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For years, office culture has treated work and rest as opposites — every minute spent recovering felt like a minute stolen from productivity. New research suggests that trade-off is largely an illusion.
A study led by associate professor Stacey Parker at the University of Queensland, with colleagues Niamh Dawson, Nerisa Dozo, and Hannes Zacher, found that employees who pair short breaks with intentional work strategies throughout the day report significantly higher energy and motivation than those who don't.
Measuring Energy as It Happens
The researchers tracked 91 office workers across fields like IT, HR, administration, consulting, and education. Participants wore heart rate monitors and completed brief hourly surveys over a full workday, generating more than 600 hours of combined physiological and self-reported data. That dual approach let the team compare what people said they felt against what their bodies were actually doing.
"There are lots of things people can do to stay energized and motivated at work — including taking a quick walk, chatting with a colleague, or planning their goals for the day," Parker said. "Taking short pauses, or 'microbreaks,' alongside activities like organizing work, can help people manage their energy levels."
Five Distinct Energy-Management Styles
The data revealed five recurring patterns, or "profiles," that describe how people manage their energy across the workday:
- Moving — short physical breaks like walking or stretching
- Socializing — brief conversations with coworkers
- Meaningful organizing — planning tasks, updating to-do lists, reflecting on purpose
- Active strategizing — combining organizing with microbreaks in the same hour
- Passive strategizing — staying heads-down with little to no energy management
The last category dominated, accounting for roughly two-thirds of all hours tracked. Socializing followed at about 15%, meaningful organizing at 9%, and moving and active strategizing each appeared only rarely.
What the Heart Rate Data Showed
Physiological data added nuance to the self-reports. The moving profile produced the strongest heart rate variability — a marker of how well the body manages stress — outperforming the organizing, active, and passive profiles on that measure. For motivation specifically, the active strategizing profile came out on top, suggesting that pairing movement or rest with purposeful planning offers benefits neither strategy delivers alone.
The Winning Combination Is Also the Rarest
Employees who blended meaningful organizing with microbreaks in the same hour reported the highest levels of energy, motivation, and sense of mastery — beating out even the movement- or socializing-focused groups.
The catch: this "active strategizing" pattern showed up in only 6% of the 600+ hours studied, dwarfed by the 65% spent in passive, heads-down mode. Only about a quarter of employees could be classified as consistent "effective strategizers."
Rethinking the Workday
The findings challenge the assumption that work and recovery compete for the same time. "Employees don't have to choose between working and taking a break," Parker said. "They can combine restorative activities with work-focused strategies, even within a single hour, and gain benefits for both wellbeing and performance."
Parker sees clear implications for how organizations approach wellbeing and workday design. "There's a real opportunity for employers to give people the information, tools, and support they need to manage their energy more effectively," she said. "These findings provide practical guidance on how employees can feel better, stay motivated, and cope more effectively with the demands of work."
With the most effective pattern appearing in just 6% of hours studied, there's substantial room for workplaces to help more employees adopt a strategy that's already proven to work.