In an ideal world, you might get a full-hour lunch break daily to relax, eat a healthy meal, and feel refreshed. But unfortunately, an increasing number of people are forced to work through their lunch break to complete their work on time or to get home faster to their wives and kids in the evenings.
Your lunch break may be essential to your job because you can relax and take care of other matters besides your work. Whether you work from home or in an office, you could get away from your desk and indulge in personal hobbies or relax your body and mind. This allows you to return to work feeling refreshed, energetic, and ready for the rest of the day.
If you work through your lunch regularly and want to make that time more enjoyable, here are the tips and tricks to help you do so.
Five Tips To Enjoy Working Through Your Lunch Break
It is important to utilize your lunch break to concentrate on other things since it allows your brain to take a break from thinking about work-related issues. Then, when you return to your workplace, you will feel more invigorated, productive, and eager to finish chores.
A study shows that half of all American employees do not take a decent lunch break, and one-third eat at their workstations. The causes vary, but most may be attributable to the sensation or idea that lunch breaks are unproductive. However, it is widely established that individuals, and even the whole firm, gain when employees take a lunch break.
Always allow your brain to rest sometimes to re-energize yourself. Then, when you return to work, your attention, creativity, and brainpower are greatly enhanced, which means you will achieve more than you would have if you had not taken the rest.
All breaks from work are good, but to truly boost your productivity, fill your lunch break with these five suggestions.
Get Active
If you are already feeling tired by lunchtime, it might seem counter-intuitive to expend any more energy on exercise. However, countless studies show that moderate exercise that raises your heart rate for just a few minutes can help you increase brain activity for hours afterward. Start with a short walk around the office or even a trip up and down a few flights of stairs. The walk will take just a few minutes but will leave you feeling energized and ready to take on the challenges of the afternoon.
Exercising during your lunch break may also spare you time that you would have spent exercising before or after work, allowing you to utilize that extra time to do other things. Try the scientific seven-minute exercise if fitting in a workout during your lunch hour seems difficult. It takes only seven minutes, but it’s intense, so you’ll feel it.
Meditating to calm your mind and body may also help cleanse your brain and improve your concentration levels when you return to your task. This fresh energy may be directed and focused on any challenging activities you may encounter in the afternoon. This enables you to face these issues with a more positive and relaxed perspective.
Stop for Five Minutes
If your job is rushed and busy at all times, you might feel that working through lunch is your only choice to stay ahead. While this may be true, you can still benefit from five minutes of uninterrupted peace and quiet. Don’t answer your phone or check your business emails for at least five minutes. Instead, spend time in silence, reading a news article of your choice or calling a friend to chat for few minutes before returning to work.
You can try to fix a schedule with your friends outside your work premise or with your relatives to spend your lunch break catching up. If they’re nearby, attempt to meet for lunch. And if you can’t be physically together, you can opt into video calling technology, which allows you to utilize the opportunity to reconnect.
Friendships have been linked to various advantages, including improved mental and physical health. People with strong social support networks and old friends are happier, suffer less depression, and achieve more achievement.
Alternatively, you can also sit down and converse with your colleagues in the break room during lunch breaks. This makes building deeper connections with colleagues easier and simplifies cooperating on work-related tasks. It may also help you and your team members feel more at ease, making your work more pleasurable.
Get Delivery to Save Time
Although making homemade meals is often considered to be the best option for lunch, not everyone has the time or expertise in the kitchen to do so. If you enjoy fast food or restaurant meals at lunch but can’t leave the office due to work, consider having your favorite fast food delivered right to your desk. This can be a nice way to enjoy your favorite foods without skipping your work duties.
Your employer provides you with a lunch break for a purpose, and failing to take one might negatively influence your health. Constant sitting may create back discomfort, but frequent breaks can relieve spinal strain, decrease tension and anxiety, and help avoid burnout. In addition, taking time away from work activities allows your unconscious brain to work properly, and eating brain foods helps you be more productive.
Choose Healthy Lunch Items
Whenever possible, try to include a range of healthy foods as part of your work lunch diet. Even fast food restaurants have great options, including grilled chicken and salads. You don’t have to go on a granola diet or anything like that. Just plan to include some lean protein, whole grain carbohydrates, and nutritious vegetables in every meal to fuel you for a few more work hours.
Brain-boosting foods include blueberries, avocados, nutritious grains, salmon, and dark chocolate. However, if you consume oily or sugary items, particularly in large quantities, you may feel lethargic when you return to work or have a sugar crash later in the afternoon.
Were you thinking about skipping lunch? Well, think again—but this time carefully, as your brain consumes 20% of your energy. So it would be best for you if you ate to recharge your brainpower. And, no, coffee isn’t enough.
You could also plan your weekly meals to ensure you eat healthily at lunch and supper. This also helps you save time and money by planning your meals and obtaining a quick lunch during your break. You may also make a food list and go grocery shopping that evening for nutritious products for forthcoming meals.
Avoid Sugar and Caffeine in Large Quantities
When people are tired, they rush to grab one or two cups of coffee during lunch breaks. However, the caffeine fix is not without drawbacks. Fortunately, many simple healthy behaviors, as mentioned above, may keep you energetic throughout the day without relying on a beverage of Joe as a crutch.
Limiting your sugar intake at home, where you have total control over yourself and your environment, is typically considerably simpler. However, this might be more difficult while you are at work and exposed to your coworkers’ eating habits and the temptations of vending machines and fast food restaurants.
If you’re hungry for a snack at work and don’t have something nutritious on hand, it’s too easy to succumb to the vending machine or devour the cookies your colleague baked. Bringing your own food helps you reduce sugar cravings since you have greater control over what you put in your body.
After a delicious meal, indulging in those sugary treats or caffeinated beverages can be tempting. But, while they might give you the energy to get through in the short term, after an hour or two, you will be more tired than when you first started. So instead, indulge in a handful of nuts or a piece of fruit for quick energy.
As a bonus point, it is quite fulfilling when you use your lunch break to do errands that you would have kept for the evening or the weekend, and it will give you a chance to take a walk and get away from your desk. The more errands you can do during your lunch hour, the more time you’ll have to relax during the weekend.
In Conclusion
Although working through your lunch break may not be ideal, it can still be enjoyable. Consider spending 15 to 30 minutes after your meal concentrating on your obligations, engaging in a calming activity, arranging your thoughts, or enjoying the fresh air. This may improve your chances of tackling your afternoon duties more pleasantly and energetically.
These tips will help you to make every day pleasant, even when you’re the man eating at his desk.
