Hitting the Pause Button
A Different Perspective on Productivity
Living in a massively popular tourist destination (at least pre-pandemic), I had the opportunity to meet people from various corners of the world and listen to their stories. Some are boring, many are interesting. My favorite stories, however, tend to belong to travelers. Not the tourists who come to Bali on a holiday for about a week, but long-term travelers who find themselves on the island as part of their long journey. I enjoy listening to their travel stories, but above everything, I am always curious about why they decide to leave their “normal, everyday life” to go on a prolonged adventure.
I am always fascinated by the idea of having a “pause button”. Travelling is fantastic, but even without taking any trip, sometimes we just need the time to recharge or to look back and reconsider our steps. A pause from work, a pause from society’s expectations, a pause from interaction that leaves you feeling drained. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we all could afford having a pause and not be judged for it?
Coming from a country with 12 days annual leave that usually can’t be taken all at once, the luxury of a long-term travel is something many of us here can’t afford. If not because of time, then because of the cost. But again, let’s not even talk about travel now. Let’s talk about a break. Realistically speaking, if we apply for 12 days leave to take a break, not to take any trips outside of the city or country, not to attend any family affairs, and not because we or someone close to us are sick −but just because we feel like we need a break, do you think we can just get away with it?
In most cases, the answer is likely no. If you’re lucky, you might get a questioning look and a couple of days approved with the promise to answer call and reply email when the company needs. Yet more often than not, people opt to make up excuses about having a sick grandmother or a close friend who is getting married out of town. Recently, I even read a story about someone claiming to have been infected by covid-19 just to have two weeks off work unbothered. So that got me thinking, why is it so difficult to hit the pause button? Life is a long journey after all. Don’t we need breaks in between?
The trip downhill
I remember a couple of months ago when a thought to take some time off work suddenly crossed my mind. Work situation wasn’t so conducive and I knew by the end of my contract, there was a big chance it wouldn’t be extended. I stood on a coral reef, looked at the horizon and imagined how nice it would be to be living near the beach and just focus on writing and making art every day, away from any kind of work pressure or office drama.
A couple of weeks later, my fear was confirmed and I found myself without work. Worse, just a month after that, a stricter safety measure was taken due to the rising coronavirus infection. Hospitality industry, which has been suffering for a year and half already, takes an even harder blow. I know finding a new job will be extra difficult.
In a way, you can say I got my wish. I got the break I longed for and all the time in the world to write and make art, which I have been grateful for. While I do miss working in an office, I appreciate every minute that I could use however I see fit. That, until the guilt of unproductivity kicks in.
The guilt of unproductivity
“What do you do for a living?”
“Where do you work?”
“How’s work?”
The similar questions keep coming, both from old friends and (overly) inquisitive strangers. While it’s alright to explain why am I not currently working at first, it gets tiring to explain it again and again after some time. If I say I’m taking a break, people usually assume I mean just a short break. If I talk about unemployment −and that it has been months, I get either a pitiful reaction or more prying questions. If I say I am thinking to take a sabbatical or an (adult) gap year, most people won’t even understand what those mean as they are not common where I am.
I come to the conclusion that a break is indeed a luxury. Either you have enough savings to carry on during the time you aren’t making cash, you live in a society with a good welfare system or have people who can support you −at least partially, or you have somehow achieved a financial freedom.
Besides the financial aspect, however, there are also other things to take into consideration. Living in one of the most populous countries in the world, I find taking a (longer) break to be extra tough, as you are easily replaceable. Productivity is expected and that’s alright, but when you feel burnt out, requesting extra time off could be seen as the sign of you being lazy or unmotivated to work. If you for whatever reason find yourself in an unpleasant, unsupportive working environment and you complain about it, there will be numerous people lining up to take your place. On the other side, if you −like me− hit the pause button after leaving one company, you end up wondering how long it is okay to be on a break. Job market, especially at that moment, is tricky.
During the last couple of weeks in my former workplace, I felt deeply unappreciated, hurt by the way I was treated. I might not be perfect, but they certainly weren’t either. I felt a lot more peaceful by the time I have more freedom to manage my day. Again, until the guilt of unproductivity kicks in.
What about writing? You might wonder. I love writing. I enjoy playing around with words and create something that is beautiful −or better, impactful. Yet sometimes, I still have my struggles when it comes to producing content −no matter how many articles about writing or productivity on medium and other sites that I’ve perused. By the end of the day, I am frequently left with scrambled ideas and unfinished documents. I am not giving up, but sometimes, when progress takes longer time than hoped we feel a pang of self-doubt.
Work has become a major part of our adult life and to some extent, it helps shape our identity. When you are no longer professionally known as a (insert work title here), what would you be? Should you start from scratch in another role or you pursue something similar to what you did in the past?
What do you really want?
The so-called productive break
Leisure is a reward. Whether it is the time you go home from work (or just close the email and work documents, in case of WFH), the weekend, holiday or your PTO, the majority of us see free time as something valuable that we want to use properly.
Someone might want to catch up on sleep, another wants to hang out or plans that amazing vacation with their loved ones. Problem is, sometimes we either get carried away making plans on how to best use that leisure time or we end up spending the break −unintentionally− thinking about work or other problems and how to be more productive the next day, so much that we forget to let go and just enjoy ourselves. The latter is especially popular among workers with high-pressure jobs, both the actual high-paying ones and the underpaid.
Raised in a self-employed Asian family, I grew up watching my parents working from morning till evening seven days per week. They took a few days off during holidays, about three times in a year, but other than those everyday is a working day. While I come to appreciate their hardworking values, as a preteen I resented it. I was considered too young to go on a solo vacation, yet they never made time to take me anywhere. From their point of view though, the time they weren’t working was the time they weren’t making money.
As my fellow 90s kids will surely relate, the time we became an adult and started working versus our parent’s most productive years back then are starkly different. They never really had to deal with work chats coming up late at night or expected to still get in touch with work when they were on a holiday the way we do now. I sometimes felt like I had even less break compared to my parents’ seven days-workweek, because at least their nights were never interrupted. Gone are those days when breaks actually mean breaks.
So here are my questions: do you take break when you feel like you need them or you wait until you’re burnt out first? If you ever feel burnt out, what do you do? And lastly, should you have all the time you want to be on a break, what do you really want to do?
Not all those who wander are lost
Yup, I just had to quote Tolkien. I started this article by mentioning long-term travel and adventure −while it might not be remotely close to Frodo and the gang’s journey in the middle earth, both reminds me that in a long journey, we sometimes feel like we are lost.
In a long journey, we take breaks so we could be recharged by the time we hit the road again. Sometimes that break means a couple of hours of sleep, sometimes it’s a weekend of unwinding, but also sometimes we need a lot longer than that.
When I tell people I haven’t been actively looking for a new job, surprise is the most common reaction. Most were probably just wondering how I make my ends meet, but one straight up called me lazy. Ouch.
The truth is, I am currently trying to embrace the feeling lost. I am wandering. I’m learning new things every day and exploring possibilities. Work-wise, I am not nearly as productive as I used to be −or as I hope to be. I still beat myself up mentally everyday thanks to the guilt of unproductivity, but I am trying to quit that.
If you ask me what is my long-term plan, I might no longer be able to give you a straight up answer. For so long I thought this was a sign of a lack of preparation or ambition, but right now in an unexpected break in the middle of a global pandemic, I am learning to see it in a different light. Life itself is unexpected. We can make as much plans as we want, but in the end, we might end up in a different direction anyway. So why not just learn to better yourself in the way you can, embrace the unknown, and take a break when you feel like you need it? The break part might sound easier than done, but here’s hoping it would be more normalized in the future.
After all, life is a long journey. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
