I work with a lot of people who are stressed out a fair deal of the time.
Working in Jozi will do that to you - the pace in this city is fast, and we all want to try keep ahead of the game and stay on top of things.
As much as we try however, the truth is that this very often isn't possible or realistic.
We run the rat race marathon day in and day out, chasing deadlines as the month end debit orders come crashing in relentlessly, wave after wave.
It is very easy then to get lost in this cycle.
Days blend into weeks.
Weeks blend into months... and here we are, with just 2 months left in 2018.
It's amazing then to see how many people just haven't bothered to take their leave this year, or sometimes even for several years.
The work-home-work cycle becomes so hypnotic and repetitive, and many people find themselves stuck, and seemingly unable to make a change.
This just further exacerbates the problem, as an expectation gets created of how that person values their leave (or doesn't).
I have also found that the longer one waits to take leave due to them, the harder it becomes to actually take the leave, and make a clear break from the working world, even if just for a few days.
This break though is actually super important, even if it is just time spent at home, away from the daily grind.
Have you ever been working on something intense - a project perhaps, or a complex job, and after a while it starts becoming more and more difficult to focus?
The same thing happens with work in general - the longer you go without leave, the more cloudy things become.
You may think that you're doing just fine, but from the outside things may look a little different.
So next time you take a few days off, make it meaningful.
Bite the bullet, and take a week or 2 if you can. See how your perspective has shifted when you return to the workplace.
You may well find that things which looked a certain way before leave, now look quite different with a fresh pair of eyes.
Sometimes problems that you were having difficulty resolving, find their solutions in this way.
Daunting mountains are sometimes reduced to molehills.
A key component here though, is to disconnect as far as possible.
This is especially challenging today, in the connected world that we live in.
Cellphones, laptops, tablets and social media follow us pretty much everywhere. For the millennial generation, this is often a non-negotiable.
The importance of taking a selfie somewhere and uploading it to every possible social media platform, has become more important than the experience of just getting away from everything and just "being".
We seem to have forgotten the power in simply existing, without having to inform thousands of random people of our every move.
Don't get me wrong - it's a nice thought and a nice ideal. Let's all be social and connected.
I get it.
Just be cognizant of when to disconnect, tune out, and have conversations with real human beings, face to face.
Take your leave, and just disconnect from all of the things.
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