THE ROOT 9: 45.2 | Defining a 'Break'

True Breaks and the Pavlovian Loop

A couple of weekends ago we were getting a bit ahead of work on the weekend, and taking some ‘breaks’ throughout the day by casually scrolling through Instagram, Youtube, TikTok, you name it…Sure, that has it’s place in time (we are only human) but we talked about something we had heard on an episode of Modern Wisdom with Dr. Andrew Huberman on how to reclaim your brain.

It talks about how breaks work to actually recharge our brians…and where we may be misinterpreting a break as something that actually does the opposite. When treating a break as a reward for hard work, we may tend to reach for our phones. We think we are resting because we aren't "working," but in reality, we’re swapping one form of stimulation for another. Not a lot of us truly focus on “deliberately defocusing”, which almost completely reframes how many of us may think of a “break”.

The principle is simple but fairly challenging to put into practice: a break should be less stimulating than the task you just finished. When we immediately jump into social media, we never actually allow our brains to consolidate information or genuinely rest. Instead, we create a Pavlovian loop: a process which associates a neutral stimulus (a signal from your brain to recharge / refocus) to a meaningful one (opening up your phone) through repeated behavior in responding to a signal (boredom / need for rest) - over time this triggers a similar reflexive response to the neutral stimulus alone. In simple terms…you trick your brain into thinking it is getting a break / rest by opening your phone…but it really isn’t. We condition ourselves to reflexively seek a hit of dopamine the second we feel a hint of boredom. (Or at least, this is my best attempt at explaining this new concept I learned — let me know if I misinterpreted anything!)

Basically, the brain forms a strong and involuntary link making that signal of boredom lead to the reaction of a phone scroll, as opposed to rest, even without the original trigger of boredom over time.

To break this cycle, we should instead supplement our breaks with tasks that are LESS stimulating. By just sitting in a chair, looking out a window, or walking without a podcast / music, we allow our mind to actually take rest and come back to the task with better focus.

If we can sit through the boredom, we gain back the power to choose where our attention goes next.

Note: this podcast is 3+ hours. If you want a brief 12-min video explaining this concept, you can find that in the YouTube excerpt of the podcast here: