Following up from the previous post ‘How Breaks Are Essential for Personal Productivity‘, what about the lunch break? How important is it for productivity? Here again Daniel Pink’s book ‘When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing‘ comes to the rescue.
When I travel to the UK or the US I am always amazed how people take their lunch snack at their desk, almost not even standing up. Thus the lunch time is kept to a minimum and they can leave work earlier. In France and many other countries, a true lunch break is an essential part of the day and it is important to go somewhere out of the office to have a real meal.
According to Daniel Pink, having a good lunch break is essential for overall effectiveness. “Not just any lunch will do, however. The most powerful lunch breaks have two key ingredients — autonomy and detachment.” Therefore, it is important to be able to disconnect from work sufficiently.
Taking the time to have a real lunch break is thus confirmed as a good practice; this has consequences on employers’ policies as well: since a proper lunch break is correlated with improved effectiveness, why hesitate?
