Because we all need opportunities to recharge our brain. Even Bill Gates took a week off twice a year to recharge. I like to take a week in the spring and one in the fall just for myself to recharge. I usually play golf and video games during that week. I’ve found I’m stressed leading up to that week and recharged after the week. This is outside of family trips and vacations which can add a crinkle to taking time off if paid leave is limited. I’ve been fortunate to work at companies where I have quite a bit of time off and I can work from anywhere so I can maximize the time-off when I get there.

At one point I thought some friends and other people I knew who seemed to work all the time were different but eventually they burned out too. I do think tolerances are different and some people need less time away from others but we all eventually do need some time to unplug. And this isn’t going on vacation and answering emails or responding to alerts. It’s getting away completely. This was recently reaffirmed to me in my current role at an incident response company.

Notifications are the devil. Leaving notifications on is very much death by a thousand notifications. In my current role I’ve had email and multiple IMs on at the start. I’ve since reeled that in to just IM notifications and direct mentions specifically because no time of day or weekend was safe. Each notifications requires brain energy. It’s like running a car if you leave it on even in park it will run out of gas. That’s why turning off the car and in this case notification saves some of that energy for when I need to make a trip.

As a leader I need to be conscious of it because I impact a lot more people at work. I remember delivering a performance review to someone in January and they were a little surprised at the exceeding expectations review I gave them. They told me that at the end of the year they were wondering what they had done wrong to tick me off. As I reflected I realized I was burnt out during that time. While I tried to put on a nothing wrong is face and I don’t yell at people it was still pretty clear to the people that reported to me (and probably those that didn’t) that I was in a fowl mood.

I also need to be watching out for my directs and ensuring they’re in the best state mentally. Again, some people are better at it than others, so identifying the people that need to be told to go on paid leave is important. People earlier in their career are usually the ones that will work until they have some sort of breakdown. I know I was and to a certain point I still am based on what happened as a manager. Coming from a military background and getting into the private sector I expected to be told when to go home sick and when to go on leave. By the way if you’re sick go away and if you’re in an office go home.

I had 60 days of leave available when I left the Navy. Now I did take that as terminal leave and enjoyed my last two months of service playing World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade but it highlights that I really wasn’t taking time for myself. As we get older there are more and more stresses added to our life and career. Starting a family or having family members to take care of takes it’s toll. As we advance in our careers we get better at what we do and gain wisdom from our experiences but new problems like politics and health problems start to creep into our world. It’s more important than ever to make sure we are taking breaks to ensure we’re performing at our best.

This blog post first appear on Exploring Information Security.