Sabbaticals

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while and I think its only fitting the starting off the new year and looking at getting “back into work” that we start thinking about our next time off.

What?

Yes, you are working to live, not living to work! Remember that.

Part of the problem

Admittedly, I’m terrible at taking time off. As in, horrible at it. There are several reasons for this. I’m a workaholic and its something I’m trying to get better at. But also, there is a part of me, that has a child that can throw some health issue wrenches your way at the drop of a hat and put you in the hospital. Having a “bank” of days to rely on, even when the company would bend over backwards to make it work with sick days and family sick days, and every other internet company benefit you can think of… I’m from a broken system in my early years and its hard to get out of that mental thought process. I’m part of the problem here!

Addressing the problem

One of the podcasts that I listen to is called Focused which talks about different tips, tricks and ways of getting more focused and productive. Who couldn’t learn a thing or two about getting better right?

In one of their podcasts, at a little over 42 minutes in, one of the hosts starts talking about taking a sabbatical every 8 weeks. The thought of that, of a scheduled week off was intriguing to me.

Burn out is something that I’ve battled with in the past. So this is something that sparked my attention. I dug into this more and this came into this person’s existence based on a previous episode of the podcast. This is a more recent discovery for me so I’m not deep into the back history of the show so I took a listen to episode 101 Focused #101: Taking a Sabbatical, with Sean McCabe - Relay FM

The first time you do it, it seems like a much needed break. You come back and you feel recharged. The second time you do it, you feel guilty about doing it. By the 3rd one, you really start to relish the week off. You look forward to it.

#blog/drafts

Focused #133: Success & Failure - Relay FM

What I did last year

For 2022, I decided that I was going to force myself to take a week off every quarter. A full week whenever I could and try and grab some of that bonus time where there was an extra company holiday tagged on if I could. I hadn’t taken this much time off in a year since I took my sabbatical 4 years prior!

For the first half of the year, this worked out great!

TODO - Look up PTO in 2022

The second part of the year, I ran into a problem. I had a buddy coming into town to hang with the family as part of a Christmas present to the kiddos. They love my buddy and he’s a kid at heart so nerf guns, pool parties, baseball games were all in on the week off. This was in July and it was fantastic! This took care of my Q3 time off and I didn’t really have anything planned for the rest of the summer. With work projects, it was going to be pretty hectic anyway trying to meet the demands of the job and continue to perform at a high level. This goes back to me being part of the problem.

For Q4… I didn’t really have time scheduled to be away until taking the last two weeks of the year off. The company has a code freeze around that time and its a good time to unwind as January is a big performance review time at the company.

This meant roughly 5 months between weeks off. BIG MISTAKE!!!

I should have scheduled another week in there.