed practice, which means spreading study sessions out over time, as high utility. It gave the same rating to taking practice tests, while rereading and underlining were rated surprisingly low utility. The benefits showed up for students of many different ages and ability levels.
So, for example, three one-hour sessions spread over a week are a better bet than one three-hour cram the night before, and quizzing yourself is a better bet than rereading your notes.
Example two-hour evening session. This is an example only, so stretch or shrink the blocks to fit your focus and your course load:
7:00 to 7:25 p.m.: study block 1, phone in another room
7:25 to 7:30 p.m.: break, stand up, stretch and refill water
7:30 to 7:55 p.m.: study block 2
7:55 to 8:00 p.m.: break, walk around the house
8:00 to 8:25 p.m.: study block 3
8:25 to 8:30 p.m.: break, stairs or jumping jacks
8:30 to 8:55 p.m.: study block 4, quiz yourself on everything so far
8:55 p.m.: take a 20-minute break, or stop for the night
If 25-minute blocks feel too short, try 50 minutes of study with a 10-minute break. Our sister site has a full guide to the Pomodoro technique and focus timers.
The classic version is 25 minutes of work and a 5-minute break. In the 2023 study, a similar schedule of 24 minutes on and 6 minutes off left students less tired and more focused than choosing their own breaks, with the same amount of work done.
Somewhere between 25 and 50 minutes is a common range. Start at the short end if focusing is hard, and stretch the blocks as it gets easier.
About 5 to 10 minutes for short breaks. A 2022 review found that breaks of up to 10 minutes boosted energy and reduced fatigue, but hard mental work may need longer breaks to recover.
Move, and step away from the screen. In a 2018 lecture study, short exercise breaks helped attention and learning more than playing a computer game did.
SkillArena: Focus Training is a free daily session of four short games, about four minutes in total, covering attention, memory, logic, numbers, reading and wording. Because the research above favors moving away from the screen during breaks, it may fit better before or after a study session than in the middle of one. It has no account and no ads, and its games work offline.
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