Comment by mavamaarten

I don't think it needs to translate to "go on vacation". During my time being employed, this translated into getting up and stretching, taking a few minutes to look out the window, going for a short walk, taking an intentional breath, sitting and meditating for 15 minutes, actually eating lunch away from my computer, or not eating lunch and going for a quick run or doing yoga or going to the gym.

This can come forth in so many ways.

Moment by moment we can have an eye on our body and what it is asking for, I've found it to not only make me more productive, but also led to my baseline of stress to being way, way lower then everyone around me which is contagious in a positive way.

I take your point as I'm retired. But I had my previous working life squarely in mind when writing the post.

"Sustainable pace" helps, which in my case came down to 37 hour working weeks, not working at weekends, and taking all my vacation (and some extra when my employer let me buy it). I know this might sound like madness to Americans, but as a Brit employed mostly by American companies, it worked fine for me.

I found that taking plenty of breaks during the working day helped. Coffee breaks with colleagues, a decent lunch break (ideally including exercise), and plenty of tea breaks. So many times I've had a good idea or solved a problem during a break, so they are actually productive.

Then there's finding other useful things to do which aren't as taxing as the thing that's blocking you (e.g. the next large feature). Fixing bugs, writing docs, and doing preparatory investigations about the upcoming work are all productive ways to give yourself a bit of a mental break. (This was hardest when working in teams with continual short sprints or doing XP and pairing, but if I allowed myself to start to burn out, my productivity started to decline - essentially my brain was forcing me to take things a little more slowly in order to recover.)