Level Up and Launch: Week 26 Review
“ Sometimes, taking a break and going somewhere else and, almost, for both parties, absence makes the heart grow fonder. ” — Edge
Week 26 ended on Tuesday morning. The cause? Minor burnout. It started when I couldn’t get out of bed. A series of iPhone alarms wailed on and off from 9:00 to 11:30. They all failed.
Where technology failed nature succeeded. Around 14:00 I woke up to the sound of birds singing and a cool breeze rushing through my bedroom. Though the air felt good, I felt quite the opposite. My mind and body were both exhausted.
At first, I thought I had the flu or worse — the Coronavirus. After moving around I ruled them out. My only symptoms were a minor headache and exhaustion.
I tried to work despite my lack of fitness. It was Tuesday and I’m hungry to make progress on my capstone project, React Interactive Dashboard. It’s the last step before I launch an application campaign for my second frontend job. More than anything, I want to get it done (enough) so I can face the market with a non-trivial project to support my pitch.
Unfortunately, my attempt at working failed. I couldn’t focus. Looking at my screen was only making my headache worse. The voice inside my head kept telling me to push through while my body was telling me to stop. In the end, I listened to my body and reluctantly took the day off.
Wednesday evening my wife and daughter were asking me what I had planned for Wednesday. As usual, I responded “work.” It was clear that something was going on Wednesday, but I was clueless. Then, for the 3rd time in the last couple of weeks, they reminded me last Wednesday was my birthday.
I’m not a birthday person. I don’t celebrate mine. I only celebrate other people’s birthdays out of respect for them and their culture. My family knows my position on birthdays, but they still insist on doing something for my birthday every year.
I made it clear I felt like a dead battery and I wasn’t going anywhere. Instead, I agreed to take Wednesday off, we would pick up some burgers and watch a movie together. Following through on our agreement resulted in me doing nothing Level Up and Launch-related for two days in a row.
Long story short, I wasn’t feeling it on Thursday or Friday, so I chalked them up, too. Instead, I slept for 10 hours. When my daughter came home from school, I spent time with her. In the evenings, I talked with my wife, watched movies, and played PS4. And, I shunned all things “work” including exercise. I only left my place to shop for groceries.
I wasn’t surprised by the turn of events. For weeks I’ve written I want to take a vacation. I planned to take one in Week 27, 28, or both. Until then my compromise was taking a day off, if necessary. That’s what I thought I was doing Tuesday except one day turned into one week.
I presume I should feel happy, but I don’t. On the contrary, I’m upset at myself for not handling the situation better. I’m also upset that my body more or less forced me to take a vacation.
It’s irrational, but feel like I should have seen the burnout coming and taken action to prevent it sooner. I can handle uncertainty, but I don’t like surprises. I thought I was good to go until Week 27 when I would take a planned break. Perhaps then I could have used my time off more efficiently.
Besides some extra family time (which has been abundant thanks to coronavirus), the only thing I accomplished was catching up on sleep. I would have liked to catch up with friends or have gone somewhere and done something — anything. Alas, I was burnt and thus had no desire despite having the opportunity. That’s frustrating.
I flirted with taking this week off. My wife always says you need two weeks off. The first week is to come down from everyday life and the second week is when you start relaxing. She’s probably right, but I’m not doing that. Not this time.
I’m tired of leveling up solo. I’m keen to get back to work and level up as a team member. The only thing stopping me from applying is the feeling that I have nothing to show for all the time I’ve taken off.
Of course, having nothing to show for the time I’ve taken off is false. Besides a handful of small projects, I’ve learned a ton about my craft. I also learned a great deal about a variety of web technologies, project management, and myself.
However, when I started Level Up and Launch I envisioned myself completing a capstone project, a Get Hired MVP, that would reduce the perceived risk of hiring me while also boosting my self-confidence. After 26 weeks, I’m in the early stage of working on that project, React Interactive Dashboard. After coming this far, I’m hell-bent on making significant progress towards finishing it before I put myself back on the market.
Since my goal is to get back on the market as soon as possible, I’m eschewing taking more time off. I’m hoping a week of catching up on sleep was enough to power through enough of React Interactive Dashboard to start applying with higher confidence in 3 to 6 weeks.
Week 26 Goals Recap
- Nav route to app home page — NOT ACHIEVED
- Indicator widget including tests — NOT ACHIEVED
- List widget including tests — NOT ACHIEVED
- (Optional) Fix CSS Module — NOT ACHIEVED
Week 25 Deliverables
No deliverables this week.
Project Board
Level Up and Launch Public Project Board
Continuous Improvement: Last Week’s Action Items
No action items this week.
What Went Well?
Despite my philosophical aversion to birthdays, I’m grateful to have survived another year. That said, I’m grateful to survive every day, which is one of the reasons I find celebrating birthdays superfluous.
Also, sleeping 10 to 12 hours a day was helpful. I hope I can relive sleeping as long for at least two weeks before I start my next job.
What Can Improve?
I need to work on having the resolve to take long breaks (e.g. a week or more) before my body forces them on me. I’ve been working on that since 2009 when I decided to leave home (i.e. California).
Living in Europe helped. Back in 2014, I was still very much thinking like an American. I planned to work all year only taking bank holidays off. I figured that would impress my boss and I would get a non-trivial check cut (for accrued holidays) in a few years when I moved on. Instead, my boss reprimanded me for not taking my mandatory 30 days vacation! I suppose on some level, all this time, I’ve been relying on the System and my wife’s nudging to help me do the right thing.
Being driven is a gift and a curse. My drive has allowed me to recover from social and economic problems that broke my family and many of my peers. Against the odds, I fought back against adversity and barely finishing high school and worked my way into finance, marketing, and now engineering.
But, no matter what I do, I can’t seem to get past my past. I feel like I’m perpetually playing catch up. Making up for past mistakes, lost time, and getting a raw deal in a few facets of life combined with my desire to achieve new goals, drives me. After all these years, I’m still learning how to use the breaks.
I’ve made progress. I systematically take short breaks every day so I can work for months without burning out. Next, I need to figure out how to take longer breaks (i.e. vacations) so I can work for years without burning out. As a concrete action item, I’m going to use Google Scholar to dig up some research on human's need for vacations.
Ideally, there is some empirical evidence available about when to take vacations that amounts to more than “listen to your body.”
Concrete Action Item: Research the science of taking breaks/vacations
Looking Ahead: Week 27 Plan
My plan for Week 27 is to execute my Week 26 plan. I carried the goals below over from my Week 26 plan.
Week 27 Goals:
- Add nav route to home page
- Indicator widget including tests
- List widget including tests
- (Optional) Fix CSS Module
