Are you taking a break this weekend? 🏖️

My most productive times are when I'm doing absolutely nothing. Not in 'I'm scrolling on my phone' type of nothing, but literally nothing. No reading, no music, no work. Just me, my thoughts, and a pen and notebook for 3-5 hours, uninterrupted. It's the most productive time on my entire week!

I think it depends on your stage of life. When I was in my 20's all I wanted to do was work, balance wasn't a priority and I seemed invincible in terms of my mental and physical health. At 30 things changed, perhaps it was getting married and starting a family, or perhaps it was simply the level of stress at work, but I found myself having heart palpitations from anxiety. It took me 6 months & an extreme retreat from all projects at work demanded by my VP at the time to get back to neutral. It was a lesson. I am not invincible and while I enjoy working we all work better when we balance. Therefore, now a days at 38 I take every break I can get and I consider balance my #1 priority beyond my family, so much so that it is baked into the core values and culture of my own company. So my advice, take every holiday and take care of your physical and mental health, it is not replaceable and you are not invincible, work hard while your at work, but realize that you have earned your break and you and your productivity will be better for it when you return.

Replied on the twitterrrs.

Im limited by my arms screaming to stop because of RSI. Mostly it’s okay but when it’s hot outside or when I work on my laptop it can get a bit painful.

I would love to sit in a coffee shop all day but it’s just not physically possible because the bad posture.

I love coding so this condition helps balance life with work, it would be too tempting otherwise.

What if working on your side-projects is your break? :p Of course you should take break from the side-projects as well.

The EUROS are on :)

Should take a break but I never do :)

I'm working this weekend. Whenever I'm not working on my day job I'm thinking/working my company.
I'm new to my own company (only became serious these last few weeks). I go to gym in the morning and take afternoon naps, hopefully those will keep the burnout at bay.
Instead of work life "balance" I think in terms of tradeoffs. I'm ok sacrificing leisure time to acquire new skills and grow my network. Tradeoffs are easier to reason with, compared to an elusive, subjective "balance".

what are your thoughts on work/life balance while working on a startup?

I forgot about work/life balance for quite a few years. Not really sure when anything will be like before I started working for my startup.

Do you take days off or even vacations? How do you prevent getting burned out?

No, I don't take days off. And not really sure when I'll be able to afford it.

Preventing burn out? I'm not sure as an entrepreneur you'll be avoid burnout, at least once -- unless you're really lucky.

This is prime work time! You have to take a break every now and then, take a day or two off, log off completely, go for a walk etc. but a weekend like this where nobody is going to interrupt you can be super productive.

Unfortunately not as the weekend is when we get our best indie work done. No client interruptions from our day jobs 😄

I take long weekends to work on 1 project.

Context switching is hard for me. I think it's hard for everyone, but also everything thinks they can multitask.

Sometimes this 1 project is a side project that I just have to do to get it out of my head.

Sometimes this 1 project is a content piece that just takes longer than a blog post to write or create.

Sometimes this 1 project is a feature.

A long weekend provides enough time to unwind from work, get started on a project, get side-tracked, get back on track, get through the nitty gritty, get through some rough patches, and get it done.

I launched Influence Weekly after Thanksgiving.
I launched Better Sheets in one 24 hours period starting on Friday.
I created the first CreatorScape over the weekend.

Even on a normal weekend you can get 20 hours of a project done without losing sleep.
Four hours on Friday night, 8 Hours each on Saturday and Sunday.

I think this will be true for lots of indie hackers: the weekends and small holidays are when they get the time to work on their projects. I am no different.

I am certainly no different. Weekends and nights. I have a 4 day weekends which gives me plenty of extra time to work on my projects. Even just launched the MVP for my latest project, nameea.com. Plus, my fun and free time is my maker time. It's doing what I love to do.

Looks like it! Maybe I can squeeze an hour or two tomorrow to do a little bit for https://deploymentfromscratch.com/

Maybe. There's some saturdays I don't even turn my computer on. Just got done finishing something for a series. So, maybe I'll work on a few other things, or maybe paint and do other more relaxing things. We'll see how I feel when I wake up and decide based on that.

I normally take a day or 2 break after I've hit one of my S.M.A.R.T goals. So I guess I'd definitely due for a break this weekend🎉

I'm definitely taking a break but from all the development work. I've been very busy with development waking up at 4 AM and getting stuff done before my day job starts, it was a little crazy.

Now I'm figuring out and working on the marketing side of things. I think I'm gonna do one week development and one week marketing cycles for a while and see how it goes.

I love holiday weekends for indie hacking. It's the best time to get things done imo

When I was 20 something, I didn't take breaks. I had no menpower and had to do everything myself.
Now, I have few people who take the load off my shoulders, so I can leave the city from time to time. It's the work-life balance.

Nope, last days have been busy with family visits, tomorrow I can finally work again!