Lunch Break

A sandwich in one hand and the keyboard in the other. That's been the state of software developers in the company. With ten hours of work per day, who would need a break anyway! The underlying logic for the sandwich-at-the-monitor practice was that they did not want to waste time eating away from their work-station!

Anyway, all this changed today. We moved a desk to the outside hall away from the workplace. We then set a time in the middle of the day to have lunch. We went at that time to the table and had lunch all together away from the monitors and keyboards and sitting with each other.

Benefits

• A real break revitalizes the mental energy of the software developers, specially if it's taken away from monitors, keyboards and tail or tailless mice.
• Sitting all together instead of each at his desktop during this lunch break was enjoyable and made us chat together and got us closer to one another. We even discussed some side issues that affected our work or that were laterally related to it.
• The third benefit is to mentally separate lunch and break time from time for work. If they two are blended together like was the case before, then when it comes time for work the feeling one having lunch and having a break may blend with ones 'feeling' of work and reduce ones alertness, concentration or readiness to work.
• Finally, the naive idea of eating in front of the monitor in order not to waste time for work is absurd. Come on, give me a break! How can one be productive programming on a computer and writing code when one has a sandwich in the other hand? What kind of productivity do you expect from this? Besides, not getting a real break in itself will reduce performance due to continuous work and absence of time to regenerate and revitalize ones energy.