I don’t remember the last time I took a full day off.
When I’m not working my day job, I’m working on GradSimple. Weekends, evenings, random pockets of time. Even over Christmas, I still found moments to squeeze work in.
At some point, I realized I hadn’t taken a real break since starting GradSimple. I checked the date I bought the domain: December 20, 2023. Which means it has been something like seven hundred days since I’ve actually rested.
No wonder I’m burnt out.
I love what I’m building, but work is still work. And the past few months have been rough. I’ve felt uninspired. I’ve been slow to reply to people. I haven’t wanted to experiment or push new ideas. I’ve basically been operating on the bare minimum.
At first, I felt guilty. Then I realized the guilt made no sense.
I’m not in a race. I’m not behind. This slowdown is just a normal phase of the journey. And I don’t need to optimize every minute of my life for it to matter. Rest is necessary, and I’ve been ignoring it.
If anything, I probably deserve to give myself an extended break.
So I stopped treating weekends like extra workdays. If I wanted to chill, I chilled. If I wanted to watch a movie instead of forcing myself to be productive, I did that. I didn’t need to be “on” all the time.
And giving myself that space helped. I feel better now. It reminded me that you should check in with yourself before you hit a wall, not after. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is just step back for a bit.
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