The Secret to More Restorative Breaks? Leavey Professor Rebecca Chae Says Start With a Fresh Mindset
In today’s fast-paced workplace, taking breaks has become both a necessity and a challenge. While organizations encourage employees to pause for coffee, lunch, or short walks, the effectiveness of those breaks often falls short.
Leavey School of Business Professor Rebecca Chae has been exploring why that’s the case and what can be done about it. Her recently published paper uncovers a simple yet powerful shift: how we categorize our tasks around breaks can determine whether we return refreshed or mentally drained.
The research, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, reveals that when people frame a break as occurring between two separate tasks rather than in the middle of one ongoing task, they are less likely to ruminate about unfinished work. In turn, this mental shift reduces stress and improves post-break performance.
“It’s not just about whether you take a break,” says Chae. “It’s about how you think about the work on either side of that break. By creating a psychological boundary, you give your mind permission to let go.” This insight arrives as employees report record levels of burnout and mental fatigue, with the World Health Organization recently classifying burnout as an occupational phenomenon.
The ongoing debates around hybrid work schedules, four-day workweeks, and workplace wellness programs underscore the urgency of finding strategies that truly help people recover during the day. Chae’s research offers a low-cost, immediately applicable tool: a mindset shift that doesn’t require apps, gadgets, or wellness stipends.
Chae and her co-authors drew from their combined expertise in goals, motivation, and time perception to explore how task framing could affect mental recovery. Their experiments included contexts as varied as word search puzzles, exercise routines, and academic calendars. Consistently, participants who framed their breaks as transitions between distinct tasks reported fewer intrusive thoughts during downtime and performed better when resuming work.
The practical implications extend well beyond the lab. “At the individual level, employees can start to think differently about their breaks by labeling them as transitions between tasks rather than interruptions in the middle,” Chae explains. “At the organizational level, firms can schedule breaks more strategically. For example, setting deadlines right before lunch allows employees to fully disconnect and return more energized.”
For businesses, the research highlights opportunities to redesign workflows and rethink wellness initiatives. Structured breaks, such as lunch hours or mid-shift pauses, can be positioned between tasks rather than arbitrarily scheduled. Even simple changes, like naming pre-break and post-break activities differently, may provide employees with a sense of closure, reducing the tendency to ruminate about unfinished work.
These findings also resonate with current conversations around mental health. As companies grapple with rising stress and retention challenges, Chae’s work suggests that cultural shifts in how managers frame tasks and deadlines could pay dividends in productivity and well-being. It’s a reminder that not all solutions require sweeping policy changes; sometimes, the smallest adjustments in perception can yield the biggest results.
Chae aspires for her research to reach a wide audience, particularly individuals who guide conversations on organizational practices and drive meaningful policy change. Her goal is not only to advance academic understanding of rumination and task categorization, but also to provide employees and employers with tools to foster healthier, more sustainable ways of working.
“Ultimately, we want people to feel that their breaks are actually restorative,” she says. “By reframing how they approach tasks, individuals can make the most of even the shortest pauses — and organizations can cultivate environments where productivity and well-being go hand in hand.”