Making the Most of Your Lunch Hour

MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR LUNCH HOUR          

Bob Larson, CPC
Bob Larson, CPC

With increasing workloads, more employees are eating lunch at their desks or even forgoing it altogether, according to an article published by The Wall Street Journal. But passing up a proper midday break may not be a wise decision—either for your health or your workplace efficiency.

That because the attention it takes people to focus at work drains them of psychological, social and material reserves, leading to stress and lower productivity, said Chris Cunningham, professor of Industrial-Organizational and Occupational Health Psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

“Taking a lunch break away from the desk lets people separate themselves from the source of that drain,” Dr. Cunningham told the newspaper. “And that offers the opportunity to build back some of those resources in the middle of the day—rather than just at the end when work is over.”

There is no hard data on how much of a break the body needs to fully recover its resources, Dr. Cunningham said. He believes, though, that it’s person-specific; some people might need a 10- minute break, while others might need an hour.

 

With so much research showing that parking in a chair all day puts a drag on productivity, mood and physical health, Dr. Cunningham suggests ditching the desk at least once at midday to do something energizing: “At least go for a walk down the hall.” If possible, he said, use the full break to switch focus to something uplifting—instead of, say, online shopping, reading email or running to the bank. “I wouldn’t call that a resource-replenishing moment,” he added.

Dr. Cunningham cites psychologist William James’s 19th-century concept of passive attention, which suggests that people can restock their inner resources by focusing on something that fascinates them and draws them in, seemingly without effort, according to the article.

The easiest way to replenish, research shows, is to interact with nature. “Just changing your environment relieves you of the need to decide what you want to attend to, and that in itself poses a sort of relief,” said Dr. Cunningham.

Studies have also shown that connecting to colleagues socially throughout the day can be very energizing. “If you’re a service rep or a call-center employee, I could understand why you wouldn’t want to take a social lunch,” said Dr. Cunningham, “but for some of us, it’s different enough from what we’ve been spending our day doing, and we get a lot out of it.”

He is a fan of going out with co-workers for lunch frequently—and not talking about work. “That is a resource-replenishing activity,” he told the newspaper. The only downside: “You can’t write that lunch off your taxes.”

In a recent exploratory study, Dr. Cunningham asked medical residents to rate the degree to which they found each of their daily activities to be stressful, resource-straining and resource-replenishing. “Eating during work hours was the one activity that was rated only as replenishing, and tremendously valuable to them,” he said.

According to the article, nutritionists have long asserted that eating small amounts throughout the day helps maintain a level metabolism. And most people have experienced the sluggishness that follows a heavy midday meal.

 

“It’s certainly not advised to have a Thanksgiving feast for lunch,” added Dr. Cunningham. “Then again, you should give yourself a chance to be fascinated with the world around you—and enjoying your food can do that.”