The Art of Taking a (conscious) Break

October 2019. 

Sunshine, clouds and rain reliably take turns in Hamburg, northern Germany. People associate Corona with a cold drink. A pandemic is something that happens in movies. And ‘lockdown’ is probably amongst the least frequently words used in our vocabulary. It’s a pretty normal day, apart from the fact that I just sold Ulf, my VW T4 van, with a heavy heart.

December 2020.

The most challenging year for many of us comes to an end. While we see signs of the often quoted 'Return to (the new) Normality' on the horizon, we still wake up to news about rising infection rates and updated lockdown measures. 

Without a doubt, I should have published this article around 15 months ago - at the end of a time-out I deliberately took between jobs, travelling 7,335 kilometres through seven countries in Europe in 55 days, conducting a self-initiated beach clean-up project.

Though the world has changed now and the narrative is a different one, I’ll attempt to summarise my thoughts and takeaways from two months on the road. Two months with time to think, breathe and allowing a new rhythm of life. Reflections on a temporary journey unplugged from business life.

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Many of us enjoy working. That feeling of being able to share a certain expertise. The fun of building relations with great clients. Reaching goals as a team. New challenges every day. The list goes on. A lot of people seek fulfilment, meaning and identity in their work, and I have mostly been fortunate to feel this too. Often, however, it can become easy to lose track of appreciating the simple things when your speed of life develops into rush, a tunnel mode, or an 'always on' (or 'never off')-mentality. 

Keen on retrieving these basics and simple things for a while, I decided to take a three month time-out before starting a new role in autumn 2019. Intending to use this time in both a relaxing and value-adding way, I was keen on finding out whether the adventurer I used to be in my early backpacking twenties was still somewhere inside me. I bought a VW T4 van, waved a temporary goodbye to friends and family, drove through Europe alone, cleaned plastic from beaches and threw myself into the simple van life. 

In other words: I turned down the speed of my own clock. A life without rushing from project to project or idea to idea; a life without the feeling that a day without a ticked off To Do list is a lost day.

The five takeaways and learnings I've tried to preserve from the trip...

1. Allowing (and learning) the simple things

Don’t get me wrong - full identification with your job, going the extra mile and fluid boundaries between work and private life are (probably) not bad per sé. Being immersed in a job that you enjoy and strive to give your full commitment to comes with its own rewards. It can however also lead to struggles in a work-life balance and push your mind into a constant work and performance mode. Squeezing in a hobby after work, reading more books and catching up with friends don’t always take priority when you are committing all your energy and mental focus somewhere else.

While I'm very thankful and humble about many personal highlights in my career so far - e.g. building up and internationalising a department at Statista, working daily with industry experts at LinkedIn, or having spoken at reputable conferences worldwide - the Van Life taught me to celebrate moments I had lost touch with in the past. Things like finding a convenient campground for the night, coming up with creative recipes based on the leftovers in the mini-fridge, beating the weather forecast by adapting the route in real-time, or finishing another chapter of an audio book. At first, I didn’t recognise the personal importance of these moments as they seemed pretty dull. But I noticed that the more days I spent on the road, the better I understood that it’s not the activity itself that makes something a highlight or not - it’s the perspective you take on it.

2. Rhythm and speed of life

I like to keep busy. Being busy feels pretty normal to me and I'm probably known by my friends as 'The guy who cannot sit still' (I should say however that 2020 has certainly changed me in that regard...). I like being productive and particularly getting tasks out of the way that seemed unachievable a couple of days ago. I'm used to jumping from task to task and getting stuff done simultaneously. It was therefore quite odd to have two months on the road without a binding To Do list. I often felt unproductive and - admittedly - useless. The longer I spent on the road however, the more I embraced the slow speed of life as an active recharging of mental and physical batteries. Step by step, I managed to engage with my surroundings much better and simply paid more attention to everyday situations. Looking back, I realise that I even started to walk and eat slower - activities which are usually (and stupidly) just a means to an end for me. Of course it is quite a challenge to keep up this equilibrium in a fast-paced work environment, but it helps to remember and adjust the pace when possible. I've learned that allowing slow phases is not only okay, but actually necessary in order to be on full throttle when the next deadlines are just around the corner.

3. Doing something good feels good

A huge part of this time out for me was to give something back to nature. Whilst I unfortunately had to abandon the idea of planting trees along the route due to logistics and laws, I brought Plan B to life: collecting and disposing plastic from beaches in Croatia, Italy, France and Spain and thus playing a small part in supporting the marine ecosystem. As visualised in an infographic by Statista - there are more than 5,25 trillion pieces of plastic floating in our oceans weighing up to 250,000 tons (and more). Though these numbers are pretty sad, it was great to contribute a tiny bit to making our planet a less polluted place. European beaches are certainly not the messiest ones on the globe, but it's still pretty shocking to see what people throw away in places they should keep tidy for their own and nature's sake: straws, lids, bags, cans, PET bottles, toys and even clothes hangers (yes, you read right). I quickly realised how rewarding this small contribution felt - both in terms of doing something good for our planet as well as achieving a regular goal. Receiving positive feedback (and even spontaneous help!) from locals when they saw what I was doing pushed me a lot and made me want to do even more beach clean ups along the route. Looking back, this project has definitely kickstarted a change of my environmental awareness and behaviour in my current daily life.

4. Loneliness vs. Social Animal

52 days on the road made me think a lot about solitude and the meaning of social interactions - and who would have thought what a perfect training camp this trip became for the year of 2020. I must admit that during the first half of my trip I found it rather difficult to just be with myself. Despite appreciating the opportunity to listen to audio books and read actual paperbacks - something I often struggle to get around to in my day-to-day life - I missed chatting to people, exchanging thoughts and sharing experiences. Though I was communicative and open whenever possible, I met many campers who preferred to stick to themselves or their families and fellow travellers.

Without any major trigger, my view on those things changed at some point. I realised that a day or two without any conversations isn’t necessarily a bad day. Rather, I learnt to take away positive energy from activities on my own - no matter if it was a museum visit, cooking a tasty meal or fixing something in the van. At the same time I acknowledged that I will never be a lone wolf. I gain energy from engaging with others and I'm happy about that. Being open for change and adjustment is necessary - forcing yourself into being someone or something you simply are not, isn't.

5. A task matters

While a slower pace of life was refreshing, I learned that for myself it matters a lot to have (long- and short-term) tasks. Along with my beach clean up mission, I lined up a language course and tennis camp along the route to look forward to. I even got excited when life threw some obstacles at me that needed to be solved quickly, such as exchanging a braised car battery charger, finding specific spare tools in an Italian DIY store, fixing the van’s horn or patching up some cuts from sea shells. In these situations I was entirely focused on the task at hand and time flew by.

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Although it feels like a somewhat surreal trip from an ancient, freely moving world, I am very happy that I took this solo two months time-out, connected it with activities that mattered to me and truly learned a supposedly more healthy speed of life. I know that many of us should be very thankful for having stable work and making it through the current times both healthy and economically secure. As the world is showing us right now however, that the freedom of movement and travel is not a given, let's hope that we'll soon be back in a context where we can do something besides work that truly matters to us - no matter if it's a language course abroad, an NGO project for the environment or the adventure trip we have regularly postponed. I appreciate having had this opportunity before the current crisis and hope my learnings can inspire others to connect taking a conscious break with that one thing they always wanted to do.

Thank you for reading & a happy and healthy 2021,

Robin