Founders Series: How to make the most of your breaks

Welcome to our Founders Series, where we aim to give advice, answer questions and provide solutions for people starting their own businesses. If this sounds like you, read on! We've got plenty of content on a wide range of topics, all to help you grow and succeed as a founder.

Lunch breaks – one of the most important parts of the day. But it’s easy to slip into the habit of skipping it, working through it and going hungry. Taking a break from your desk, going for a walk or even just sitting on the sofa is vital to maintaining focus, low stress levels and workflow.

Unfortunately, sometimes it’s unavoidable that you’ll have to work through your usual lunch hour, but finding a time in the day, even if it’s only 10 minutes, to take a break, stretch and take your mind off work is incredibly important. If not, you could suffer from burnout, low energy levels and ultimately become unproductive.

Take a look at some of the ways you can make the most of that time away from your laptop.

Screen time

You’ve been staring at a laptop all morning, but you may be tempted to pop the TV on or scroll on TikTok during your lunch break. But giving your eyes and brain a break from a screen can have both mental and physical benefits.

The average user in the UK spends around 6 hours on their devices every day. This can be anything from social media and messaging to games and watching videos. In fact, in the UK, people spend around 1 hour 52 minutes on social media alone every day. The health risks to this high number are endless, but here’s just a few:

Disruption of sleep – blue light screens can interfere with the production of melatonin, making it harder for a person to fall asleep.
Eye strain and headaches – if you spend too much time looking at a screen, you can suffer from eye strain, headaches and even dizziness. Not quite the ‘square eyes’ your mum might have threatened when you were a kid!
Mental health problems – one of the more prominent ones on this list is the impact screen time can have on your mental health. Not only does the content you’re seeing affect you, with comparisons being made between your life and the personalities you see online, but having too much screen time can isolate you from the real world. Although it can provide a good distraction, striking a balance between scrolling or playing games and the other items on this list is a vital thing to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

We’re by no means saying cut out screen time all together. That’s completely unrealistic and we can admit we love a scroll on Tiktok every now and then. But mix it with other things. Otherwise you can get stuck in a rut if you’re not being challenged creatively or trying new things.

So what are some other ways you can spend your lunch break?

Getting out

Going for a walk in England is always a hit or miss situation – weather being a big disruption. But the mental health benefits to going for even a short walk during the day far outweigh the negatives of possibly getting caught in the rain. In fact, studies have shown that walking for as little as 30 minutes a day can reduce the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and even some cancers.

Not only that, but going for daily or weekly walks, even if it’s only for 10 minutes, can improve your mental wellbeing and productivity massively. Being outside, getting fresh air and taking some time out of the four walls of your office boosts creativity and alleviates the stress of the day.

If you struggle to walk without a purpose, a common issue, there are plenty of apps you can use. These include apps for dog walking, for monitoring your movement, podcasts for motivation or even to take your mind off the task at hand. We’ve listed a few examples below:

BorrowMyDoggy – not got a dog but wish you did? With this app, you pay a yearly subscription of £12.99, create your profile and become a dog walker! Choose a dog from your local area, arrange a meetup and build connections through the app. It’s a great way to get out and about, see your local area, and help someone out who isn’t able to take their dog out or doesn’t have the time. Win-win!
MapMyWalk – created by Under Armour, this app allows you to track your routes, plan out new areas to explore and connect with friends over your shared love of exercising. Set customised challenges if you like a goal to work towards, or just go on your favourite walk that you can save for another time too.
Spotify – it may sound like an obvious one, but Spotify has tons of free podcasts and playlists. This includes ones specifically dedicated to walking, or focusing your mind, but also thousands of others to cater to whatever interests you. Whether that’s true crime, comedy or romance, there’s a bit of everything. There’s also playlists for music to help with breathing exercises. If you’re feeling particularly stressed and have taken yourself for a walk to calm down, try square breathing, or listening to some forest sounds.
Forest – linking to our point about screen time, Forest helps you take a step away from your phone and find some focus. If you’d rather take a walk without worrying about messages popping up or work emails interrupting your break, set a timer in the Forest app for the duration of your walk and a tree will grow as time passes. Customise your tree, enable blocking for notifications and work towards planting a tree in real life. The more time you spend focusing, the more your digital tree grows. And if you leave the app while you’re in focus time, your tree will die. There’s a good motivator!

Meal prep

It’s so common to get to the end of a long work day, look in the freezer and decide a takeaway is more appealing. If the thought of preparing a home cooked meal after work doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, why not meal prep? If cooking is something that relaxes you, spending your lunch time preparing a few meals that you can freeze or refrigerate to eat throughout the week is a great idea.

There’s lots of websites and apps you can use to find freezable/meal prep suitable recipes. Here’s just a few:

Pinterest – often seen as one full of unattainable crafts and delicious looking meals, Pinterest is actually packed with recipes that are easy to follow. Often, a Pin will link off to the creator’s blog, where they’ll have step-by-step instructions and sometimes a video to show you what to do. One of our Content Editor’s personal favourites is a one-pot ratatouille spaghetti (vegan and gluten free).
BBC Good Food – this website is absolutely packed with easy, meal prep meals. Each recipe tells you exactly how long it’ll take to make and is given a difficulty rating. So if you’re feeling like more of a challenge, choose a trickier recipe!
Kitchen Stories – available on both iOS and Android, Kitchen Stories is a free to use recipe app, full of easy-to-follow video recipes. Like on Good Food, each recipe tells you how long it’ll take to prep and then cook, and you can filter it by dietary preference.

It’s okay if things change

Like we’ve said previously, sometimes it’s completely unavoidable that you’ll have to work through your lunch break. That’s fine. And even if you can’t squeeze in a break until the end of the day, try to at least take 5 minutes to grab a cup of tea and a snack.

Taking a short break not only benefits your body and means you aren’t hunched over a desk all day, but it helps stimulate your brain. You’ll be more productive and produce better work if you give yourself a bit of time away from the laptop.

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