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Hey legend,
This one’s coming in from Bingin’ Bali where the juices are absolutely top-notch 🍉🍍🥤🍍🥭
The importance of taking breaks
In my 20s, I’ve burned out so many times I can’t even keep count.
When I started my graduate role in the Uber Australia Driver Operations team back in 2015, grinding out 50-80 hour weeks, I had absolutely 0 clue about managing my own RnR (“rest’n’recovery”).
As a result, I never made time for my health.….until it made time for me.
A.K.A
3 bouts of tonsillitis within 3 months of early 2016 was enough for my GP to give me the green light to have them removed with a tonsillectomy surgery.
Can you guess what my problem was post-surgery?
Even though it removed my tonsils and the likelihood of getting tonsillitis again, it didn’t remove my habit of overworking and failing to schedule breaks for myself.
Unlike cars, smartphones or houses that you can swap out when they’re no longer working, you only get one body. But I wasn’t treating mine with that in mind.
#WorkHardPartyHard
Whether it was societal conditioning or just the workplaces I found myself in, I had a deeply conditioned belief that working hard was admirable and the only way to get ahead in life – both personally and professionally.
No-one around me ever spoke of the value of taking time off to do…
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
So instead, I packed every day of annual leave with overseas trips with mates that had only 1 agenda…
This pattern continued throughout my 20s and it just become a continual rollercoaster of burnout after burnout. In fact, I think I just resigned myself to the fact that this is how life was meant to be…
💪🏽Making Gains
It wasn’t until I committed to debut in an ICN bodybuilding competition in 2022 with the support of my coach Tri Tran (@alphaden.au), that I first-hand experienced and understood the importance of scheduling breaks as a top priority, and not just a “nice-to-have”.
My training regime involved a bulking phase where I would progressively increase the volume of the calories I’d consume, as well as the weights in my strength workouts.
My (beginner) naivety assumed that all of the gains came during the workouts.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Gains are made during your recovery.
And the quality of your gains are directly correlated with the quality of your recovery.
My coach was more on my case about:
- The quantity and quality of my sleep
- How much daily hydration I was averaging
- What I was doing (or not doing) on my non-workout days
- How much “Mamba time” I had scheduled into my calendar
…than he was on my calories & strength training.
Because it’s during your recovery time that your body processes the nutrients in your food as the fuel to repair the muscles you’ve intentionally “torn” during your workouts, so they can grow. Hence, if your recovery is rubbish (i.e. poor sleep, dehydrated, always active, barely having time for yourself to do things that make you happy), so will be your gains.
It’s the equivalent of pouring water into a bucket, with a gaping hole in the bottom of it. All of your progress is just being flushed away.
Growth comes from recovery
Since “retiring” from the world of bodybuilding, I’ve applied this approach of scheduling or buffering breaks into all aspects of my personal and professional life.
In order to maintain consistent and sustainble growth, commit to scheduling non-negotiable breaks for yourself firstbefore blocking in all other commitments on your calendar.
This is something I share with all of the legends that undertake our Storyteller Sprints because even though we’re focused on focused bursts of content creation, we always encourage a “buffer” or “de-load” week where we encourage everyone to drop their content output to 50-70% of their maximum output.
This does 3 things:
- Always you to zoom out and reflect on the macro/overall direction
- Increases your capacity ahead of the next sprint; and
- Recharges your “creative battery”
If you’re ready to start creating regular intervals of recovery time for yourself, here’s a protocol that I’ve created for myself and you can implement it in your own way:
Daily
🗓️ Book a recurring 30-minute daily appointment with yourself, just to be present with your own thoughts.
I highly recommend going for a walk in nature without any technology (other than a fitness tracker) to allow your brain to process, marinate and/or solve whatever is top-of-mind for you.
Weekly
🗓️ Book a half-day each week for you to do something that fills up your cup.
It doesn’t need to be expensive.
It doesn’t need to be complicated.
It just needs to be something that is purely recreational for you.
It’s the kind of activity, hobby or interest that fulfills or recharges you and brings you back to everyone in your life as a better person
Plus, you’ll often find in times like these where your best ideas, breakthroughs and “a-ha” moments happen, because your brain isn’t consciously focused on your work/projects but it’s more in a Conscious – Open Focus flow (see below)
Monthly/Quarterly
🗓️ Book a 1-2 night overnight stay for yourself and/or with your immediate loved ones, away from your home. Again, keep it simple and low-key.
Just an affordable AirBnB within a few hours drive from where you live. And there doesn’t need to be an agenda. It’s just a chance for you to reconnect with yourself and/or your loved ones, without the familiarity of your regular home environment.
So in summary:
- If you don’t make time for your health, your health will make time for you
- You only get one body – treat it like that
- Commit to scheduling your breaks first before slotting in other commitments
Also, I’m currently practicing the balance between work & play while I’m traveling in Bali with my partner, so if you’re keen to follow along on our adventures, let’s be friends!
See you in the next one legend,
🕺🏽Mamba