My break was almost 5-6 months. It's not like I didn't do anything. I revamped my website, shipped a puzzle game, wrote articles. But I had months where I basically didn't do anything. And it was hard to climb out of the stretch of unproductivity. The main issue was that I didn't have any concrete goals. And while theoretically I could have done anything, my mind was digressing everywhere and ended up doing nothing.
It was a good experience for sure and would definitely do it again. But I would keep my goals concrete and ideally have one project to dedicate myself to.
It makes me wonder if humans are aligned much more to primitive life than we believe. I wonder if our ancestors spent long stretches of time living off reserves and waiting for spring to come. Then in spring they started working hard to replenish store. Maybe it's natural or instinctual to do very little when we aren't motivated by the need to provide for ourselves?
> I think it’s basically that a lifetime of being told what to do with your time atrophied your ability to direct your time when you had control.
I also think humans need to do nothing occasionally and that it's actually extremely valuable. If you look at the entirety of human history this whole 5 days of work 48 weeks of the year is very new. For most of human history we would have had intense bursts of activity (hunting, harvesting, planting etc.) followed by quite a bit of nothing. I think even as recently as the middle ages the average person was working about 150 days a year (though often in bursts from sun-up to sun-down 6 days a week until the work was done).
I took a year off of work, i traveled some, spent time with my now ex-wife, kept up on the latest skills and did a couple personal projects. But most of the time i rested, had a lie-in every morning, worked on my cooking skills, and played video games.
At some point i aim to do a similar thing again and spend a year slowly re-modeling a house (this has the dual benefit of being fun, gaining me new skills and not being anything close to a year of full time labor)
I think its not only that but also the nature of the work.
Historically most labour was rote physical labour with bursts of problem solving thrown in. Now we spend all day doing problem solving with very little physical labour. I think the mind gets tired just like the body.
I had the good fortune of being able to work that schedule once, and there is a lot to be said for it.
I believe that a lot of our current employment arrangements revolve around the primitive data management and "ERP" technologies of 100-200 years ago. Anything but the simplest arrangement (everyone works 40 hours every week with very limited exceptions) was hard enough at scale.
I have a plan to semi retire and do nothing until j get bored out of my mind and start doing something. I feel years of being a corporate employee in high stress function takes away your ability to do self directed things and to know what you really want to do. I would love to find that again.
It was a good experience for sure and would definitely do it again. But I would keep my goals concrete and ideally have one project to dedicate myself to.