The importance of taking time off from work

A couple of weeks ago, a story about a woman who took a couple of days off from work to focus on her mental health went viral.

In summary, Madalyn Parker, an engineer who works for live chat company Olark, wrote an email to her team that said she was taking the next couple of days off to focus on her mental health. The company's CEO responded, praising her for her email and stressing how important it is to take time off.

This is an ongoing issue in the startup world, where 80-hour work weeks are often the norm and considered cool. David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails and CTO of Basecamp, completely disagrees.

In the early days of my career in consulting, I used very few of my vacation days, and the thought of taking time off to work on my mental health never even crossed my mind.

When I was working for the Washington Capitals, the seasonality of the job didn't really allow us to take any days off between September and May (when the Caps would crap the bed in the playoffs). We would take some time of in the summer, but even then I didn't take full advantage of it.

I thought that taking days off would slow my ascent up the ladder. If I was the hardest working person in the company, I would get promoted and get more responsibility and authority.

Looking back, all that crap didn't matter.

Unless you have a terrible manager, no one is going to ding you for taking days off. And as important and valuable as you are, your big company will go on without you and will still be there when you return. It's harsh but true.

But as an entrepreneur, taking days off matters more, both for better and worse.

Any day that you're not working on your product or business is a day of progress and potentially revenue lost. For each day that you take off, your competitors may be moving ahead of you, and it's a day where you're just not learning anything.

But if you don't take time off, you won't be able to recharge and your mind will never be 100%. You likely won't be able to make those creative breakthroughs that are so important to the success of a company. You'll get burned out.

Quite a predicament, huh?

Personally, I've been feeling a lot of guilt lately. I keep thinking that I don't do enough for my day job, I don't do enough for WinOptix, and I don't do enough as a parent and husband. I don't know how much of that is true or if it's just me.

One possible answer is that I can work harder. Dedicate more hours to my day job, stay up later to work on WinOptix, and spend more time with my family.

You can see just how impossible that is.

Hopefully it's just all in my head. And I think some time away will help clear my mind and be more comfortable with my situation. It has to be real time away though, where I'm truly physically and mentally disconnected from work. Otherwise, it's not really time away.

On that note, I'll be traveling to Thailand for the next couple of weeks to attend my cousin's wedding, hang out with some elephants and tigers, see some temples, and eat some amazing Thai food. I'll see family that I haven't seen in a long time, and spend time with my family exploring very different environments.

I'm going to take this time to reflect on my current situation, think about the path forward, and reset my mind. So I won't be blogging over the next three Fridays. Hopefully I'll come back refreshed, less guilt-ridden, and ready to kick some ass.

See you in a few weeks. And remember, go take a day or two off from work and don't feel guilty about it. It'll help in the long run.