Not all time is valued equally.

Time in which you are energetic, ready to focus, and able to do deep work is far more valuable than time in which you’re not in the right mental state.

The reason this is so important is that almost all productivity tools are oriented around saving your time, but very few are oriented around saving your energy. Energy management is crucial and something that you need to keep in mind rather than burning out after trying to drain every single minute.

Do not make the mistake of focusing too much on managing your time at the cost of your energy levels throughout the day.

A Mathematical Consideration of Breaks

Consider maximizing the product of two numbers that sum to ten. As in, maximize xy given x+y=10 . The ideal solution is not (10,0), but (5,5).

No matter if you are maximizing (3x)y or (0.5x)y, your answer will never be (10,0).

This is perhaps the most convincing reason why you should take breaks. You need to make sure that you have time to spend and optimize the remaining time that you’re going to work.