I Gave Myself Permission to Take a Break

I took a break this past weekend. I met up with some friends in the mountains, left my laptop at home, and enforced a 48-hour no-work zone.

I was told that my graduate program wasn’t compatible with a job, and it’s true. It’s true because the program is very much like a job in itself: project-driven, working on real problems with real agencies in the industry we’re prepping for. It’s exactly what I want, but it also soaks up all of my days, nights, and weekends, just like the job I left behind when I became a grad student. And I needed to put it all down and take a breath.

Science has my back, and business journals publish studies to this effect all the time. Entrepreneur reveals “The Secret to Increased Productivity: Taking Time Off” and HBR explains “Why You Should Tell Your Team to Take a Break and Go Outside.”

But even though taking breaks and seeking renewal are common sense and now even common knowledge, it’s still so hard. I have a theory why.

We talk about the need to create work environments where people have permission to step away and unplug. But, while this is important, getting permission from our workplaces isn’t enough. I think the sticking point is whether we give ourselves permission to unplug.

Until we can turn our own brains off, put aside the problems we’re chewing on in our day-to-day, and proactively seek that time to renew, it will never happen. We have to teach ourselves how to do that. The ability won’t just pop up on day 1 of vacation.

My weekend away taught me that I’m not very good at giving myself permission to break. Yes, I left my laptop at home, but I still had stress dreams and felt anxiety about the week ahead. Even so, my semi-successful unplugging left me feeling grateful to myself — grateful that I tried, even if imperfectly, to build space into my life for non-work activities. So here’s a promise: there’s more to come.