"Give me a break!" A systematic review and meta-analysis on the efficacy of micro-breaks for increasing well-being and performance
Patricia Albulescu · Irina Macsinga · Andrei Rusu · Coralia Sulea · Alexandra Bodnaru · Bogdan Tudor Tulbure
PLOS ONE · 2022
What the research tells us
Micro-breaks of up to ten minutes showed small average benefits for vigour and fatigue: vigour d=.36 (95% CI .16–.55), fatigue improvement d=.35 (.19–.50). The primary performance estimate, d=.16 (−.04 to .37), was not significant; subjective improvement does not establish better work performance.
Scope & interpretation
Activities, tasks and designs varied; inclusion required English, a specified publication period and accessible full text. Performance showed a publication-bias signal, and sensitivity estimates do not replace the main analysis. Its P value is .17 in the text and .116 in Table 3; both are nonsignificant, but the exact value remains unresolved.
Study at a glance
- POPULATION & SAMPLE
- 19 reports, 22 independent samples and 2,335 healthy employees or students, synthesised separately by outcome.
- EXPOSURE / INTERVENTION / SUBJECT
- Experimental or quasi-experimental comparisons of micro-breaks lasting ≤10 minutes.
- OUTCOMES
- Vigour, fatigue and performance, with 9, 9 and 15 effect groups respectively.
- TIME FRAME
- Brief breaks and short-term task outcomes; no established long-term workplace-policy effect.
Cited on this site
Editorial & review record
Record for v0.3 · Updated
Editorial responsibility: TAP Editorial Team
Editorial note
Under the editorial responsibility of the TAP Editorial Team, this publication used AI assistance for content organization and editing.
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How responsibilities and review are recorded ↗Scope of this reading note
Full-text eligibility, risk-of-bias assessment, Table 3, publication bias and discussion. Individual-study bias and performance-model output remain to be checked.
- Study funding
- Andrei Rusu reported Romanian Ministry of Education and Research, CNCS–UEFISCDI support, project PN-III-P1-1.1-TE-2019-2032.
- Competing interests
- The authors declared no competing interests.
Project support
Founded and supported by Resilio.
Revision history
- · v0.3
Added the nonsignificant primary performance result, publication bias and inconsistent P-value text.