Why Taking Breaks Help Your Brain Absorb More Information

Information has never been so abundant, or so accessible. By some estimates, Americans now consume more than 12 hours of media each day, and digital content—everything from TikTok videos to podcasts—accounts for two-thirds of that total. 

This information glut has led to questions about the human memory’s capacity to handle such a flood of novel input. While it’s often assumed that the more we take in, the more we must retain in the form of greater knowledge or understanding—sort of a “more is more” view of information consumption—research suggests our brain needs regular breaks to properly digest what it consumes.

So-called “offline states”—when a person isn’t thinking about much and their attention is free to wander—give the brain an opportunity to revisit and process its recent experiences, says Erin Wamsley, a cognitive neuroscientist at Furman University in South Carolina.

A lot of this processing occurs at an unconscious level, so we aren’t aware it’s happening. But if we don’t give our brain these breathers now and then, our ability to recall and make sense of what we’ve learned may suffer. “People are generally not aware that their brain is doing something very important when they’re not doing anything,” Wamsley says. “But this offline processing is a crucial aspect of memory.”

Why breaks are so important for the brain

Stimulus-free downtime used to be an inescapable feature of life. But in our age of AirPods and autoplay, time off from new content is increasingly optional. “In the world we live in now—where everything is instantly accessible—we may have moved away from the natural rest periods that allow the brain to consolidate new memories,” says Michael Craig, an assistant professor and memory researcher at Northumbria University in the U.K..

When academics like Craig talk about memory “consolidation,” they’re not just referring to the rote recall of facts and figures. Whenever we take in new information—whether it’s a cable news segment, an encounter with a coworker, or something we’ve studied in preparation for an exam—our mind strives to integrate that new info into its existing banks of memory in ways that allow us to make meaningful connections, develop deeper understandings, and come up with novel insights. The brain also uses its downtime to dump information it deems useless or unimportant. If we pack all of our idle moments with stimulating content, that may deprive our brains of the time and space it needs to perform all these helpful storage and sense-making functions, Craig says.

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In some of his research, he and colleagues found that when people rested quietly for 10 minutes following a learning task, their memory for the new information—specifically, their ability to recall fine details and to distinguish what they learned from similar content —was significantly better compared to a second group that did not take a break but instead jumped right into another task.

This finding mirrors a lot of related work—on both people and animals—that has shown depriving individuals of post-learning rest leads to poorer retention, recall errors, and a failure to learn from past mistakes.

“It seems our daily activities help determine the fate of new memories,” Craig says. “If we’re exposed to new information relatively continuously, without any of these rest periods that used to be a feature of life, that could have a detrimental effect on our ability to lay down and strengthen new memories.”

Apart from all these concerns, memory research has also revealed a “recency bias” that may have consequences for those of us who reach for a device as soon as life gives us a free moment.

According to Brad Pfeiffer, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, some of the processes that help us hold on to new information tend to prioritize whatever we’ve encountered most recently. “So let’s say that whenever you finish studying, you grab your phone and scroll on TikTok,” he says. “If these TikTok videos are the last thing you tend to look at before taking a break, then they may be what your memory replays and retains, rather than your homework or whatever it is you were doing before you picked up your phone.”

How to take a brain break 

While all this research suggests a little cognitive downtime—perhaps especially right after you’ve learned or experienced something important to you—can support your memory and its many vital functions, experts say it’s not clear how much rest is best, or even what that rest should look like.

So far, studies have found that 10 or 20 minutes of quiet, eyes-closed solitude can sharpen a person’s memory for recently encountered information. But Craig says it’s possible that much shorter “micro breaks” of a few minutes, or even just a few seconds, could prove similarly beneficial.

Furthermore, while researchers have tended to study the effects of sitting or lying down in a quiet place, there’s evidence that routine chores or other activities that don’t require much brain power—folding clothes, for example, or going for a walk—might also provide the brain with the kind of low-stimulus downtime it needs to consolidate what it’s learned.

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Wamsley says the sorts of activities that support information processing and memory consolidation likely vary from person to person and depend a lot on what their mind gets up to. “If people are going on social media to zone out and they’re barely paying attention to what they’re seeing, that could actually be compatible with memory consolidation,” she explains. On the other hand, she says that meditation, problem solving, and other cognitive tasks that require deliberate focus and effort are likely to interfere with offline memory consolidation.

In other words, giving your mind a rest doesn’t just mean taking a break from engaging content; it also means setting aside the mental chores people take up in their free time in order to improve themselves or to be more productive.

“In our 24/7 work culture where we’re always doing something demanding, people view any rest as a waste of time,” she says. “That view is false.”  

Craig echoes this sentiment. “If someone is always busy and their mind is always actively engaged, we know that will have a detrimental effect on learning and memory,” he says. “Sometimes less is more.”