I have been getting beaten down between 24/7 job uncertainty with the bad engineering market right now, a full-strip house renovation, and not sleeping well.
Yesterday renovation with my girlfriend’s family I hit a breakpoint of just going numb after the 3-4 hours of work I put into building the bath frame has to be shortened by 2cm to get the tiles flat that I wrongly calculated because my brain doesn’t work anymore. Like 50% of the work has to be redone and half of the holes through the tiles carefully redrilled.
Today I actually took a day off just working on my personal electronics project. Just a nice, sunny day playing with our dog, doing a bit of gardening and actually enjoying the day instead of just going and going renovating or working or going to social events. I really needed it. Back to the grind tomorrow.
People need to realize this. I did as a manager in my last position.
People (and management too, stupidly) think that they need to always be on and there but no, everyone needs a break. You’re actually useless if you overwork yourself. The business legit will do worse if you show up without having taken a break.
For your and the business’s sake, take time off often. Do whatever you want. You don’t have to travel to a far off country for a vacation. I took a week off after my birthday and just spent it at home, relaxing and waking up late. It was wonderful.
Everyone needs to take their time.
I’m very thankful to my boss and the company I work for. They will actually get on you for not taking time off. My boss even started not letting us use our PTO for unexpected time off we take, even though we’re supposed to. So I’ve been having time accumulate and just took the entire week to myself.
Not only that, it also helps others (and yourself) see the value you bring in your absence. “Oh shoot, who’s going to do that? Who knows how to do that?”
Glad you got your time, OP! Hopefully it helped you out a lot.