I don’t have an answer, research to reference, or really even ideas regarding the optimal amount of time off. All I know is that I took 5 days off – actually off, with no work to speak of other unless you count reading short stories on a couch as work – and I feel much better. Not that I felt bad before, it wouldn’t even be that noticeable save that working is easier now. Focusing is easier, following through is easier. Enjoying the work is the easier. I never stopped caring, but I had become easier to distract.
Five days isn’t a lot. I didn’t go off the grid for a month. I didn’t try on a new identity in a foreign country. I ate granola with my wife at top of a beautiful mountain, so maybe that counts as eating, praying, and loving. I liked my job before and I still like it now, but sometimes you can end up too deep and caring a little too much, particularly about the bureaucratic details and status-oriented outcomes.
I am firmly team vacation, but with the caveat that your vacation actually be a vacation. Something stimulating and relaxing at the same time. The kind of thing where you are excited to get out of bed to do stuff but also free to do nothing for long languid periods of time, preferably with the hot or cold beverage of your choice.
As for the question presented at the outset, I still don’t know what the optimal length of time is. My closest approximation is a period of time long enough that don’t remember what you were working on the day that you left but not so long that the discontinuity becomes a source of stress and anxiety.
Or maybe its a schedule – 3 days every 2 months, 1 week every year, 1 month every 3 years, 3 months every decade. I’d love to say there is no rule, that you’ll know what you need when you need it, but I didn’t. I might schedule rereading this post every 6 months though.
Economist Writing Every Day 