Time Off

A sabbatical, time off, mental recovery, vacation, R & R or rest and relaxation are all terms used to describe times when we need to gather ourselves and focus on a mental recharge. One of the things I wish to discuss is when and how often you should be taking a mental recharge and why I decided to take some time to myself before jumping to the new job.

I think one of the best times to take some much-needed time off is in between jobs during the great resignation and the great hiring. I have seen my LinkedIn explode in seeing friends and colleagues go to new jobs, in talking with a few of them I have heard some common things from them, and one of these common things said to me is “I wish I took more time off.” Time off is one of the things that people need to make an educated guess on how much they need off. Personally, I try to take off a month off before jumping into a new job. I have in the past jumped from a job to a job with only a week off or less. This kind of thing I tried in the past and I felt very burned out within only a few months and needed a longer vacation. When jumping to a new job I would always suggest at a minimum of taking a few weeks off so that can give your brain some time to relax.

With how work is nowadays with a lot of tech jobs being remote, there can be a sensory overload when it comes to having work become invasive on one’s personal life. And sometimes it can take time to detox from that, I know from a few of my friends in other tech areas the line between professional and personal time has become very blurred and spending time to regain what is lost can help you regain that boundary. It can also allow us to focus on us more and taking entire days to ourselves are for the better especially when we go into the new job very clear headed and 100% focused.

I always say when you take time off, totally disconnect, spend all your time focused on relaxing and regaining your brainpower especially when you go at 100% you will have strained your brainpower so you gotta give your brain time to relax just like any other muscle especially if you have found your work to overlap with your personal life. The brain as they say is a muscle and you gotta give this muscle time to relax.

What I did during my time off as you can see, I am writing again and of course catching up on some of my shows that have been in my backlog and of course reading some of the books I have been wanting to read. So, all in all, in-between jobs you might want to take time to yourself to allow yourself to recover and decompress cause we all need it from time to time and there is no shame in that. When in doubt rest it out.

Photo by Zhang Kenny on Unsplash