Yes, I'm here to tell you, you should take a break.
Breaks are important they help us see things from a different perspective.
It doesn't mean one truth, it means take enough time for that moment in time to feel like a break.
I hope that makes sense, but we will be going through some examples and their importance.
In this article:
- Small breaks to solve issues
- Weekend breaks to recover
- Holidays
- Longer breaks to prevent burnouts
- Slowed down breaks
Small breaks to solve issues
I think it's fair to say we have all been here, staring at the screen for 3 hours hoping your brain will solve that one pesky bug.
It just doesn't want to be solved and it's driving you insane. Your posture sucks, your brain hurts and it almost feels like you can't be taken seriously as a developer anymore.
However, 🛑 Stop for a second, walk away from the computer, but more importantly from the situation.
Try not to think about that stupid bug and take a short walk.
I used to take 5/10 minutes walks when this happened, and at first people in the office would always think that's weird, but it resulted in coming back, viewing the problem from a fresh perspective, and solving it right away.
At one stage my former boss asked me why I would walk away and I explained the process, more importantly, I told him that walking away for 5/10 minutes surely was more important than me viewing my screen for 3 hours, and he agreed.
More and more people started to use this method, and it worked. Less stress, more effective bug solving.
Sidenote: You don't always have to go for a walk, just taking a short break to check Instagram for 10 minutes is also fine.
Yes, people will think it's silly but it's resetting your mind.
Just don't spend more time on these breaks than actually working!
Weekend breaks to recover
I don't know about you, but I spend most of my weekends still doing some kind of developing, solving problems in my head.
Being reminded of that pesky bug that's waiting for me on Monday.
And it sucks! We only get 2/7 days off, and even on those 2 days, we struggle with this stuff in our head.
Even when telling myself I won't do any work you get drawn to it. You're on your phone checking your mail and some silly work emails pops-up you just can't help my note it.
And there your brain goes, down the rabbit hole of problem-solving already.
That is when weekend breaks are important, the goal to making them work is forcing yourself to have zero tech, what we do is we plan a day trip to a garden, picnic, hike, or whatever you like. Once you made the plan agree with your partner, kids, friends that no technology is allowed.
You will see within 30 minutes that everyone is more aware of the actual outing and will be grateful for this time off.
If you want to take this next level, go and try remote camping where you just don't have an option to check your phone or laptop!
Holidays
Finally, holiday time.
First of all, I know all to many tech people who don't even take holidays and I was one of them.
You always think but there is so much work, or, I don't even need a holiday.
But you do! Holidays are good to recover from stress, and important for personal growth.
When you are always pushing yourself, making your brain work at 100% capacity you can't really grow as a person.
It's much like muscles overtraining them won't make them grow, they need rest to actually recover and grow bigger.
And yes, holidays are quite hard, they often come with much anticipation and handovers. These factors make it hard to get in the relaxed mode. Try and not to look on your devices for the first 1/2 days, by then you should be out of the work mentality.
Longer breaks to prevent burnouts
Sometimes you might need a longer non-holiday break, often to help prevent burnout.
And yes, you can feel burnouts coming, are you feeling always grumpy when people even ask you how your day was yesterday. If you want coffee or tea?
There you go, burnout of some kind upcoming.
But those are obvious quite extreme, other signs I personally experiences are;
- Headaches (very mild, but always there)
- Feeling super slow in your work
- Can't even do simple tasks
- Angry at everything and everyone
- Quickly annoyed
Burnouts in tech are a huge issue, and luckily I see more and more companies fighting against it.
It's not cool to be pressured into doing "free" overtime every single day!
Heck, I even stopped doing overtime, tomorrow is another day.
About 2 months ago, I had three deadlines at the same time, and yes working on multiple projects is a bad idea, but we don't have a choice sometimes.
I felt the burnout coming, couldn't concentrate, was stressed out and angry at my Fiancé.
I felt like an asshole but decided to call my boss, explain how I was feeling and he didn't hesitate to give me "unlimited" time to recover.
I know you don't always have this option, so perhaps talk if you can re-arrange your holiday for this period.
Or, even talk to the team to see if the workload can be re-arranged.
Slowed down breaks
Continuing on the above, you might feel burnout, stress, or peer pressure but not a full one.
It might be super useful to "slow down" this means working half days for a while.
Or working 3 days a week, you will be astonished how much even 1 extra weekend day can be.
It creates space to recover, and reset your brain by breaking it's routine.
Share your story
I don't think there can ever be enough stories on this topic, please feel free to share your story and ways of coping with breaks.
Thank you for reading, and let's connect!
Thank you for reading my blog. Feel free to subscribe to my email newsletter and connect on Facebook or Twitter
Top comments (11)
With 2 kids and the pandemic, I had to reduce my work time to 50%. I made the mistake of mismanaging my expectations and thus caused unnecessary stress for myself and my team. Especially in transitioning phases, allow yourself more breaks and use them to reflect on your expectations.
Hey Alex,
Can imagine it was quite hectic with kids and working from home.
Did you manage to get the percentage breaks alright now?
I still find it hard some days to say ok now I need a full break.
After realizing what had happened, I first took a break of one day to redefine my expectations. Everything else just followed automatically.
Thanks for sharing! Surely, taking short breaks can help me focus more. I thought this was not important until I experienced burnout. So I scheduled my short breaks along with other tasks, which really helped remind me of break time. I use task management software so that I can track my progress. I like Tick Tick and Quire.
Nice, i'm glad to see you are taking action.
Burnout is so real, and often a first one can really take you by surprise.
Thanks for these apps, i'll check them out.
Coming from the man who has my notifications filled up with daily articles...lol! I'm thankful you don't take too many breaks though. :) Oh, and if you ever need any inspo on what to write about can I make a personal request for Amazon Database services and analytics. (specifically RDS and Quicksight). I need someone who speaks human to help me make sense of it. Thanks for all you do though!
Haha, you'd be surprised I do actually take breaks!
I try and write ahead of time to be able to have some weekend off, or go on a holiday :).
Awesome! I only did Azure table storage as a database, but will definitely write this down!
And as for breaks, I wish. My break was working from home for 3 days while I had strep, awaiting my Covid results. I also have two kids, and just started my first dev position the beginning of the year (not remote :( ), and it is hard! I did take a hiatus from an outside project I was working on for a small start-up, because I was spreading myself too thin. But many employers aren't so understanding, even during these hard times. My employer could let me work from home, but he doesn't. Maybe bc I'm new.
Yeah especially seeing this when you're new, they sometimes expect another rock star dev from the line, since that's what they have.
It's such a toxic environment really.
But good to move your side projects to the side, and perhaps even talking to a manager can be helpful?
This is a really great reminder - thank you! Since I've been working from home and have very few distractions, I sometimes have to remind myself to take a break to go eat lunch in a different room or walk the dogs, etc. I always feel much better afterwards!
I think especially when working from home it's becoming more important.
I find myself doing only 15 minute lunches and get back to work.
However need to tell myself, stop, it's a break you earned it.
Just sit and relax for a bit.