Those of you who are Solopreneurs and Small Business Owners doing most things on your own trying to make ends meet, do you take short breaks in between? Like a day or two just to relax even though you're worried about the bills? Are you able to do it guilt-free or do you overcompensate when you're back at work?
Breaks – Yay or Nay?
byu/Glittering_Adagio569 inEntrepreneur
Posted by Glittering_Adagio569
6 Comments
Personally force a break everyday, and when it feels needed a full day yeah. No matter how busy I feel like I am or how guilty it feels take a couple hours to do something that will center you everyday, for me that’s ballet but more than likely something else for you find what works make it a non negotiable anti burnout daily. I work so much better after taking that break that it’s more than worth it, and sometimes things will start stacking up where you end up worrying so much during the day that you can’t really concentrate on the work so it doesn’t get done anyways then that’s a very clear signal that you need to take at least a day of specifically relaxing, not a lite day, not a planning day, full on relaxing a 24hours of specifically forcing yourself to disconnect from the grind have a full mental reset. You can only grind so many days in a row before it catches up, gotta find your rythm that’s sustainable so you can keep going after that initial burst of grinding, doing 90% as hard a grind but over ten times as many days sustainably goes a lot further, remember that
Take breaks.
Yes: short but planned breaks, not “whenever it happens” keep you productive without burning out and don’t make you miss the month.
Use 90/15 for three cycles a day (deep work on gainful activities → 15′ reset), then 30′ walk/lunch; put 1 day of “maintenance” every 2 weeks for backoffice only: zero guilt because it’s already on the agenda.
Golden rule: maximum recovery of 25% of missed time, no punitive marathons, protect revenue blocks and breaks pay for themselves.
Yes, definitely take breaks. Between running my small business and helping raise our baby, I don’t have much time, but I make sure to take a little time off. I try not to work on Sundays, and sometimes I have free time on Saturday as well. However, problems do arise, and sometimes you just have to postpone that break.
Oh man, the guilt is so real. That feeling where you finally take a day to breathe and your brain won’t shut up about everything you “should” be doing instead.
The overcompensation thing you mentioned is the killer – you take one day off then punish yourself with 12-hour days to “make up for it.” Like you’re not allowed to be human.
I had to start thinking about it this way: if I hired someone to do my job, I’d give them weekends. Why am I treating myself worse than I’d treat an employee?
The bills are gonna be there whether you’re miserable or not.
1 or 2 days is fine, but you’ll have to learn to take the days off. Just make sure not to have too long of a break without work or you might lose your momentum, that happened to me and got me into 5 years of atrophy