How to Recharge
Productive work requires us to be firing on all cylinders. How can we care for ourselves to protect our mental well-being, perform, and be creative both on a daily and long-term basis?
This blog walks through many techniques to suggest skills and practices we need to incorporate into our lives to avoid burn out, deal with stress, and work toward our dreams.
When we drive a car, we routinely refill the gas tank (or recharge the battery), replace the oil, and get tuneups. And even then, we replace our cars every few years, even if the car is still moving forward. We want a car that is not just performing, not just getting us to work and back, but that is doing so at a reasonable performance without constant worry it will break down.
But many of us don’t give our mind and body the same care we give our car. Add the fact that we cannot trade ourselves in for an upgrade and that we are way more complicated machines than are cars, and you have to wonder what we are doing.
I have long figured out that as both a manager and as a person that I believe first and foremost that creative, innovative work takes a fully-focused, engaged mind. This is what I demanded of my employees, and this is what I expected of myself. I can give a damn about how many hours someone puts in, about how they keep up appearances, what I valued most were ideas and work that moved the needle.
Of course, other more routine work needs to get done. That’s the baseline. But where you really earn your keep is the big generative ideas that find new markets or product features, improve processes, or make other more-than-incremental leaps. To do that, you cannot drive yourself to exhaustion.
So I started researching the various ideas we have for how to keep ourselves, as creative knowledge workers, in peak performance on both a daily and long-term basis. I soon had compiled quite a list, and thought putting it all on paper might be fun.
Many of these will be familiar, others, such as Ultradian Rhythm Theory, may be new. My suggestion is to think about each of four groupings below and figure out which of the suggested techniques, or perhaps some not suggested here, serve the same purpose.
Support Routines: Foundational practices to give you a proper base on which to build.
Deep Recharges: Plan these into your weekly and yearly calendars to set yourself for long-term success.
Workplace Rhythms: Setting your day up to maintain productivity and creative focus.
Quick Recharge Strategies: Use these when needed to do a quick mindset reset.
When thinking about these groupings, I considered two aspects of well-being:
Productivity. To ensure we are getting enough of the right stuff done.
Fulfillment. To what end we put our work to, and how does that satisfy us.
For the latter, deep recharges are especially important as they allow you to revisit your purpose, mission and long-term vision, and to tie them to your values. Without these recharges, you may be driving fast, but to what destination?
Support Routines
These are the most basic aspects of keeping our living organisms functioning properly. That doesn’t mean we practice these routines daily. But what is it costing us when we cheat on these routines? We feel sluggish, tired, unable to focus. We respond to stressors differently. Our health and confidence suffer.
The most basic of these routines include:
Sleep: Prioritizing quality rest for cognitive performance and emotional regulation.
Exercise: Boosting mood through endorphins, improving energy levels, and reducing anxiety.
Diet & Hydration: Supporting brain function with balanced nutrition and adequate water intake.
Social Connection: Regularly engaging with supportive relationships to combat loneliness and gain perspective.
Meditation. I’ll drill down on this below, because I believe meditation is underrated as a fundamental support mechanism.
But you may also find these helpful:
Therapy or Coaching: Building emotional intelligence, processing challenges, and fostering personal growth.
Digital Detox: Limiting screen time, especially outside work hours, to reduce mental fatigue.
Hobbies & Creative Outlets: Pursuing interests that provide joy and a sense of accomplishment.
Routine & Structure: Having a predictable routine that reduces decision fatigue and builds healthy habits.
We all know about the benefits of a good diet, 8 hours of sleep, social connection and exercise, so let me focus some more on meditation. Research on meditation using fMRU techniques consistently shows mental, emotional, and even physical benefits.
Cognitive Benefits
Improves Focus & Attention: Meditation strengthens the prefrontal cortex, improving sustained attention and reducing mind-wandering. (Tang et al., 2015, https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn3916)
Enhances Memory & Learning: Increases gray matter density in the hippocampus, improving working memory. (Hölzel et al., 2011, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21071182/)
Reduces Mental Fatigue: Helps prevent cognitive overload by improving information processing and task-switching.
Emotional Benefits
Lowers Stress & Anxiety: Reduces cortisol (the stress hormone) and calms the amygdala, the brain’s fear center. (Goyal et al., 2014, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24395196/)
Boosts Emotional Regulation: Strengthens neural connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, helping people respond rather than react to stress. (Taren et al., 2015, https://sanlab.psych.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2021/03/1-s2.0-S0306453020305370-main.pdf)
Increases Happiness & Well-Being: Triggers the release of serotonin and dopamine, linked to positive mood.
Physical Benefits
Lowers Blood Pressure & Heart Rate: Helps regulate the autonomic nervous system, reducing strain on the cardiovascular system. (Black & Slavich, 2016, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26799456/)
Enhances Immune Function: Meditation has been linked to increased antibody production and reduced inflammation. (Davidson et al., 2003, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/images/uploads/Davidson-Mindfulness_on_Brain_and_Immune_Functionpdf.pdf)
Improves Sleep Quality: Mindfulness meditation reduces insomnia symptoms and helps with deeper sleep. (Ong et al., 2014, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4153063/)
Workplace-Specific Benefits
Boosts Productivity & Creativity: Encourages divergent thinking and problem-solving. (Colzato et al., 2012, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22529832/)
Enhances Workplace Resilience: Employees who meditate regularly report higher job satisfaction and lower burnout rates. (Hülsheger et al., 2013, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234018520_Benefits_of_Mindfulness_at_Work_The_Role_of_Mindfulness_in_Emotion_Regulation_Emotional_Exhaustion_and_Job_Satisfaction)
You don’t need to commit to a lot of time for meditation to provide its benefits. Five to ten minutes a day is a great way to start, increasing to twenty to thirty minutes as you become more comfortable with it.
Deep Recharges
Even when we take care of our most basic biological needs, we are prone to burnout. A deep recharge allows us to take stock of what we want and why, to examine our life to see if we want to make change, and to reinvigorate us for either change or to keep on going.
A deep recharge can look like any of the following:
Weekend breaks: These are built into most of our schedules, and we should learn what works best for us. For me, I enjoy a long Saturday morning walk with enough time to myself. I also don’t like to think about the week ahead on Sunday night: I’d rather do that Friday afternoon or Monday morning.
Vacations: Us Americans! We seem to have a love/hate affair with vacations. We understand their importance, but are hesitant to take them out of fear. But aren’t you envious of the colleague who seems to get away regularly with no repercussions? Vacations are a critical part of really deep recharge. Get over your fear, and go away.
Taking a "sick" day to mentally recharge: Sometimes you just need a day off, but be careful! Watch out for the following pitfalls:
Poorly Timed Breaks: If a day off interrupts momentum on a time-sensitive project, it may increase stress when returning. The Zeigarnik Effect suggests that unfinished tasks linger in the mind, so leaving high-pressure work incomplete without a plan might prevent full mental detachment.
Lack of Boundaries on Rest Days: A “day off” that includes checking work emails or mentally stewing over tasks doesn’t provide the same benefits. To be effective, time off should include true psychological detachment from work.
Overcorrection: For some, especially those prone to procrastination, a day off can become a pattern of avoidance, making re-entry harder. Balancing regular rest with accountability is key.
Sabbaticals: A sabbatical is the deepest of recharges and could tie into identity shifts—people often use them to redefine their career direction, develop new skills, or rekindle passion for their work.
Workplace Rhythms
While Support Routines build up a base for us to perform our best, and deep recharges help us maintain that over the long term, setting up a rhythm for each day can help us manage the grind.
Pomodoro Technique: Work for twenty-five minutes, take a five minute break.
Ultradian Rhythm Theory: Longer breaks every 90 minutes.
How do these compare?
25-Minute Breaks (Pomodoro Technique)
Developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s, the Pomodoro Technique suggests working in 25-minute focused intervals followed by a 5-minute break.
Why it works:
Focus and Attention Span: Research shows that our ability to focus declines after about 20–30 minutes of sustained work. Short breaks help reset attention and prevent mental fatigue.
Mental Restoration: Brief pauses prevent cognitive overload, allowing the brain to consolidate information and improve memory retention.
Dopaminergic Reward System: The anticipation of a break gives the brain a dopamine boost, making tasks feel more achievable.
90-Minute Breaks (Ultradian Rhythm Theory)
Origin: The concept of ultradian rhythms comes from sleep research by Nathaniel Kleitman, who found that we go through 90-minute cycles of light and deep sleep. This rhythm also applies when we’re awake.
Why it works:
Energy Peaks and Troughs: Our bodies naturally shift between high and low energy states every 90 minutes. Working in alignment with this cycle allows for deep focus during peak times and recovery during breaks.
Cognitive Performance: Studies show that after 90 minutes of intense concentration, the brain needs downtime to maintain high performance and avoid burnout.
Elite Performers: Anders Ericsson’s research on elite performers (like musicians and athletes) revealed that the most successful ones practice in uninterrupted 90-minute sessions, followed by rest.
Which type works better depends on the type of work you are doing.
25-minute breaks may be better for tasks requiring frequent context switching or when motivation is low.
90-minute breaks may suit deep work, like creative thinking, writing, strategic planning, or coding.
During these breaks, you can do almost anything that recharges you.
Take a walk
Connect with a colleague for a quick chat
Creative breaks (doodling, music, etc.)
Movement (stretching, quick yoga)
Change your environment for a new perspective
Learn (watching short inspiring videos, reading)
During longer breaks, I like to take a walk to get coffee and maybe interact with people (since I work alone). Frequently I’ll play a quick game of chess since that forces me to refocus my mind away from work for a few minutes.
In fact, since I was once criticized for playing too much chess at work, I decided to do a little bit of research to try to understand what my chess breaks were really doing for me. Here is what I learned:
Doing something different (I like playing a quick game of chess), helps reset your mind by engaging different cognitive processes and providing a mental "palette cleanser." Here’s how:
Cognitive Shifting
When you switch from work tasks to something like chess, your brain shifts focus, activating different neural pathways.
This cognitive flexibility strengthens problem-solving skills and prevents mental fatigue by giving the overworked areas of your brain a rest.
Stress Reduction
Engaging in a fun, stimulating activity provides psychological detachment from work stress.
Chess requires focus but in a low-stakes context, which can calm the mind and reduce cortisol (stress hormone) levels.
Restoring Attention
According to Attention Restoration Theory, tasks that require directed attention (like work projects) deplete mental energy.
A game of chess offers soft fascination—it’s engaging but not overly taxing—helping to restore attention for the next work session.
Dopamine Boost
Completing a game or solving a challenging puzzle provides a dopamine hit, the brain’s reward chemical, improving motivation and mood.
This can make it easier to return to work with a refreshed, positive mindset.
Engaging Different Skills
Chess activates strategic thinking, foresight, and pattern recognition, which are different from the skills you might use in routine work tasks.
This variety boosts neuroplasticity, helping the brain stay adaptable and resilient.
Quick Recharges
So you’re sleeping well, run a couple miles every morning, eating lots of kale, meditating, and taking restorative breaks during the day. You’ve spent one of your breaks telling your colleague about some snorkeling you did in the Caribbean earlier in January. You are doing it! You have created the conditions for success!
Cue the ominous music.
A meeting pops on your calendar: You. Your boss. Topic: product failure at large customer.
Where’s the meditation and hydration and warm blue water when you need it most?Unexpected situations at work can throw you off, and it's helpful to have a collection of techniques to recover your equilibrium quickly.
These techniques include:
Mindfulness exercises
Micro-journaling to clear mental clutter
Gratitude practice to shift mindset
Mindful breathing (e.g., box breathing)
Some of you will be more comfortable with one or another of these techniques. At times of sudden stress, we must be careful to not let our primitive sympathetic nervous system, the one responsible for fight-or-flight responses, automatically take over. Very few workplace situations call for such a reaction. Instead you want to consciously slow your heart rate, and transfer the decision making process to your parasympathetic nervous system, responsible for a rest and digest response. Any of these techniques will help you do that. By doing so, you can make a conscious choice about what action best fits the situation given your goals and values.
Putting Various Types of Recharge Into Action
How can you identify what type of recharge you need?
Not all fatigue is the same, and not all are the same. Some might need emotional connection, others solitude. The above list of tools and techniques does not imply you need to practice all of them. Instead, they are a toolkit from which you can apply what works for you given your personality and situation.
Here are my suggestions:
✅Treat most of the Support Routines as non-negotiable.
✅Ask yourself how you can utilize deep recharges just a little more than you are today. How can your weekend be a little more restful? Do I utilize my vacation time in a way that truly feels restorative? Can I plan a vacation every quarter?
✅Notice when energy starts to flag at work and see if you can incorporate the Pomodoro Technique or Ultridian Rhythm Theory into the day.
✅Have at least one quick recharge technique (like deep breathing) down pat to use in times when you feel everyday stress washing over you.
Workplace culture and leadership can affect recharging. Some companies create environments where mental and emotional breaks are valued, but at others they are seen as slacking and you need to be a bit craftier to get the breaks you need. Companies won’t be upset if you are writing or breathing, but playing a game may trigger sweat-equity managers. If you are a leader, you can help inscribe a culture supportive of people’s needs for these breaks. If you have a workplace that makes it hard for you to take the vacation you have accrued, then perhaps you are not in a company who has your well-being at heart.
Some of you may have beliefs like “I have to always be productive” or “rest is lazy.” I ask you to consider the impact of making decisions when you are at less than full capacity. For myself, I have usually found good work does not take long; what takes long is the processing ahead of that work getting done, and that processing needs to be done when you are at full mental capacity.
