Stopping to Smell the Roses
It’s been a few months since I stepped away from the corporate world, and I wanted to dive a bit deeper on how that’s been going and some of my reflections as we embark on our new journey.
So how has it been going? Swimmingly, thank you very much. I don’t recall feeling this energized and settled in recent memory. I mentioned in my first post that I took the first month doing whatever I felt like. The unstructured aspect was great -- it accentuated the astute differences between having my schedule mostly dictated vs my newfound freedom to do whatever the heck I wanted to. And this free-spiritedness was critical -- it was only after a month into my time off that I felt like I had shed the majority of the pent up anxiety and stress that had been encasing my mind and body for years. There’s still work to do here yet but it really did feel like a huge weight had been lifted. In the ensuing months there has finally been a feeling that the old paint is finally stripping away, layer by layer.
And it’s just natural to ask myself, the benefits of taking some time away are so obvious to me now. Why didn’t I do this sooner?
It’s not like it’s unheard of. Tim Ferriss famously wrote about mini-retirements in The 4 Hour Workweek. In fact I owe it to that book for planting the seed in my head. How did our work culture get to a place where we work our asses off, crossing off the years until we hit that golden age of 65? And then we can finally enjoy the spoils of our labour? It’s also slightly preposterous and unnerving to think that when we finally hit that target, some of us have developed old-age related physical ailments that prevent us from pursuing some of the items we yearned for on our bucket lists. Instead of this system of broken promises and missed opportunities, Tim advocated for taking an extended amount of time off on a regular basis to do those things while you are in your prime.
Absence makes… the job get harder?
Our society has placed so much emphasis on work that it’s actually surprisingly hard to get away. In the working world, the main way to recharge is to take vacation days, but I’d say the norm is to take a week off at a time, maybe a bit more around the Christmas holidays. When we heard of coworkers taking a month off for an exotic backpacking trip, we thought to ourselves -- I could never take that much time off! Lucky them!
But why not? Even when I’ve been in roles blessed with a decent amount of vacation time, it was next to impossible to feel comfortable booking a big chunk of it to do something meaningful. You’d feel like you were letting your team down by having them cover for you for a long time, you’d miss out on too much while you’re away, and you’d have too much to catch up on when you get back. This was the case for me even in a company that encouraged its employees to take their allotted time off. And imagine you’re not so lucky -- you’re in a workplace where there is little to no coverage for your role and everyone’s a workaholic. I’ve heard about corporate environments where it’s seen as a weakness to take time off, as if it’s a tarnish on your loyalty to the mission and company. I can only imagine in these companies how people must brag about how long a stretch they’ve been able to muster without any time off! All in the pursuit of feeling productive. Sit down and have a medal, I guess?
In fact, research has shown for a long time that the opposite is true. Think of an athlete competing at the highest levels, where no matter how hard you train, your recovery is just as important. Your body reacts similarly to work pressures, and performs at its peak with the right amount of recovery. And oftentimes, this recovery needs to be the opposite of work — not travelling with the kids lining up at hellish lines in Disneyworld while checking your Slack messages at night. To be effective at resting you need enough time to meaningfully unplug from the work matrix.
Giving yourself a break
Like we’ve talked about in a previous post, it helps to have an idea of what you’re shooting for through vision exercises (like a vision board) and setting some targets. This will allow you to evaluate what you’re really trying to get out of your current job and larger life goals. Similar to the mini-retirement idea -- are there passions or goals you may have that warrant taking a break earlier to attain, before you’re too old and potentially unable to do so?
Career-wise taking a break can feel risky, so it’s good to evaluate objectively if that is really the case. Would your current company allow you to take a longer break? Would your manager be supportive? Sometimes the answer will surprise you, as we tend to minimize our value. If you’re decent at what you do, your manager will likely go above and beyond to keep you, since it’s well known that it’s much more cost effective to retain talent versus having to go through the long cycles of hiring, onboarding, and training a new employee. And that's if they turn out to be a good hire! For ones that don't work out and aren't a good fit, the company is in a much bigger hole after losing you.
Are you ready for a bigger change? Maybe it’s time to consider just taking a longer break in-between jobs. You may be in a sector like technology, where it’s insanely competitive for talent, and finding your next gig is potentially easier than you think. And especially if you’re not too worried about your skills atrophying over time. Do some quick research and take a look at job postings — are there a lot of companies looking for your skills? Have those postings been reposted over and over, suggesting that those companies are struggling to find good people? The flip-side of the Great Resignation is there's a huge amount of newly vacated roles to fill, and you could be in a field that is crazy in-demand. If that’s the case, start thinking about a sabbatical in broad strokes. What would the activities you want to partake in cost? What kind of savings do you need to stockpile to be ok financially? How long could you take off without setting yourself back?
How we're thinking about it
And maybe you’re like us -- you’re ready for a complete 180! The way I think about what I’m doing is a culmination of the above. In a future post I’d love to break down the steps that allowed me to set up the right financial footing to take a bigger risk. I’m also in a hot job sector where it’s so hard to land good designers -- I know this because it’s been incredibly challenging trying to scale my team up. That bodes well for me too -- if I ever feel like I want to dip back into that life, I feel super confident that I could. And on top of that, I did ask for a decently long time off and it was granted! So I was actually able to tippy toe out onto the edge of the dock and peek over before diving into the ocean head first. What’s the worst thing that can happen? I get wet, I dry off, and basically keep doing what I was doing before. But the upside is this -- you shed some of those barnacles holding you down. And there’s a whole ocean to explore — if you just get out of your beach chair to take a look, you might just find what you didn’t know you were looking for.
Inspiration
Tim Ferriss - The 4-Hour Workweek
Bill Perkins - Die with Zero
