Knowing when to press pause
This will be my last blog post for the summer as I take some space to pause and rest. You’ll hear from me again in August!
How do you know when you need to take a break and press pause? Asking for a friend… 😬
I’ve written before about how I sometimes struggle to make space for rest. Recently, I’ve been reflecting on knowing when to press pause on something to create more time and space for rest. In my own reflections of my work and business, I’ve decided that now is the time to press pause on some things, so I’m going to take the summer off from blogging and content creation. I’ll still be sending out my monthly newsletter and will work with coaching clients, but you won’t hear from me again on this blog until August.
If you need permission to press the pause button on something, I’m here to tell you that you can give yourself permission to pause anytime you want. But, If you need help knowing when it’s time to press pause, here are some factors that I’ve found helpful to guide my decision.
You’ve just wrapped up a big project
If you follow my work closely, you’ll know that I recently launched a new course. I had so, so much fun putting it together! But it was also so much more work than I originally anticipated. I seriously worked on this thing for months, and now that it’s out in the world, I’ve felt a strong urge to continue that momentum and push forward onto a new project. Luckily, I talked it through with a colleague and realized that now is the perfect time to press pause and rest. Summer is a time that tends to be a bit slower for business anyway, so it makes perfect sense to slow down and press pause on creating anything new.
If you’ve just wrapped up a big project or accomplishment - like say, teaching online during a pandemic? - now might be a good time to press pause and make some space for rest.
You have the time (or can make the time)
Summer is an obvious stopping point for many academics and researchers, but I know firsthand that we can also feel the urge to maximize our productivity and take advantage of all of the “free time” we have during the summer (which, reality check, isn’t actually that much time and tends to also fill up with other commitments). Because I’ve been publishing a blog post every other week for the last year, I have a large catalog of posts where people can learn more about me, my work, and my perspective. This means it’ll be a lot less impactful than if I had decided to take a break with only a handful of published blog posts.
Summer break can be a great time to reflect on where to press pause. If you don’t feel like you have the time, see where you might be able to create more space or make the time.
You just feel like you need it
I regularly need to remind myself that I don’t need to do anything to “earn” rest. You can just take a break when you feel like you need it, you don’t have to have a reason or a justification. Recently, I’ve been feeling that pull to rest. For me, that comes up as a strong desire to sleep in, spend time outdoors, take the weekend off work, and catch up on my backlog of “to-read” books. I’m learning to get better at reading those signals when they come up for me.
If you feel like you need rest or a pause, you don’t need permission from somewhere else. You can give yourself permission to take a break whenever you need it!
