Things at work can get pretty overwhelming, especially before the holidays. Tight deadlines, long meetings and working hours that are way longer than your usual are not uncommon instances. As a matter of fact, it has been a routine for some even way before the holiday season began. However, as much as you’d like to cover as much work as possible, this can put a great strain on your body. Even your drive to actually work and creative process to produce satisfactory results can also be greatly affected. Thus, making you step back from your usual A game.
While hard work is indeed admirable, it must also be noted that your working hours is as important as your break times. Romanticizing hard work to the point of exhaustion and burnout is long overdue. As a matter of fact, there are already studies that show how breaks can reduce and prevent stress, allowing the maintenance of one’s performance and lessening the need for long recovery periods.
Instead of looking at holiday breaks as lazy periods, it can viewed as the best time for your mind to take a break and refresh. You can also take this opportunity to dive into your creative process, work on things that you want to and even explore more out of your comfort zone since this time, you do not have the pressure of getting everything right. You can just take your time to actually enjoy doing what you’re doing, something that you may have long forgotten amidst the stress brought by deadlines.
As a freelancer and more so as a creative, your greatest investment does not lie on high end equipment or your multi-national organization. Your greatest investment will always be yourself. All your hard work and achievements will be for naught the moment you found yourself not loving what you do or getting sick due to exhaustion. Breathe, relax. Remember the reason why you loved your job in the first place.
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