The problem with the gap between two meetings is not that it is short. It is that it arrives with no instructions. You close the laptop, you have 13 minutes, and the fatigue from the last call has nowhere to go, so it carries into the next one.

A break you have to design is not a break. What helps is a fixed thing you can do without thinking: sit back, put both feet flat, make the breath out longer than the breath in, then unclench the jaw and drop the shoulders. In that order, for 4 minutes.

Two details matter. Do it before you open your inbox, not after — the inbox will take the whole gap. And do it sitting exactly where you are: standing up, walking somewhere and coming back is another decision, and decisions are what you are short of.

It will not fix the call that went badly. It ends the physical part of it, which is enough to get to the next one intact.