Embracing the Christmas Break Curse
To break or not to break
Challenge
I read a tweet a few days back that struck a chord. Twitter being Twitter, it disappeared forever and I can't find it, but it essentially said:
'Fighting the urge to start another side project during my Christmas break'.
I'm sure most of my readers feel that on an atomic level.
For years now, Christmas 'break' means 'time to do all the things I haven't had a chance to do throughout the year'.
For years, this excitement (yay new fun things to work on!) also carried shame. I should rest, be with family, not be too hard on myself for not achieving all the things I wanted to achieve.
Decisions
1. F- it
This year's challenge is to get over it. Embrace the 'curse' of wanting to do stuff during time off. It's who I am (and maybe who you are?).
F- it.
So here's what I'll attempt to achieve these two weeks.
2. Read one book
I have a shelf stacked with books I 'can't wait' to read but never get (take) the time to. Even bought three more this past week.
This break, I'm going for it. I will read one book: Product-led Growth by Wes Bush. It came highly recommended in Lenny's thread on product management & growth reading material.
Only about 200 pages, should be an easy one!
3. Course #1: marketing
I've enrolled on a course a little while back. I'm on the last stretch, with one assignment left to work on.
I have until June to hand it over, but I want to take quite some time during this break to work on it and do as much as I can up front.
I'll use this break to speed-run through the lessons (already gone through them once) and write the first draft of my assignment.
4. Course #2: programming
I've been meaning to brush up on my programming for a while. I used to be decent in PHP back in the day (aka 20 years ago).
While I don't want to be a proficient programmer, I do see the benefit for someone in my position (product, marketing, business) to know more about the craft.
Heuristically, I don't really care which language I'm going to learn. I'm more interested in the overarching concepts.
I've settled on Javascript because it's approachable and useful across the entire stack. I've already picked a beginner's course, which I'll go through this break.
5. Side hustle glow up
One of my side projects has resurfaced. It's been a lot of fun thinking and working on it here and there, but I haven't had much of a chance to truly focus.
This break, I want to dig it up properly and work through some of my to-dos. This includes reworking the website, recording videos, and more.
6. Relax
Finally, I'll also attempt to achieve some guilt-free relaxation. The points above might end up too intense for a two-week break. And that's ok. Whatever I achieve (or don't) is fine.
Hopefully, this is something you can take out of this post as well. Do you. Need the break? Take the break. Need to stay active? Do it. Don't feel pressure either way.