💡 Essential points to remember :
Mental workload affects more and more employees. It can be cognitive, emotional, social or relational, and leads to fatigue, irritability and loss of concentration. To free yourself from it, you need to learn how to take real cognitive, physical and sensory breaks. Listening to yourself, knowing how to say no, prioritizing and allowing yourself to slow down are all levers for preserving your balance and mental health at work.
⏱️ Reading time : 2min30
Perhaps you’ve already had that feeling of your brain boiling, like a pressure cooker ready to explode. Between e-mails, meetings, constant notifications… it’s hard to keep a cool head. The feeling has a name: mental workload. And it’s affecting more and more employees.
So how can you reduce it? How do you find the inner space to breathe, act with greater clarity, and reconnect with yourself? Here are a few concrete keys to relieving the pressure.
Understanding mental saturation
A Le Sphinx survey of 1,061 French people carried out in September 2024 revealed that 88% of French people say they are affected by a mental load, and 40% say they feel a strong mental load.
According to psychologist Alicia Sandon, mental saturation is “this sensation of having your head constantly turbine, of looking for that stop button but not finding how to stop the flow of thoughts, because it can’t stop, you can’t stop thinking, it’s not possible” (France Inter, 2025). For her, this mental saturation is also linked to bad breaks deemed “counter-productive”, which maintain this impression of running non-stop.
According to psychiatrist Philippe Aïm, there are four forms of mental saturation:
- Cognitive saturation: the brain is overloaded with information.
- Relational saturation: difficulty in saying no, in setting limits.
- Social saturation: pressure from expectations and external standards.
- Emotional saturation: tired of having to “hold it together” in all circumstances.
As a result, you lose lucidity, concentration and energy. You feel drained, irritable and sometimes even powerless.
The solution? Taking the right breaks
Many people think they’re taking a break by scrolling on their phone or chatting at the coffee machine… but these activities are still cognitive. The brain continues to process information, often superficial or stressful.
To truly desaturate, we need to learn how to take qualitative breaks, which allow the parasympathetic nervous system to regulate itself to achieve a state of relaxation and optimal recovery.
There are three types of pause to consider:
1. The cognitive pause: calming the flow of thoughts
It’s not a question of stopping thinking (impossible!), but of thinking differently: slowing down the flow, giving our minds a gentler direction. A simple technique: writing. By putting down on paper all the thoughts that cross your mind, you free up mental space.
Take out a notebook or open a blank document. For 3 to 5 minutes, write down without stopping all the thoughts that run through your head: tasks to do, worries, emotions, loose ideas. Don’t censor or re-read yourself.
2. The body break: release physical tension
The body is a precious ally in calming the mind. Taking a few minutes to stretch, go for a walk outside, take a short nap in the break room or simply breathe deeply will take you out of “autopilot” mode and release tension.
💡 And why not go one step further?
A 10-15 minute micro-nap, particularly in a Nap&Up cocoon, offers a real regenerating break. It reactivates concentration, reduces fatigue and encourages a return to oneself. In a calm environment designed for relaxation, the body can release the pressure, and the mind can reorganize itself more serenely.
3. The sensory pause: reconnecting to the present moment
To get out of the mind, you need to go back down into your senses. Breathe deeply, listen to soothing music, smell a perfume, touch a pleasant material, observe the landscape… The idea here is to reconnect with the present moment, to lower your cortisol levels (the stress hormone). As psychologist Alicia Sandon sums it up: “Switch from thinking to feeling”.
Getting back to basics: what we often forget
In the face of work-related mental overload, it’s also essential to implement a few good practices in your daily work life:
- Learn to say no, when necessary.
- Clarify your personal and professional priorities.
- Respect your own pace, instead of comparing yourself to others or following external injunctions.
- Allow yourself to do nothing, even for a few minutes. Emptiness isn’t wasted time, it’s restorative time, a source of creativity.
🔁 Nap&Up tip: These breaks are even more effective if they’re regular (1 every 90 minutes, even a short one) and disconnected from screens as much as possible.
Conclusion
In our daily working lives, punctuated by emergencies, meetings and digital demands, mental workload has become an invisible reality, but one that is hard to bear. Cognitive, emotional or relational, it exhausts our resources and is detrimental to both performance and well-being.
The good news? It’s possible to reduce it, without turning everything upside down. By reintroducing qualitative breaks into the day, everyone can regain a better balance, greater lucidity and a calmer relationship with work.
At Nap&Up, we believe that taking care of one’s mental health starts with allowing oneself to do nothing in order to do something better later on. From micro-nap cocoons to recovery spaces, each solution contributes to de-saturating the mind, soothing the body and strengthening one’s self-presence.
