When to take a break
And what stops folks from doing it
A few weeks ago, my third daughter was born. We are all tired but doing well. I appreciate all the subscribers for sticking around while no posts were coming out.
When our eldest was born, I didn't have a strong handle on what to expect. Plenty of theory yes, but no experience. Having a miniature human totally dependent on you for absolutely everything comes with, well, a rapid learning curve.
This time I was very aware of how tiring those first few weeks would be. I knew I would need to dedicate 100% of my attention to my family. I took time off work. I took time off from writing this newsletter. I put all my hobbies on pause.
Sometimes you need to take a break from absolutely everything else.
High Priority Events
For many folks, work is high on the priority list. Stuff happens, though, and events occur that overshadow everything else. A birth. A death. An illness. An injury. An unexpectedly successful side project. A true once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. When it hits, such an Event can require your full attention for days, weeks, or months. The right action may be to drop everything else, including your work.
This is always difficult to do. It gets even more difficult if:
The change is sudden. You might be overwhelmed and not able to clearly think through your options. You might need to make decisions quickly and not have time to consider and seek guidance.
You've never had an Event like this before. You don't have a baseline and aren't sure if this event is actually important enough to override your day job.
You're still in your first full-time job. You don’t have any experience in deciding when and how to leave a job and are reluctant to consider the possibility.
Depending on the type of event and how long it’ll last, taking a break might mean paid time off, unpaid time off, or leaving your job altogether. It’s easy to convince yourself that you can handle both the Event and your day job at the same time. And you may be right! A more likely result, however, is that you handle both poorly.
Be willing to take a break when you need to.
Burnout and Boredom
There isn’t always an event. Simply working on the same team or grinding just a little too hard over a long period of time can wear you down. Burnout and boredom tend to sneak up on you. Your interest and performance degrade so gradually that you don’t notice until you wake up one Monday and realize you are So Done.
If you realize you are heading down this path early, you might be able to resolve it with a small change. A vacation, a new project, a shift of responsibilities. Once you get to So Done, it can be hard to recover without both a break from work and a completely new job at the end of the break.
Burnout and boredom affect everyone differently, and it takes time to learn what kinds of symptoms are normal for you. Some common ones are:
Fatigue. Both mental and physical. You’re tired of working on this type of problem. Tired of doing the same things over and over. Maybe you aren’t getting enough sleep. Maybe built-up stress is starting to cause physical pain.
Detachment. You used to be interested in this work, but now you run on autopilot. It doesn’t really matter to you anymore. In time, your neutral detachment may morph into a negative cynicism.
Irritability. You used to enjoy this work, but now every little problem seems to set you off. A bug that needs to be fixed. A meeting you need to attend. A coworker who disagrees with you. Each a tempest in a teacup.
Reduced productivity. Often correlated with other symptoms. It is hard to do your best work when you are tired, irritable, and don’t care. In the moment you might not realize that. You might instead have a feeling of ineffectiveness. You used to be better than this, you think, so what happened to me?
Be willing to take a break instead of grinding away to nothing.
What Stops People?
So you have a real High Priority Event, or you are deep in Burnout. You need to take a break. But you aren’t. You are hesitating. What is stopping you? There are some common categories of reluctance I’ve seen:
Job Security
The job market is a little weak. Maybe you work in an at-will employment jurisdiction. If you take a long stretch of time off, they might replace you. If you leave your job, maybe that resume gap will make it hard to find a new one later.
But if you are dealing with an Event, then by definition it needs your attention now. Job security is a future worry, to be dealt with in the future. If you are dealing with Burnout, then grinding away until you rage quit or are fired for low performance will put you in an even worse situation.
Financial Concerns
The bills still need to be paid. You can’t just go to the landlord and say you need to take a break from rent. Sometimes the Event itself is expensive and is pushing you to the limit as it is.
There’s no good answer if you find yourself in this situation. I don’t want to trivialize this experience, but there isn’t much you can do besides grit your teeth and do the best you can.
If you are not already in this situation, it is strongly in your interest to ensure you never find yourself there. Prioritize the creation of a substantial emergency fund. In the startup world, we talk about a startup’s “runway”, which is how long the startup can operate before running out of money. Consider using a similar measurement for your personal finances. If you stopped working today, how long would your savings last? A common recommendation is to have a personal runway of at least six months. Personally, I’m a big proponent of financial independence (eg. indefinite runway) as a goal.
FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
Will taking a break hinder your career progression? Will it cost you that promotion that seems around the corner? What if you miss out on important opportunities? What if it is the wrong choice and you regret it later?
Life is strange, with endlessly branching possibilities. You can’t predict the future. You try to make the best decisions you can with the limited information you have.
One of the funny things about FOMO is that your brain has a tendency toward choice-supportive bias. When looking back you are likely to convince yourself you made the right choices.
Reputational Concerns
There is a natural tendency to worry about what others will think of you. Will the people in your life think of you as a quitter? Will they see you as less dedicated than your coworkers/friends/siblings?
There’s a good chance the people in your life have had to take breaks of their own. They are unlikely to think poorly of you when you do so. And if they do, well, your actual well-being is more important than someone else’s perception of it.
Guilt
More than anything else, guilt can keep someone at a company long after they should have left. This is especially true if you have strong friendships with colleagues or if you are an empathetic line manager. You know that your departure will mean more work for those who remain. You worry that nobody else can handle your duties as well as you can. You don't want to feel like you are letting your colleagues down, so you decide to stay just a little longer. Over and over again.
Your colleagues will understand your need to take a break. Especially if they are your friends. They might bear a larger workload or cut back the scope of some projects, but that will be a temporary effect. It is the company’s duty to keep teams properly staffed. If your departure overloads your previous team, that failure lies with the company, not with you.
As an aside: it’s worth mentioning explicitly that this is about taking a break from a good job. At issue is an unexpected event or simply grinding over the long term. It is an entirely different situation if you are in a toxic work environment, asked to do something illegal, are highly undervalued, etc. In these cases it isn’t about whether to take a break, it is about how soon you can find something better.
Take a break when you need to
I hope that when you have Events they are for good things. I hope that you catch signs of Burnout early and can make the changes you need. Take a break when you need to.
If you have an interesting story about dealing with an Event or with Burnout, let us know in a comment or email reply.
We’re all in this together.
