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Pausing reduces stress and helps prevent burnout by calming the nervous system.

Short pauses improve focus, productivity, and decision-making at work.

Constant busyness increases anxiety and leaves no room for creativity or insight.

Regular pauses support mental well-being, clarity, and sustainable performance.

Three weeks ago, I did my usual 4-square breath and one-word check-in at the beginning of my graduate social work class. Most of the students shared words like: exhausted, tired, and burned out. In response, we talked about the upcoming school break, and one student said, “I feel guilty when I do nothing for 5 minutes.” I was shocked! Especially after someone else agreed with her. I then asked the class who else felt that way, and all but one student raised their hand. That experience inspired me to write about the power of a pause.

Students shared that they were raised to work all the time, or that there was always more to do, and they had jobs, families, and assignments to manage. I diverted from the topic of the day to discuss why we need time — even just a few minutes a day — for our brains to do nothing.

The Always On Culture

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”— Viktor Frankl

This quote has been in my stress management slide decks for more than a decade. Frankl’s insight is so relevant at this moment when layoffs, AI, and pressures to do more with less reward speed, urgency, and constant reaction. Notifications keep our phones pinging. Deadlines keep stacking up as the to-do list gets longer. Constant news cycles keep us informed of conflicts, violence, and natural disasters that are often distant but seem so close. Amidst all of that, we have friendships to maintain, families to care for, household chores, and, with some extreme planning and discipline, time for hobbies.

We live and work in a time where technology makes it easy for us to be always on. We have to keep moving, move fast, and even sleep becomes another thing on our to-do list. We often don't have breaks between meetings, which stack one on top of the other, making it hard to think or even breathe. We grind because we think that is the key to success and that any breaks leave us behind our competition. This feels especially pressing when the jobs report is full of layoffs.

Even when we are reading the same sentence over and over because our brains just don't want to take in any more, we keep on going, because we are taught that pushing through is how we get the rewards of hard work.

So, we should not be surprised when burnout shows up, as it does for so many of my therapy clients and employees in my audiences.

Burnout rarely starts with overload. It often starts with the disappearance of space to think, regulate, and respond instead of react.

The space that Frankl described is a psychological necessity for protecting our mental well-being, inspiring creativity, and sustaining high performance.

The Impact of Always Being On

I am a psychotherapist who works with high-performing professionals struggling with stress and burnout, and I see what happens when people don't take pauses. Even short ones. The pressure of full calendars, beeping phones, and late nights with laptops leaves their nervous systems stuck in a state of constant activation.

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They are crying in the bathroom, at home, or in session. Their stomachs are a mess. They are losing hair. Because they just won't stop.

Without breaks, the brain never learns that it is safe to rest. And over time, that constant sense of urgency and busyness leads to mental and physical exhaustion and burnout.

Why Pause Is Productivity

Research on emotional regulation shows that even brief pauses reduce reactivity and improve the quality of your decisions. Mindfulness research shows that short intentional pauses and cognitive resets improve stress resilience, focus, working memory, and flexibility under pressure. And a review of almost 20 studies showed that microbreaks enhanced well-being and performance.

Put simply: You can’t run at full power on a low battery.

Pauses create more time because our brains are faster, sharper, more focused, and more creative when we rest.

In the pause is where we respond instead of always reacting.

It is where we prioritize, plan, and prepare. It is where we get ideas. It is where we find peace.

Burnout creeps up on people. Some people have a big crash where one day they wake up, and they just can't do one more thing. For others, it is a slow burn of sleepless nights, overextension for weeks at a time, and heavy cognitive loads. Early signs of burnout include: irritability, impatience, emotional numbness, cynicism, creative blocks, and chronic fatigue. Many people have learned to power through these early symptoms, and ignoring these warning lights is what leads to the danger zone.

As a speaker, I work with a lot of organizations that respond to burnout after crisis — dips in morale, turnover, disengagement, and absenteeism — instead of supporting employees with institutionalized work boundaries, organized play and community-building, and mental health support during stressful times. Prevention lies in how work is structured and how leaders model work habits.

Increasingly, organizations are recognizing that sustainable performance requires sustainable people. And pause is part of that institutional infrastructure.

Leaders model work habits. When I worked at SRI — a research firm in Silicon Valley — I had a boss who encouraged us to take breaks, work in an ergonomically sound way, and made sure we left work when work was over. Her explicit motivation was preventing extended sick leaves, repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel, and stressed-out employees who could not perform at their best.

If leaders never pause:

teams assume urgency is constant

employees experience burnout

But when leaders pause:

psychological safety increases

decision quality improves

emotional tone stabilizes

high performance is sustainable

Three Pauses That Prevent Burnout

1. The Reaction PauseBefore reacting emotionally, take one slow, deep breath in through your nose and breathe out slowly through your mouth. This regulates your nervous system, slows your heart rate, and calms your blood pressure. This gives you time to think and to respond, not react.

2. The Reset PauseSetting your calendar meeting defaults to 20 minutes and 50 minutes prevents cognitive overload, gives your brain time to prepare for the next thing, and allows you to take a bathroom break, get hydrated, and refuel.

3. The Perspective PauseAsk yourself: Can this wait? Taking a moment to assess the degree of urgency allows you to decide what needs to be done now, and what can wait an hour, a day, or a week... or does not need to be addressed at all.

The retreat industry is growing because people are desperate for breaks, and so is the meditation app business. But you don’t need an app or a retreat; you can create space that gives you pause. For example, you could take:

one deep breath before speaking

a moment of stillness between meetings

a short walk before a decision

a break outside for fresh air

Unlike what my graduate students believe, five minutes of doing nothing won't make their grades fall, or lose them their dream job, or the promotion or raise they work so hard for. Instead, those five minutes are exactly the space that Frankl referred to in his famous quote — where freedom, well-being, creativity, and sustained performance live.

This piece is dedicated to my MSW class - Social Work with Communities and Organizations - at the University of Toronto this semester (Winter 2026), because they were the inspiration and motivation.

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