One-Minute Pauses: The Micro-Vacation Method at Google

In 2014, Google engineers at Mountain View were logging twenty-eight direct Slack interruptions per desk hour, slicing focus into fragments. The breakthrough wasn’t a new tool, but the "micro-vacation": a scheduled, sixty-second break for every twenty-five minutes of work. Here’s how they did it-when the timer hit twenty-five, each dev closed the laptop, stood up, and faced away from the screen for one minute, no exceptions. The average uninterrupted stretch grew by fourteen minutes, translating to a full hour and twelve minutes of focused work recovered by Friday.