When you’ve got a big project staring you in the face, it’s tempting just to grind it out, getting up from your chair only to pour more coffee. (But who are we kidding? You’ve got the coffee pot sitting on your desk.) However, research shows that this single-minded focus will backfire after a while. Just as kids at school need a recess to recharge, adults at work need to take a break now and then. A recent study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign showed that taking a short break can improve your ability to focus on a task. Researchers theorize that your brain gradually loses focus when stimulated by the same thing over and over (sort of like how you learn to ignore the ticking of a clock). By giving your brain something else to chew on for a few minutes, you can return to the original task with more focus. In the study, people who interrupted a long task with brief breaks showed no loss of performance over the course of fifty minutes, while those who didn’t interrupt their task did worse over time. Unlike with multitasking, where you constantly switch between tasks, deliberately taking a break is refreshing to your brain. But don’t just switch from one type of task to a similar task (reading a book, then reading a blog). Instead, do something different—take a quick walk around the office, have a conversation—then get back to the original task quickly.