
Ask HN: I'm taking a 2 months break off work. What should I do? - p0larboy
A little intro of myself. I&#x27;m a frontend developer who had been in the industry for more than 6 years - transitioning from a freelancer to a full-timer.<p>Wrote a short piece on why I&#x27;m taking a break: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@p0larboy&#x2F;renavigating-6f3632eec53<p>I&#x27;m having a two full months of free time. Any suggestion of what I should do?
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jtfairbank
You say you like side projects...

I'm the founder of a med-tech non-profit that helps residency program
administrators schedule their residents within the hospital. Its pretty boring
B2B stuff, but we really do get to improve the medical education system. We
have an MVP and completed an alpha test this spring, currently we're iterating
on the product for our spring 2015 Beta test.

If you have the urge to work on something during your time off, but want to
keep some space from your normal life, perhaps you could help us out a bit? It
could be a good way to challenge yourself to find that "willingness to perfect
the execution". I could use help from anything to a few hour review of our
layout to actual development. Since you're donating your time it'll all be
internally motivated, low stress, work from anywhere, do what you feel, no
long term commitments. All the code would be open sourced. :)

Other suggestions:

    
    
      * go camping
      * try sailing (people are always looking- just go down to a yatch club and say you want to crew)
      * get out of town for a month (your mom n dad would probs love to see you)
      * pickup an exercise regime, or challenge yourself to cook every day, basically add a healthy component to your lifestyle that will improve your 'normal' life when you return

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p0larboy
hey jtfairbank, drop me a mail at colinnus@gmail.com

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davismwfl
Make part of the time off, electronics free. It is crazy to see how much time
we devote to them, so learning to not check your phone every 2 minutes and
avoiding the internet as much as possible is a freeing experience. At least
for me it was, so much that I do it every year now where I spend a certain
amount of time totally electronics free (1-2 weeks usually).

Travel seems like the other obvious to me personally.

The last is to talk to everyone and observe people doing their job around you.
I love hearing about what issues people are facing, what things in their life
are challenging them etc. I don't mean personal issues, I am more about
finding problems to solve. To me that is fun, and it is cool to interact with
people that I wouldn't necessarily meet in my everyday grind. You could easily
come back with ideas of problems to solve that would be of interest to you. Of
course, I personally find this fun, you may not.

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p0larboy
I'm thinking of doing some volunteerism work and travelling, something out of
my comfort zone.

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Broken_Hippo
Definitely suggest travel. I guess where would depend on finances. I'd fully
suggest at least a little time in Amsterdam, but with that chunk of time, you
could go quite a few places and have recovery time.

I suggest minimal planning - possibly a loose idea of what you'd like to visit
but the willingness to change if something else seems interesting when you get
there.

Enjoy :)

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pagantomato
If you live in California, you should do nothing but visit all the different
state parks and the small towns in between. Take a car, some camping supplies,
and maybe a laptop and just go. Travel light.

If you do things right, you can pretty much consume the entire 2 months doing
this.

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gaius
Go diving. I had about 2 months off in the summer, so I was a dive bum. Was
weird going back to work, wearing shoes etc. working for money instead of
fills and beer...

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p0larboy
Linkable:
[https://medium.com/@p0larboy/renavigating-6f3632eec53](https://medium.com/@p0larboy/renavigating-6f3632eec53)

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contingencies
Get off the internet.

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mazeway
If you're single, learn pickup.

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kalagan
Traveling

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Gustomaximus
It has to be travel. Where and how is personal preference but you only get a
few big break opportunities in life so take it while you can.

