Don’t Feel Guilty About Taking Breaks

Due to some technical problem, I had no internet access at home for more than a week. When I told people about that, most said, "How could you survive?" Oh well, I am still alive in one piece. No doubts it was not convenient. But hey, it was a good excuse for me to stop writing but reading. To me, it was like a vacation.

People need breaks to recharge themselves. It is the best and perhaps the only way to stay creative and productive. In one of my favorite books "The Power of Full Engagement", Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz stated that full engagement requires periodic strategic recovery. They explained the energy that serves full engagement is renewed and stored during periods of strategic recovery (disengagement). Such oscillation cycle helps us to raise our bars.

The same concept applies in sport. Loehr and Schwartz wrote "Interval training is a means by which to build more energy capacity and to tolerate more stress, but also to teach the body to recover more efficiently." Top athletics have interval training. So should we. Don't feel guilty about taking breaks, but be proud of taking the step to engage yourself.