The Importance of Taking Time Off

Ever since I've enrolled in the Open Source Development classes at Seneca, I've had a blast. I learned about using all sorts of new technologies, got to collaborate with people who are much more skilled at programming than I am, and I've had the chance to contribute to projects that seemed interesting. I could've graduated last semester, however the project and the idea of being able to learn and ship a product under the guidance of a very experienced professor convinced me to stay for another semester just for this course.

This isn't a post to say I regret my decision, far from it. The previous week prior to writing this post, I've been waking up at 8/9 in the morning and have been working on issues all the way til usually late in the morning of the next day (seems like this isn't unique for our class). But I started to feel kind of burnt out, the things I enjoyed doing just a week ago, I started to procrastinate on or not look forward to. I decided on a simple solution, take the weekend off and just enjoy time with things not related to Telescope. Do some exercise, go for a walk(I have no idea how advisable this is currently), spend time with the family or watch a movie. 

I think it helped. As I'm writing this blog, I am content with my routine of checking slack, opening up my laptop that hasn't been opened for a a few days, browsing through outstanding issues on Github, typing the commands 'docker-compose up elasticsearch redis' then 'npm start' and fixing currently stale PRs.

I think this is applicable to probably anything and not just my situation, if you're starting to not enjoy something, take a bit of time off, enjoy other things and then re-evaluate.