8 Lessons from a delightfully imperfect career break

This could be an incredibly short post. There is no right way to do a career break and trying to define a formula for a productive career break is entirely missing the point. That said, looking back at the last year and a half, there are a few things I’ve learned that might help people in a similar position.

For those of you who are so burnt out and ready for a career break that the idea of reading a full article about taking a career break feels like a sick joke - no worries, I understand! Here is the tl;dr:

1. Know your why and be intentional with your time - This isn’t about having a checklist of ‘things you want to do’ but rather being intentional with your focus.
2. Set alarms for the essential stuff - The easier you make it to stay checked out unless there is a reason to check in, the better.
3. Get your head ready for change - it won’t all be sunshine and rainbows. It is an incredible privilege to be able to take a break from your work. It can be downright uncomfortable to feel like you aren’t doing it right. Change is hard.
4. Embrace the identity crisis - it’s probably why you are doing this in the first place. Realising just how much identity is tied to work can be a fascinating and humbling self-reflection exercise.
5. Give yourself some arbitrary constraints - embrace how they change over time.?Budget, timeline, and ideas about how it will play out, might seem counterintuitive, but if handled right they can be very freeing.
6. Appreciate the little stuff? - stay in the moment. Yes, this break is likely about setting you up for whatever is next but to be ready for that, it’s important to stay in the moment and appreciate what’s in front of you.?
7. Reframe being lazy and enjoy the restorative time. It can be a rollercoaster of energy and motivation - some days feeling very ready to do all the things - learn, connect, discover - some days wanting none of it.?
8. Rethink how you work - when work isn’t what you do. Without that system or routine that work/jobs provide, you will need to start building your own to move forward with your focus.

Now for the long-form version and pretty pictures.

I desperately needed a break long before I took one. Back in Spring 2019, I sat down with some of my leadership team and made a plan to hire replacements for the roles I did in the organisation so that I could step back. This was going to take 3 roles and I estimated about 18 months to fully make the transition. We made progress - hiring one of the roles and transitioning someone else on the team to cover one of the others. And then 2020 happened and all our plans went out the window. After two more years of extreme stress, I was done. The business was stable and there was a team in place that could take on enough of what I did to make it work. There were discussions about selling the business on the table but regardless of what happened, I was going to take a break.?

Just to be clear - what I’m defining as a career break is a voluntary break from your career. There are plenty of other reasons people take breaks in their careers but if you are intentional, setting aside time in your life to reflect, rest, and refocus can be a very positive thing - even if it’s not always as easy as it sounds.?

Know your why - be intentional with your time

This isn’t about having a checklist of ‘things you want to do’ but rather being intentional with your focus.?

When I asked for career break advice from my LinkedIn network - my friend Nick Imrie made a further distinction between taking a career break when you love what you do and want to go back to it but need to recharge (probably due to external factors such as a toxic workplace, grief and loss, family etc.) vs a break when you want to eventually do something different and need the headspace to discover, reflect, and gather new inputs (location, media, people).?

For me, it was about rediscovering who I was outside of work. There would be change in whatever I did next and I would likely need to go through both these lenses to get there.?

So much of my life had been dictated by work and as an owner of the business where my role was the connective tissue supporting our operations and team management, there was not a single week that had gone by without needing to check in and deal with something. It sounds terrible but it wasn’t - I enjoyed so much of it and got a huge amount of value from being so connected to something I was building. That said - it wasn’t sustainable. I don’t believe we should design every moment of our lives to be sustainable forever - sometimes we need to push harder, to be consumed by our work, and that’s perfectly OK - as long as you can recognise when that needs to change.? For me this came when I went to coffee with a friend and as a response to the question ‘How are you?’ I launched into an entire conversation all about the business (said friend was not involved in any way with the business). I distinctly remember halfway through one of these conversations realising I was bored - I had bored myself with my own story. Not only had I gotten to the point where I didn’t have anything to say about life outside work, but I was entirely uninspired by what I had to say about work.?

I believe your focus can change over time. I spent the first part of my break reconnecting with people in my life that I had let fall off the radar or had lost engagement with because they weren’t involved in my work. After that, I went on to reconnect with what made me happy, what inspired me, and with my body.

Know your why - have it be your guiding north star - but let it be open enough to explore and learn. Your focus might be on health, or discovering a new career path (courses, reading etc) - but your focus might change over the time you have off so know what the key priority is for your time and check in daily if possible on what you are doing to move in that direction.

Be intentional with your time but let your intention be open to interpretation.?

Set alarms for the essential stuff?

This is a very practical tip. Sadly, even during a career break, you have some essential adult / good person stuff that needs to be done. Paying bills, taxes, house admin, remembering people's birthdays, key events you don’t want to miss, and more. If like me, you really embrace the quiet and digital detox, it’s very easy to miss these simple things. In a high-pressure work environment, you are continuously in your email and calendars - you are in the ‘getting things done’ headspace - so once you come out of that and embrace the quiet and tranquillity time moves at a different pace and these things can fall off your radar.?

Do your future self a favour - as part of your final days wrapping up your work - set some calendar reminders or whatever kind of reminders will get through to you in your career break bubble. If you have people who might be trying to reach you via these platforms - consider putting an OOO on your personal email - something along the lines of you are taking a break - ‘this is how you can reach me’ or ‘I’ll check this email weekly’.?

The easier you make it to stay checked out unless there is a reason to check in, the better.?

Get your head ready for change - it won’t all be sunshine and rainbows

It is an incredible privilege to be able to take a break from your work. It can be downright uncomfortable to feel like you aren’t doing it right.

"It is normal to have negative emotions and thoughts when changing pace. It does not mean you are not making the most of it - just that you are human." Xenia Avezov

We assume that taking a career break is this magical place where all our problems fall away, leaving nothing but sunshine and rainbows. The reality is that once the work noise fades, we are often faced with even more awareness of the things that don’t feel right in our lives. If you are motivated to change those things that’s great - but I experienced almost non-existent energy levels combined with a real understanding of all the things in my life I wanted to change out of this break. A combination of embracing the downtime needed as rest and recovery, with accepting that change rarely happens overnight and that it’s OK to feel low despite being in this incredibly privileged position was how I dealt with these feelings but everyone’s journey is different.?

There will be moments when it feels great. When waking up early for the day and realising you have nothing you need to do feels euphoric - but also be mindful that it won’t feel that way all the time and it’s OK to not feel that way.?

Embrace the identity crisis - it’s probably why you are doing this in the first place.?

A week after I stopped working, I was visiting family in California. We had a little dinner party at the beach with people I hadn’t met before. The usual question of ‘what do you do?’ came up. I wasn’t prepared. I was in my family bubble, on a beach of all places! My first response was ‘Not much, I’m unemployed…’ Turns out that shuts down the conversation pretty quickly, so it’s a great response if you aren’t feeling particularly chatty.??

A few weeks later I was at a barbecue with several people I didn’t know. This time I was ready, I had my little script. The trouble was this wasn’t my usual crowd - mostly families with small kids so after chatting to a group for a few minutes someone turned to me and asked ‘Do you work?’ I was not ready for this - the direct answer was obviously no… but in my head, it was a million times more complicated. I’ve worked my whole adult life, my life had been almost exclusively about work for the last 10 years - it was such a huge part of my identity that the simple question threw me for a loop.?

Over the next year and a half, I experienced a number of these moments - realisations of just how much my identity was tied to working, and how much career accomplishments and the roles I’d held impacted how I engaged with every aspect of my life. Each of these was a fascinating and usually humbling self-reflection exercise. These uncomfortable moments are more important than the rest and relaxation in a career break. We all know that feeling tired and burnt out very rarely comes from a lack of sleep.?

While there might have been a stigma around career breaks at some point in history, my experience is anyone worth talking to is very supportive of the idea of a career break. Most people have experienced burnout in some way and can empathise with the need to take a step back. I learned what to say in particular situations depending on my audience - mostly to make them feel comfortable (or uncomfortable if I was feeling a little prickly). The fact that I had sold a company was a bit of a get-out-of-jail-free card and my area of interest/research project became a good discussion point for the ‘what’s next’ conversation people will inevitably ask. I do recommend having some canned responses to the usual questions for people who are just trying to make light conversation but fight the desire to justify and explain your life and career up to this point.?

Embrace your discomfort and learn from it - nobody else cares.

Give yourself some arbitrary constraints - embrace how they change over time.?

As mentioned in the intro - I had started planning for a career break 3 years before I took one. Towards the end of 2021, I could start to see the light at the end of the tunnel - and while discussions about selling the business were on the table, I knew there was no guarantee this would happen so I wanted to understand what this would cost me. So I sat down and looked at what I’d spent money on over the last few years, tallied up my essential and non-essential expenses along with what I might want to spend on this new life, personal training sessions, courses I wanted to take, travel to see friends and family, etc. I did a more conservative version and a more generous version. While this seems obvious, the simple act of seeing it laid out was hugely reassuring. This simple task helped me reframe the idea of ‘giving up’ my salary (loss) and instead see it as an investment in my future.?

The other arbitrary constraint I gave myself was around my timeline. While a few people I asked made the argument that this can feel like you are ‘on the clock’ I see this more as understanding that you will go through phases in terms of focus and permitting yourself to go through those phases. Initially, I created a rough timeline, mostly to give myself a clear boundary to taking actual time to relax and heal. Simply having a plan of how this might progress helped me to enjoy the downtime I had created for myself. My initial plan was to take 3-4 months over the summer and do nothing - not even think about what was next, just to enjoy, rest, travel, read non-work books, try new things, and reconnect with people - basically giving myself a full pass on anything work or future related and fully enjoy it. I would then start researching in the autumn for another 3-4 months doing research and discovery - hopefully finding a direction to follow and make something of in the next 6 months. The reality was very different but having that rough timeline in my head gave me a sense of comfort that helped me step off the cliff.?

Appreciate the little stuff? - stay in the moment?

You will likely have some big expectations for what you want to do with your time on your career break. While that’s great, appreciating the little stuff is so much better. The ability to take yourself out to a fancy breakfast mid-week, or go for a 3-hour wander in a new neighbourhood. Offering to be the one who travels to catch up with a friend - spending an afternoon cooking just for the fun of it - this is the stuff that feels amazing as long as you appreciate it.?

This is also about being in the present. It’s easy to get pulled into thoughts of the future, that’s why you are taking this break after all but to really make the most of it, I suggest doing whatever you can to stay in the present.?

"Don’t let anyone else set your schedule, taking time off is all your own, so enjoy where you are at." Morag McLaren

"Everybody wants to talk about progress, everybody wants to hear you are looking forward to your new job. Protect your ‘not thinking about work’ bubble. If you move too quickly to the future it’s not really a break." Emily Rubenstein

There is plenty of research touting the benefits of gratitude and being in the moment so I won’t go into it but it takes noticing the little stuff to appreciate it so it’s always worth the reminder. Yes, this break is likely about setting you up for whatever is next but to be ready for that, it’s important to stay in the moment and appreciate what’s in front of you.?

Reframe being lazy - enjoy restorative time

For the first few months - I embraced the lazy days. I turned into a petulant toddler about anything I felt I ‘had to do’ - even plans I’d made for myself. Rejecting some pretty basic adulting responsibilities (see setting alarms for the essentials stuff) - it was as if putting off the career break as long as I did made some part of me deeply resent anything would get in the way of it. I’d said yes to the push and pull of everything around me for so long, it was my time to just say no. To everything.

Over the summer this started to shift - I started to have some energy and feel interested again. I won’t lie, the next year was a bit of a rollercoaster of energy and motivation - some days feeling very ready to do the things I wanted to do - learn, connect, discover - some days I wanted none of it.?

I was struggling to reconcile this version of myself - someone who wasn’t productive all the time, only half finishing things, setting myself goals for the week and not doing them - but later in the journey I learned to embrace those moments as my need for restoration and enjoyed them. There is nothing better than embracing a day to just read on the sofa or spend the afternoon playing in the kitchen, as long as you allow yourself to enjoy it!?

Rethink how you work - when work isn’t what you do?

For years your schedule/systems/routines were probably dictated by work. Without that system or routine, you will need to start building your own. You could, of course, just take a break and then go back to the same way of working in your next role but now is a great time to rethink how you work best. I would suspect most people who take a career break have things they want to do - reading, taking a course, spending time on a hobby, spending more time with their family and friends, etc.? What environments, conditions, and inspirations help you do those things most effectively and with the most enjoyment?? You might not be working but are you doing the things you want to do?

Some of it was about rediscovering elements that used to help me thrive at doing what I wanted to do. Spending time at a cafe to focus on writing, going to an exhibition to help me feel inspired, and meeting a friend for coffee to feel that connection and social energy. Some of it was new - finding exercise I enjoyed that not only helped my physical energy but also helped calm my brain to focus. Everyone is different - but this isn’t about how you work best - this is about what systems you can put in place to get you in the headspace to move towards your focus.?

The motivation rollercoaster is real and you need to feed the beast to support the type of motivation you need. When you stop ‘doing’ all the time you remember that there are so many different types of energy - physical, emotional, intellectual, and social. Take the time to experiment and figure out what helps build those different types of energy for you. In my experience, this was about embracing the things that make you human: connection, community, helping people, nature, creativity, and reconnecting with my body.?

When you eventually go back to work - this will be a great lesson to keep with you.?

What’s different after a career break?

I’m sure this is very different for everyone but I’ve noticed a few things that have changed.?

• I’m excited about learning again - it’s like space all of a sudden opened up in my brain and I remember how enjoyable it is to learn something new. I’ve spent months learning about industries surrounding end-of-life, I did a course on service design, I picked up crochet again, and learned to play with some new tools. Almost daily I’m presented with a new idea or thing I want to learn more about and it’s a wonderful feeling.?
• Remembering what I loved about the work I did - at the start of my break I couldn’t find anything I liked about the work I did, now I can look back and break down what of that experience brought me energy and enjoyment and what drained me. I love facilitating difficult or complex discussions, I love to help people reflect on their careers and help them plan their next steps, I enjoy making sense out of chaos and complexity - where I take all of these things in the future, only time will tell, but for now, it’s enough to remember I can enjoy work.
• I get excited about helping people with their businesses and projects - this was one of the more jarring realisations towards the end of my last role. All I could see was the challenges and exhaustion that were in front of someone when they talked about their business. I’m back to getting excited about just about anything someone else is excited about and genuinely wanting to help.?

All of the above is really about feeling like I’m getting back to myself - even if myself has changed. There is no right way to do anything in life so why should a career break be any different? Hopefully, some of these thoughts will guide and spark inspiration for those lucky enough to embark on a career break.?

What’s next for me? It all still feels a bit up in the air but I’m testing getting back into work and loving re-engaging with that part of my brain. I’m working with companies as a team coach and facilitator, I’m continuing to research end-of-life experiences and industries, and I’m doing a bit of writing which may or may not be shared at a later date - it’s all to play for and I have no doubt it will be a bit of a rollercoaster but then again - so is life!

If you’d like to chat about your experience planning for or taking a career break, or to discuss working with me feel free to reach out, I would love to chat.