Two lessons from my high school best friend have endured well into my 30s. One—”meatloaf meltdowns”—has become a shorthand friends and colleagues have adopted to refer to straw-that-breaks-the-camel’s-back moments that aren’t really about what makes you melt down (like being served meatloaf for dinner, when you’re not in the mood for it). The other resurfaced in technicolor as I read Brené Brown‘s latest book, Strong Ground.

While the book itself is largely about leadership in the workforce, chapter 7 felt particularly relevant to the Life Between Weekends crowd—and harkened back to my high school friend’s wise-beyond-her-years catchphrase. A type-A achiever, Christine was president of just about everything at school, and I was amazed at how she did it all. To the outside, it seemed like she had boundless energy to tackle everything from student council to swim team to AP classes.

Her secret to getting so much done? She’d routinely schedule “ceiling fan time.”

Um, what?

Christine would go home, flop back on her bed, and stare at the ceiling fan. She’d revel in time to simply do nothing and let her mind go wherever it needed to. Or sometimes, she’d go pure mindfulness meditation (before we knew that was a thing) and focus purely on the fan, its blades, the repetition. It helped her recharge, allowing her to be more creative later.

If the thought of staring at your ceiling fan seems snoozy to you—and, similarly, you struggle with meditation as a way to recharge—then you may want to take a page from Brené. In Strong Ground, the social worker, researcher and best-selling author confesses to a love of reading British mystery novels.

“Interestingly, I tear through books faster during intense periods of research, coding and writing,” she admits.

You might first dismiss it as procrastinating, but Brown has found it reinvigorates her (as long as it’s done in moderation), and research backs it up. “This happens via an unconscious process that facilitates creative work by spreading activation, enhancing associative processing and reducing cognitive inhibition,” she writes, describing it as “creative incubation through deliberate distraction.”

Essentially, if you break up periods of hard work with something low-lift and formulaic, you’re allowing your brain a little break to process things in the background.

Following the journalistic tendency to check everything, I looked into this further, finding outside research that supports the idea of offering “creative incubation” periods to let your mind wander. One 2025 study found that this strategy was particularly helpful for creative writing; giving yourself 10 minutes to do something repetitive and low-lift as a break from writing, then going back to that same prompt resulted in a more creative final product. (So yes, fellow writers, taking a walk around the block—or to your office water cooler—before giving that story a final read and filing is worthwhile, beyond stretching your legs.)

The challenge, of course, is ensuring these brain breaks don’t spiral into full-blown distractions and procrastination techniques, keeping you from actually getting the work done.

In my case, a low-lift baking project, or a micro paint-by-numbers—something that can be completed in an hour or less, seems to work best. I can look at things with fresh eyes, feel the thrill of accomplishing a side project, and use that momentum to fuel my bigger project.

Maybe one day I’ll have an easier time settling in and practicing the art of doing nothing (the yoga class I’m taking is certainly helping with that). But until then, my gotta-go, gotta-go, gotta-go brain feels recharged with a bit more of an active break. If that sounds like you, I invite you to try it too.

You can find Strong Ground on Amazon and at most major bookstores.