Workday break planner

How to use the break planner

1. Enter the start and end of your shift. If the end is earlier than the start, the shift is treated as running past midnight.
2. Choose the length of your meal break, or none.
3. Choose how long each short break is, or none.
4. Choose the longest stretch you want to work without a break. The planner adds as many short breaks as it needs to keep every stretch at or under that limit, and no more.

The plan updates as you change anything. Print it, or copy the times into your calendar. The planner only uses what you enter; it has no built-in rules about how many breaks anyone is owed.

How the breaks are placed

The method has three steps, all of them plain arithmetic:

1. Meal break in the middle. The meal break starts half-way through the time that is left once the meal itself is taken out, rounded to the nearest 5 minutes. That splits the shift into two halves of equal length.
2. Fewest short breaks that respect the limit. For each half of length L, with a maximum work stretch M and short breaks of length b, the number of work blocks is the smallest n for which n × M + (n − 1) × b ≥ L, which is n = ⌈(L + b) ÷ (M + b)⌉.
3. Equal blocks on tidy times. The working time in each half is split into n blocks as equal as possible, with the boundaries rounded to 5 minutes so breaks start at readable times. If rounding would push any block over your limit, whole minutes are used instead.

Worked example

With the defaults (9:00 to 17:00, a 30-minute meal break, 10-minute short breaks and at most 90 minutes of work at a time), the shift is 480 minutes. Taking out the meal leaves 450, half of which is 225, so the meal break runs from 12:45 to 13:15. Each half is 225 minutes. Two work blocks would need 2 × 90 + 10 = 190 minutes at most, too few, so each half gets three blocks and two short breaks. That leaves 205 minutes of work per half, about 68 minutes a block, which on the 5-minute grid becomes 70, 65 and 70 minutes. The morning's short breaks are at 10:10 and 11:25, the afternoon's at 14:25 and 15:40. In total: 6 h 50 min of work, four short breaks and the meal break.

Short breaks by shift length

Using the breaks well

A break that is spent at the same desk looking at a phone gives your eyes and posture very little rest. Some ideas for the short breaks: stand up and walk somewhere, refill a drink, step outside, or run through a two-minute desk stretch routine. Between the planned breaks, brief changes of position and the 20-20-20 eye habit fill the gaps. If your job allows it, eating the meal away from where you work makes it more of a break.

What the planner does not know

Legal requirements. Rules on rest and meal breaks differ between countries, states and provinces, industries and contracts, and they are sometimes different for young workers. Some require a break before a certain number of hours; some say whether breaks are paid. This planner does not check any of that. If you schedule breaks for other people, check the rules that apply to them.

The shape of your work. The planner spreads breaks evenly, but real shifts have busy and quiet periods, handovers and meetings. Use the plan as a starting point and move breaks to natural pauses. It also assumes one meal break; for a very long shift with two meals, plan each half separately.

Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or saved. For a sitting and standing plan for the same day, use the sit-stand schedule planner.