> doing "low mental workload"
This I tried, took me a long while to realise I should not have, because "low load" is still load, and what I really needed was rest because I had myself throughly mentally exerted.
On top of that "low load" doesn't mean the task is of less importance. Mistakes come by easier when one's already exerted.
I don't think the parent meant it that way but suggesting that solution can come out as demeaning for people that already are on the edge of exhaustion and internally questioning themselves.
By not coding for 8 hours. There are many more aspects to being a developer than writing code - documentation, code review, testing, planning, mentoring, etc. Even if you're quite junior and don't get involved in things like planning you can being doing "low mental workload" tasks like writing lots of repetitive-but-necessary tests or manually QAing your own tasks before pushing them to a PR. Your day absolutely should not be 8 hours of extremely focused dev work except on rare occasions when it's needed.