Category: Psychology

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I Spent Two Hours Learning How to Take a Break Instead of Taking a Break

And so you hopefully don’t waste the same amount of time, here are just the conclusions:

Take breaks every 20 to 70 minutes. Finding the right frequency for you may take trial and error. Multiple sources agree that something near 50 minutes of work with 10 minutes of break works well. The Pomodoro technique combines more frequent shorter breaks with infrequent longer breaks, and is commonly used. The longer you go between breaks, the longer your breaks should be.

A break is only effective when you do something different from what you’re doing now. The primary differences that matter are using different areas of the brain (or not trying to utilize your brain during a break), a difference in eye-focus (stop looking at screens if you were, look far away if you were focused on something right in front of you), and a difference in physical activity (move more if you weren’t moving, or stop for a bit if you were).

(Vacations have beneficial effects, but these seem to be limited in scope and duration. I believe this take is missing important nuance.)

If you wish to read all my notes on this topic, they are publicly available here. (Note: In case that website goes down, I do regularly back up my notes (and blog posts) using the services linked to on Archives & Sources.)

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Nihilism, The Ubermensch, & Garfield

If you want the short version, skip to watching this video, or: Nihilism is the belief that life is meaningless. But why settle for that? If life is meaningless, then the only true meaning is what you bring to life. Do what you can to the fullest you possibly can. Embrace all of life, its good and bad, because it is all you have. The Ubermensch is an idealized future super-human who does this. While impossible to achieve, it is possibly the only escape from nihilism.

Garfield is horrifying once you realize the majority of the comic is about Jon suffering eternally. But that horror comes from within – or from a cosmic demon cat. It can be taken to represent a mental trap where one sits lost in their own suffering. I am very prone to nihilist feelings, but that video feels inspirational to me. While it wallows in hopelessness and otherworldly horror, to me it speaks only of the demons in my mind that I’ve lived with for as long as I can remember.

Every bit of horror displayed there just looks like a Tuesday to me. It also reminds me of the first video I linked to. I discovered it a few years ago, and keep coming back to it because it feels so significant to my personal issues:

I’ve felt lost and hopeless for a long time because my depression feels everlasting, because it feels like the only time I’ve ever be free of it is when I am dead, and because that feeling leads to wanting that death to come as soon as possible. I also fear death immensely, because I don’t believe in any kind of afterlife – I don’t want to not exist.

This idea gives me some hope and solace that while I may never escape my personal demons, I may be able to enjoy my life regardless.

I started writing this because I want you to know how Garfield is horrifying, and I want to share videos that are personally significant. Somehow these goals aligned with thinking about depression and how to keep living when life has a lot of pain in it. But, really, just.. watch this:

Edit: Oh, and I get the impression that Garfield is actually supposed to be much darker, but Jim Davis keeps being prevented from publishing the darker stuff: