You Need to Take Breaks

You need to take breaks

It’s too easy to get so deep into your work, that you forget to take breaks. Then days start blending into each other. And before you noticed, months have passed, and you have no idea how it went by so quickly. And that’s only one of the downsides of not taking breaks.

I’ve always been a very curious person. I’m truly passionate about what I do. Solving hard problems, seeing solutions come to life, helping people with what I build. But after many years, and after so many cycles, one thing is more clear every time: If you want to do anything for the long term, you need breaks in between.

Life, business, and pretty much everything you do, is rarely a sprint. Problems will never stop, customer requests, new ideas, better solutions, and the list goes on. But if you don’t intentionally leave gaps between one thing and the next, to reset, to recalibrate, to energize, the time will come when you’ll look back and wonder where time went.

You see people talking about this in many phases of their lives. At 60 years old, talking about what they would tell their 40-year-old self. At 80, talking about regrets in life, wishing they would have worked less, and spent more time with their kids and their family. And the thing is that unless you’re paying attention, you won’t notice this until it’s very late.

Burnout is another big thing that comes out of this. Your body and mind can take quite a lot. You see people endure hard situations in life, and come out ok on the other side. However, the body can only take so much for a certain amount of time.

If you’re not paying attention, and you don’t take time to reset, and refresh, cortisol levels keep rising, little by little, and it gets to a point where it’s just always high. You start seeing sleep deprivation as a way of life, what is required to succeed, and to progress in life. But who ever said that is what life is about.

Things don’t need to be so serious. When you look at the grand scheme of things, we’re just a speck in time. And unless you work in an emergency room, where lives depend on you, it would be rare that whatever you do needs that level of urgency. Things can wait. You can take a weekend off, you can enjoy your evenings with your family. You can enjoy the little moments, without being so attached to your work.

I have to remind all this to myself many times. There is no need to rush. Problems will keep happening, new things will still need to be built. But it doesn’t have to be all at once, or in a week, or in a month. Play the long game. Enjoy building, but also enjoy and remember why you’re building. Is it for financial freedom? Is it for sustaining your family? Is it for going on vacation? Is it to help your customers? Whatever your why is, remember that you can do that now, today, not someday after some payoff.

Revised draft

It’s the middle of June already, and I can barely remember what I’ve done this half of the year. Yes, I’ve shipped a lot of features and improved my software a lot, but time has literally slipped away.

I spent this past weekend at Marco Island. The sun, the sand, dolphins, boat ride, family, music, laughter, it was really beautiful.

I coincidentally left my watch charging at home, so I didn’t even know what time it was most of the time. And it was so liberating. I was literally just enjoying the moment. My son, my wife, all the family, just being, spending time together. Nowhere to rush to. No hard plans. Just being.

This made me feel happy, grateful, and at the same time. It made me reflect on all the small moments missed because my focus was somewhere else.

A few weeks ago we went to Tampa. And casually, we discovered this amazing gem called Indian Rocks Beach. The hotel was just 2 short blocks from an amazing beach, with white sands, not too crowded, and even though the water was a bit cold, it was ok after you got in.

For this trip however, I did bring my laptop. I didn’t have any intention of working, but I was in a completely different state of mind. Full-on work mode, and creation mode. So in any moment when we were at the hotel, I would squeeze in some coding session with Codex. But even worse, because of Codex remote, I would also sometimes review and give more instructions to it directly from my phone.

This is a very powerful tool for sure. And you can do quite a lot. But if don’t put hard boundaries for myself, this also means I’m never quite there, in the moment, therefore missing all those small details.

You could say that’s the cost of success, that this is required if you want to grow your business. But is it really?

The point of building a better life cannot be to postpone living it forever.

I truly love building. I would do this all the time just because. The joy of building, to know that it helps others do their job better. To solve hard problems, explore new ideas and solutions. Some might see it as work, for me it’s pure joy. But that can’t mean getting so absorbed by it that your life passed by without you noticing.

I go through these cycles quite often. And reflecting takes me back, helps me stop, and get back to my values. Sometimes it’s obvious, others not so much. But time doesn’t stop, it doesn’t care about any of it.

Instead of letting your passion take control. You need to remember why you’re doing things in the first place, and who you are doing it for. Enjoy building, but more importantly, enjoy the little moments. There is always much more to do, but those moments will never come back.