breaks, or rest periods, between bouts of work is essential. in exercise or physical labor, it is in the rest period that you actually recover and grow stronger. if you constantly exercised or worked without rest, you would start to retrogress thus get weaker than you were when you started. exercise induces the stress that challenges your body. the recovery period is when your body builds itself stronger so it can handle the stress the next time around.

the idea of rest and recovery seems to hold for mentally challenging work as well. as you start getting bogged down in a long drawn out mental task you can see that it is harder to think and concentrate. take a break and you come back to the problem seemingly better than ever. new ideas pop up and old problems seem clearer and are more easily solved. the best thing you can do when the work slows is to take a break and recover from the strain. it is easy to forget to do this and to try and stick at your work until it's done but the time wasted in the slow-down could have been better spent at a break. to some it seems strange that taking a break leads to more productive work but try it. oh and i mean a real break. something relaxing and not sitting there and thinking about the work.