Resuscitating Recess: Playing outside is good for everyone.

Recess is not just for kids. The science behind micro breaks and benefits of being outdoors applies to adults as well as children. While swinging on the monkey bars may not seem as appealing as it once did, the brain and body continue to crave breaks from sedentary activity that involve interacting outside. The activity may look different depending on personal preference, occupation, and physical location. Games of touch football at 1130am outside the office are few and far between these days. However, the principles of microbreaks, exposure to natural settings, and infusion of play can be applied in most settings.

Microbreaks

Micro breaks are considered to be breaks from typical work activities that are under 10 minutes in duration. Ideally these breaks involve some sort of physical movement that increases blood flow and activates muscle groups that are dormant when seated. A systematic analysis showed that individuals who took micro breaks benefited from an increased sense of vigor and reduced their feelings of fatigue. Moreover, when breaks were less cognitively demanding, work performance increased. Combining breaks with exposure to the outdoors, ideally in a natural environment, is where a stacking of benefits can occur.

Going Outside

Spending time in a natural environment, even in short durations, positively impacts the body and mind in several ways. First, shifting visual stimuli from a computer screen to natural setting allows the eyes to relax, signalling to the nervous system that it is safe to transition into a parasympathetic state. A meta analysis on forest bathing (Shinrin-Yoku) highlights how spending time in nature reduces cortisol levels and perceptions of stress. The reduction of cortisol and stress levels is highly correlated with lowering blood pressure.

The positive effects of taking short breaks outside carry over to work performance. Walking outside appears to enhance creativity above and beyond walking indoors or remaining stationary. One explanation for why creativity may increase is that viewing, or ideally interacting with nature, is a strategy to restore resources. Once resources have been replenished, work tasks that require an expenditure of cognitive, emotional, or physical energy are less likely to cause burnout. Peak performance requires an abundance of available resources. Consider how microbreaks in nature can be implemented as an individually or ideally, organizational strategy, for improving well-being and performance.

Infusing Play

Adding play to microbreaks is like adding creamer to coffee or salt to food: it adds flavor to the experience. Choosing to add an element to play to your break could be as simple of exploring movement in a new way, or seeing how many steps you can take in 10 minutes. Two ways play can be activated is through gamifying a task or applying the imagination. Traveling back in time to the playground during recess, the majority of activities involved one or both of these elements. In the context of work in urban settings, this may look like, walking through a park and imagining what it looked like 100 years ago. Or playing the age old game of avoiding cracks on the sidewalk. In the quest for well-being, health, and longevity, play remains an under valued activity and ability. A 15 years longitudinal study among adults in Norway indicated that playful attitude and sense of humor have been found to be correlated with longevity. A little play throughout the day can go a long way to living a longer, more fulfilling life.

Resources

Albulescu, P., Macsinga, I., Rusu, A., Sulea, C., Bodnaru, A., & Tulbure, B. T. (2022). “Give me a break!” A systematic review and meta-analysis on the efficacy of micro-breaks for increasing well-being and performance. PLOS ONE, 17(8), e0272460. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272460

Antonelli, M., Barbieri, G., & Donelli, D. (2019). Effects of forest bathing (shinrin-yoku) on levels of cortisol as a stress biomarker: A systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Biometeorology, 63(8), 1117–1134. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-019-01717-x

Oppezzo, M., & Schwartz, D. L. (2014). Give your ideas some legs: The positive effect of walking on creative thinking. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40(4), 1142–1152. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036577