How do you overcome the guilt of taking a break?
I always feel like shit when I didn't clock a certain # of hours in a given week, because I know I'm not working as hard as I can.
Yet sometimes it feels like I need a break badly, like my brain is completely fried and I'm making mistakes, or even taking hours to figure out what should have taken minutes.
And still I can't justify just taking the time off, because:
- It just seems like such an easy way out.
- There are 1,000 things I need to complete soon.
- I could probably power through using willpower + caffeine.
- Maybe I'm just being lazy and trying to rationalize having fun as rest.
- My competitors are out-executing me.
- My users and customers are breathing down my neck.
- If I don't discipline myself, then who will?
- I'm a bootstrapped solo founder. Everything stops when I take a break.
- I already have so few open hours (day job), so I should make the best of them.
How do I know if I'm being lazy or just burned out?
And even if I'm genuinely burned out, how do I not feel guilty for taking a breather?
If you are not taking a break, you reduce your output. The quality of your work will get worse if you don't replenish.
Being a stressed out and tired is like being drunk. Would you run your business drunk?
Exactly.
Your responsibility is to the long term viability of your business, not to the short term high of completing another todo.
That long term viability is hurt if you:
In the VC world, short term sprinting and burning out might sometimes reap the biggest rewards, but in the bootstrap world you need to be calm enough to think.
I'd recommend the book "It doesn't have to be crazy at work" by Basecamp:
https://www.amazon.com/Doesnt-Have-Be-Crazy-Work/dp/0062874780
I feel like measuring your work in clocked hours is not a good thing.
I like to measure my work by output, sometimes when you're in the zone you can do "8 hours worth" of work in half or less. And sometimes when you're very tired you can't accomplish anything and/or you're making basic mistakes, this can make you lose interest in your idea and burn you out, so taking a break is the best thing to do in the long run, and since it's justified, you shouldn't feel bad about it.
The best feeling is when you get back from your break feeling fresh and you start completing tasks one after another and you're actually enjoying working on your project, you immediately regain all the lost motivation.
Hi Ricky,
I can definitely say that you are not a lazy person and you are overstressed. I'm fighting with the exact same issues right now.
I'm a full-time employee. In my leisure time, I take freelance and do side projects. Because of the hard work, I put into my career in the last 2 years, I doubled my income. Everything sounds great but now I'm overstressed and burned out.
I feel that my life flies by so I decided to take a break from side projects for some time and just spend this time with my family or invest it in my health. I truly believe that people need a re-charge so they can operate better.
As for your current project, you should change something. I think you need to hire someone to decrease your workload so you can take a break and look at your project from a different angle.