Nicotine is one of the very few substances with strong clinical support as being a cognitive enhancer, so I wouldn't discount its role entirely... but yes, just

Nicotine is one of the very few substances with strong clinical support as being a cognitive enhancer, so I wouldn't discount its role entirely... but yes, just getting away from things is often what people need. As a culture we are still trying to switch gears from an economy centered completely around mindless repetitive physical labor to one centered around mental work. They're two extremely different things that have to be tackled in different ways, but we still have people kicking around (mostly in management positions) who see taking a break from working on something as 'giving up' or 'slacking off' or similar. Eventually people will come to understand that expecting extended bouts of mental effort from human beings is exactly as reasonable as expecting to have people work for 8 hours without taking a bathroom break.