CATCH SOME DOWNTIME

Our always-on culture can be bad for you. Here's how to give your brain a break.

- KRISTINE GILL

IT TAKES MORE than just leaving the office to stop your mind from working. Our brain is always "on," but there's a major difference between the mental work we do for money and the way our brain works to support us in our daily routine. That's why downtime is crucial to staying productive while having a life.

So how do you make the switch when you log out for the day? And what activities should you try to give yourself a break? The key is to understand brain science, aka neuroscience. We talked with experts to learn what stress and the daily workload do to the brain, and what you can do to give your mind the restorative break it needs.

Your Brain on Work

To understand the difference between a break and work, it's helpful to understand the brain with and without stress. Your brain enters a sympathetic state when you're under deadline and there's pressure to perform, says Jesse Hanson, PhD, a psychotherapist in Toronto.

"What happens to most people at work is that they are in what's called hyper-arousal, or a sympathetic state," Hanson explains. "The positive thing about the sympathetic state is that it's sort of the motivator to say, 'Let's get this done, let's get that done."" While sympathetic states can be helpful to juggling and knocking off a lot of work on deadline, too much is a bad thing, and Hanson says he often sees it in people who work in high-pressure environments, from a stock trading floor to a restaurant kitchen. "[Those people are] entering what is actually a dangerous level of sympathetic activity, both in terms of intensity as well as frequency or consistency," he says.