Taking a mid-morning break can be an opportunity to recharge your batteries and interact with your colleagues. With the mid-morning coffee great ideas emerge, some will say. Others consider it a waste of time. We look for the best from each side.
Coffee has positive effects on the human body. Drinking 2 cups of coffee a day increases alertness and reactivity, and prevents some diseases.
But the mid-morning coffee break goes beyond the benefits of this substance. Excluding companies that allow remote working, and although its practice has declined with the return to offices due to health restrictions, it serves to:
– Communicate with colleagues and improving the working environment.
To foster spontaneity and creativity
– Helps to regain vitality.
It's an oasis of relaxation in the middle of a stressful day.
But also…
– It interrupts your concentration on what you were doing.
If you have flexible hours, you can extend your working day.
Which stance do you most identify with, the proponents or the detractors of mid-morning coffee?
• The coffee break increases productivity by 8% according to a study by the prestigious MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). An experiment revealed that performance increased due to the break and communicative exercise with other workers.
They are not the only ones who argue that this mid-morning sociability of coffee fosters creativity and human relationships:
In 2010, a team from the Faculty of Psychology at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) stated that the opportunity to take a break during the working day helps to improve vitality and ensures that work problems do not affect family life as much.
In 2008, researcher Pernille Stroebaek (University of Copenhagen) interviewed 20 Danish officials and concluded that the mid-morning break serves important psychological and social functions in the workplace. It was seen as “an informal and spontaneous moment to release tension, discuss complicated cases with colleagues, and vent emotional strain derived from the stressful and crisis situations they were forced to resolve”.
Anti-coffee break league: Harvard Business Review
• According to what was published Harvard Business Review In 2012, taking short breaks throughout the day did not revitalise you unless you did something work-related or positive, such as praising a colleague or learning something new.
The author of this research, Charlotte Fritz, argues that non-work-related microbreaks (like making a phone call or checking Facebook) are not associated with increased energy and less fatigue, and were even sometimes associated with increased tiredness. Her idea is that, when you're in the middle of work, you perform better and feel better if you focus on it. Fritz is a proponent of longer breaks, such as lunch.
Another argument:
Eliminating or reducing the coffee break is one of the strategies employed by companies committed to combating presenteeism by shortening downtime, such as coffee breaks or long lunches. This allows for a more intensive workday, enabling employees to leave earlier without sacrificing productivity. improving productivity.
The best? Being flexible and adapting your habits to the needs of your role and your most productive way of being, even making the most of your mid-morning coffee break. Find your own formula!
