Now more than ever, people are obsessed with “the grind.” The more you work, the bigger your supposed success. It’s laughable to think that someone can work all day without any time off. Contrary to popular belief, taking a break will not harm your long-term success. When it comes to relaxation, hustle culture severely overlooks the importance of vision.
Long-term vision significantly reduces the impact of time off.
Short-term vision is deceiving.
In the short term, taking a break will significantly impact your productivity.
Let’s say you take a week off from writing online. In the context of one month, you’ll be working three out of four weeks or 75% of the available time.
Conversely, taking a long-term outlook will significantly reduce the impact of your time away from work. When viewed from the perspective of a full year, the same week-long vacation has you working more than 98% of the time. By expanding your vision, the impact of your vacation is significantly reduced. A long-term vision allows you to take more breaks with less harm to productivity.
This is why Bruce Lee once said, “Long-term consistency trumps short-term intensity.” Short-term focus requires you to “hustle” and work as much as humanely possible. Long-term vision tells a much different story.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking short-term.
Start by throwing more darts at the wall.
The more times you throw something against the wall, the better chance that something sticks.
If you write an article every week for one week, you’re left with one article. But if you do that for 5 years, you’re left with 260 articles.
The power of a long-term vision is in the compounding effect. Every action you take today is multiplied over time in the future. What you do today will positively affect the impact of what you do tomorrow. By taking a long-term approach, you’re creating more opportunities for success.
The longer your vision, the more opportunities you have to throw darts at the wall. The more darts you throw, the more success you’ll inevitably experience.
By expanding your vision, you’re giving yourself more time to throw a successful dart.
Don’t let time off stop you from restarting.
Taking time to rest will not harm your productivity in the long-term.
However, a vacation does have the potential to keep you from getting started once again. Going from 0 to 1 is oftentimes more difficult than going from 1 to 100.
Momentum matters. This is why popular online writer Nicolas Cole once said: “It’s 10x easier to stay good at something than it is to stop and try to get good again.” When you take time off, getting started once again becomes difficult. Use time off to rest and reset, but don’t let it be why you don’t get back to work.
A long-term approach allows you to take breaks in the short-term without negative impact. Just be sure you’re disciplined enough to get back to work.
Final Thoughts
Don’t let hustle culture brainwash you into burnout.
- Taking a break will not significantly impact your productivity if you have a long-term vision.
- Taking a long-term approach gives you more opportunities to succeed.
- Take a break when you need it, but have the discipline and the self-awareness to know when enough is enough
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