This past holiday weekend, I did something unusual. I took the whole weekend off, including the Monday holiday. That is why this post is showing up a day or two later than usual, and honestly, that is kind of the point.
When you run a small business, there's always one more thing you could be doing. So it's pretty typical for me to work extended hours throughout the week and then also through the weekend. Maybe once or twice a month I'll take a day off, often when something comes up like family or other commitments that can't wait.
My original plan was to make the weekend extremely productive. But as the week wound down before the weekend started, I could tell my concentration was way off. I would stare at a line of code, try to make sense of it for a moment, then pause for what felt like an eternity, as if I was daydreaming. I felt like a car with a dead battery. No matter how many times I turned the key, the engine wouldn't turn over.
I could tell that I was hitting burnout and had two choices in front of me. I could force the issue but progress would be limited and hard-won. Or I could head things off by taking a few days off to clear my head and come back ready to do better work.
So I did zero work this weekend and did my best to not even think about it. Instead I fixed some light switches in our home that have been crying for attention for years. I also spent substantial time getting exercise, recuperating, and pretty much focusing on doing nothing.
The truth is, over the past month or more, I had stopped exercising and stopped taking our dog on our five-mile walks. I could feel it in my body and my mood. So I spent this weekend resetting my habits instead of pouring every spare hour back into work.
I got back on the Peloton, which is a very expensive way to be reminded that sitting at a desk for a month has consequences. The first day sucked as my body was more lethargic than energetic. The leaderboard was not impressed, but things improved by the second day.
I sweated it out in the DIY infrared sauna setup I built for my wife, which is exactly as glamorous as it sounds. Just imagine crawling into a grow tent with 1,000 watts of french fry lights aimed at your body. Not exactly spa-like, but it gets the job done.
I also tackled the kind of home stuff that piles up when work eats every spare hour. Earlier this spring, our pool had turned green. Not metaphorically. Actually pond green. I finally got it cleaned up, and by the end of the weekend I was swimming in it for the first time in years. The opportunities were always there, but work always tugged me away.
At one point, while lounging in the pool, I solved a problem in Sherpa I had been noodling on for a bit. It was one of the easiest wins I've had lately and I'll be able to build it in later this week. The smaller win was the Sherpa idea. The bigger win was having enough distance to see a decision I've been circling about Sherpa, Outpost, and where my attention goes next. I’ll write more about that next week.
In the end, I didn't stop caring about the work. I took a breather and stopped trying to squeeze good work out of a bad state.
How about you? How do you know when you’re actually out of gas, and what helps you reset before the mistakes start?
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