I’m going to have to beg your indulgence
. I traditionally have been awful at managing breaks.
But I have learned a lot since then, and I have learned a lot through managing people, dealing with different types of people, and learning from both the advice of clever people and my own experiences. So Let’s get going. We all need a break, a proper holiday once in a while. But
why do we need a proper holiday? What’s it for? What do we hope for at the end? Holiday’s are treated as these magical cure all’s where all problems will be gone and all issues will fade away. Nope, Unfortunately, if you’re a corporate you will eventually realise that a break must have a goal or deliverable, if it’s going to help you.
I’m going to break these goals and deliverables down into two basic types, and mention a few examples of each type.
- What YOU need
- What your life needs.
What YOU need:
Physical or physiological relief: If you’re working in a high pressure job and you are dealing with high intensity of any sort for an extended period of time, you will just wear yourself out. be it lots of physical activity or indeed mental
, you will require a physical break. Back when I was young, my parents used to do this in the traditional Spanish package holiday where they spent a lot of time asleep on the beach. Their work required a physical break to actually recover from. Everyone thinks that’s what a holiday is for. but there’s far more that you might need.
A Proper Change: Sometimes you get in a rut you simply need something to shake you out of that and reinvigorate you. Sometimes you need to stop what you’re doing for the last X months or years. It’s lost its enthusiasm. It’s lost its interest, you need to stop. Take a moment away from it and then come back to it with a new mental freshness and a new enthusiasm. there is a phrase: “familiarity breeds contempt”, and its true, you might have an amazing job or at least the best job your skills and market place has to offer at the moment, but it might feel like hell because you’re so used to it, it’s become so much a drudge that you’re at the risk of throwing something really good away, because you have not taken a break from it for a while.
A Partial Mental break: Sometimes you don’t need quite the break you think you do. One of the main useful breaks that I discovered I need is a break from just
parts of my work. Previously I have had holidays from status updates and PMs, I booked the time off, I stayed at home, I relaxed, but I still did about 30 hours of work. However I only did the type of work I genuinely enjoyed
. What this paid time off did was that it enabled me to hard push against all stress parts of my role at that time, while still enabling me to deliver and mentally unwind, as well as identify areas of my role that I want to force change on
. however I am aware that this solution only really works if there are aspects of your role that you genuinely enjoy.
What is good for your life.
Leaving behind Roles: Your life is everything that is not work. There is your family. There is your external interests, your external maintenance tasks, all of that kind of stuff. Now, a lot of the times when you take an away break. You bring over the same roles and responsibilities into your break that you have in none work life. That often means that you are not REALLY taking a break. The classic example of this is the traditional role of home builder. Such people work tirelessly to get children
, organised each morning and attend to all of the core things that ensure a household runs smoothly, but even if you are doing such things out of love. You still need a break from it. When you go on holiday take a break from that role as well. The phrase “Quality family time” is often used in just as toxic a way as any corporate term such as “Be a team player”. Work is work no matter what you call it.
Memories: Sometimes the break is to build memories. life is not supposed to be the same thing, day after day, year after year, you are supposed to grow and do amazing things. The things that you look back on as highlights in life. I have been to Japan twice in my life, both times with my amazing wife. both times were expensive, and in some ways quite stressful due to work situations, but I would never have swapped them for the world. They are a huge life high point for me, and I cannot wait to go back because to build those memories are the things that when you look back on life and say “What have I done, what have I achieved?” these are your answers, now your kind of highlights might be something far more meaningful than just an amazing holiday. You might do charity work, you might go make a huge change to someone else’s life. Whatever, build those memories, after each one you will be a different person with a different viewpoint on the world which frankly will make you better at your work.
Dip a toe in your Dreams: One thing a lot of corporates do, is dream of a simpler life, escaping the rat race, all that kind of stuff. But not every dream is all it’s cracked up to be. It’s often a dream of an idealised future. One thing that a good break can be is a way to dip your toe into that, to see if you’re going in the right direction in life. Do you want to carry on pushing and living in the corporate world? Or do you want to start pulling back and making decisions that make you happy rather than successful? Go bare bones camping. Go throw yourself in the sea. live a simpler life with a smaller budget. This may be a recharge but also think of it as a way of trying something out to help you make larger long term life decisions, rather than making desperation mistakes caused by being too tired.
Conclusion
So there are a few options of what you might want to get out of a break, your end goal and deliverable is not to come back to your work after your break, see the mountain of task and messages and groan because you don’t feel like you have had a break at all.
