I made a mistake in the first year of my career: eager to impress, I worked without a holiday for 12 months. With 25 days of unused vacation, I took an extended break at the end of the year.
Imbalanced.
Too few rest days during the year, and more than I needed at the end.
That year, I learnt the value of well-timed rest periods, and I’ve (mostly) kept to a steady rhythm of Sprints and Rest ever since.
A sprint is a 12-14 week period of work.
A rest is 1 full week of holiday.
I’ve found the Sprint / Rest model has 3 main benefits:
- Sprints periods are the right length of time to set and achieve ambitious goals
- During each sprint, regardless of how strenuous it is, there is always a rest period to look forward to; that’s helpful
- At the end of a sprint, I get 9 continuous days of rest by taking my holidays between two weekends. Following this, I’m ready to sprint again.
This rhythm of Sprint / Rest is something that is currently easy to achieve without children, but it’s something I hope to preserve in the future too.
Do you have a work and rest rhythm that works well for you?