Instructional Design PSA - You Deserve a Break

May 15

May 15 Instructional Design PSA - You Deserve a Break

You deserve a break.

I see you, I hear you. I can read the LinkedIn room to know what you are giving it everything you have in order to land that new job, that promotion, that next opportunity. But I can also see that you're working so hard that you're heading towards burnout.

Now, I posted a conversation the other day, or a summary of a conversation, I should say, with a friend of mine, and he was going through these things. Now tell me, if this sounds familiar to you. So, my buddy was working about 50 hours a week, and he could tell that this job was...yeah, it was okay, but he knew there was something better out there for him. So, he started to prepare. He started to do all the things that one should be doing, with taking courses, earning certificates, attending workshops and webinars, and networking, and doing the virtual coffee chats. And he was doing everything. He was doing so much that essentially, he created a new full-time job to help him land a new full-time job, which is kind of interesting how that happens.

So, he was doing all of these things, and then he would go on to LinkedIn. And when he went on to LinkedIn, he would see that people were sharing their accomplishments, their wins, their new opportunities, and it made him feel like he wasn't doing enough. And it started to fill him with imposter syndrome. And he's just like, 'Oh my gosh, I can't take a break. I gotta go and do more, and I gotta do more and more and more.' Until eventually, him and I had this conversation, and I was like, 'Whoa, that's...no. Hold on, man. This is not the way. To being able to do these things, you need to take a break and allow yourself that permission to be able to do so.'

Now, when I share this, I heard from so many of you of how did you know I needed to hear this? I'm going through these stages right now. And then, yeah, I can tell. It's very apparent now. The thing is, though, is that when you are doing this...let's put us side professional development for a second here. Let's think more about how, let's say you're training for a marathon. That's your new goal. So, you want to be able to run a marathon, and your training program to do this is that for seven days in a row, you are going to run as hard and as fast as you can. And then, on the eighth day, we are gonna figure it out.

So, you do this for two days, and at the end of those two days, you wake up the next morning and your body is screaming at you because essentially, it's broken. It can't give you any more. It needs to rest. But you keep on pushing through anyway, expecting results to come better and faster and quicker. And that's not how things work. The right way of being able to train for a marathon is to do something like having two days on, where you're giving it all of your effort, and then one day off for resting and for recovering. Or three days on, one day off. And you keep on adjusting and evaluating from there, and being able to change your training program over time.

Now, professional development, personal growth, it's the same thing. There is a time and a place for being able to do this, and also, there is a time and a place where you should be taking breaks and purposefully allowing yourself that downtime to regroup, to recover, and then to attack these new jobs and these new opportunities, and everything else, stronger the next time around. Now, instead of thinking about this as far as from a training marathon perspective, think about your brain. Think about how learning works. Would you advise anyone else to do the same thing that you are currently doing? Probably not, not unless if they are in such an awful, toxic, chaotic environment where you have to leave this place now. Then okay, but if you're not in that type of dire position, then no, you wouldn't advise someone to be able to do this. And also, you know how learning works?

Learning does not take place where you are just consuming content again and again. And I know it's ironic that I am telling you this on a piece of content with a podcast episode and a YouTube video, but the thing is, our society, all we do is consume content on a daily basis with videos, with podcasts, with Netflix, with you name it. We're always in this type of absorbing knowledge information, whatever you want to be able to say. That's not how learning works. You know that. Yes, you're going to be introduced to new topics and go about with these exploratory phases, but at the same time, you then need to allow enough time and space, things out, to allow this information to sink in. You then want to be able to try and recall this information later on and see how much you can actually remember. You want to be able to practice what you are currently going through. You want to apply this information into real-world context, into a form of a real-world setting or scenario. You want to be able to have enough time to reflect and evaluate upon your progress and upon your growth and everything that is currently working for you, and then make tweaks and changes where necessary. That's learning.

We're trying to be able to do all of these things at a hundred miles an hour every single day and never taking downtime. That's not going to be as productive. So how do I know this? Well, because I have tried to do it. It doesn't work. I'm confident in saying that if you go a hundred miles an hour at all times and give a hundred effort every single day, it's not going to lead to better results, faster results, or anything like that. It does lead to a one-way ticket to burnout land. So fun, but that's not how this actually works. Now, one of the questions that I get asked the most, actually, the question you probably asked me about the most, by far, with anything that I do or share online, is that you always want to know how do I do everything? How do I have time to do all the different types of things that I do? So, you know, but I work at MIT Miami, I have the Instructional Design Institute, I have my book, I produce content, I do all of these things. Now, my secret, which is not a secret by any means, but this is what I do, is that I purposefully plan everything. I am super careful with guarding my time and purposefully picking and choosing what to work on, when, where, how, why, and things of that nature. So, let's take that marathon example for a second there. If I'm going to be working extremely hard for three days in a row, I will then plan to take a break that following day, or essentially, I'm just coasting. I'm not trying as hard, I'm not being creative, I am just essentially showing up, being present, and doing what I need to do. But I am not going over the top because there's a time and a place to really give it everything you got.

And once again, a time and a place to take that break. So, I tend to do that. I'm doing like three days on, one day off, and things of that nature. And some days, you may not actually see this because I will try to stay off social media and really any other type of platform. But I will give myself a break where I do nothing, like zero, nada, nothing. I am just trying to exist on my couch and hang out with my wife and my dog, and I just do nothing. That helps me, that allows me to recover. I love being around my family; that's what works for me. It's been allowing me the following day to then be able to try again and to work harder, and that's going to keep on giving me that motivation to keep on working.

Now, let me touch upon the whole LinkedIn fact as well too because like my friend and even myself too, I have also gone on to LinkedIn and wondered about how people are doing all of these things, from promotions to opportunities to raises. And it's just like, why isn't that happening yet for me? What am I doing wrong here? And the thing is, get ready to have your mind blown, not everything on the Internet is real. Shocking, I know, you've never heard of that before, but there are some things out there that just don't really make sense.

So let me take you behind the scenes, just through some investigating that I used to do to try to figure out exactly how do some of these things happen. I've seen some people be able to publish new articles every single week. I've seen some people write new books every six months to about a year. I've seen some people create new content online on a daily basis, and always this like, how? How are these people doing this?

The thing is, I started to learn more about some of these different types of tactics. So, for the people who publish articles every single week, well, they're not alone, and they usually ride with others. They may be going to be editing and reviewing and then putting their name on it, and then it goes out the door. So, it seems like they do a whole bunch.

For those who are writing books every six months to a year, they hire ghostwriters. Okay, all right, well then sure, so you can do that. A menu of those who are constantly producing content, and they have an entire team that they're outsourcing this type of work, or they have an entire team behind the scenes, and they really don't come about and always just as the one person that faces the name kind of a thing. And you don't hear more about how they go about with everything from what they do. Nothing wrong with that, but when you are the outside perspective looking in and you don't see that, you're constantly left wondering of how. Well, these are some of these insider secrets about how everything actually does work.

So, what is the message here? Don't compare yourself to others. I know it's super hard to really do, but don't think about you, your goals, your ambitions, why you're doing these things in the first place. And please, also take a break. You don't need to keep on grinding away every single day and trying to go about with all of these things at 100 miles an hour. Taking a break and regrouping is going to be so much more helpful for you in the future.

Now, if you need this, because it seems like some of you do indeed, need this type of outside voice to give you permission to take a break, well, hey, hi. I'm Luke, here is your permission. Here's your sign. Please take a break. It is okay. The world is not going to end. No one is going to die because you're trying to be able to upskill and to get better. You're not a surgeon, you're not an emergency worker, you're just trying to get better at what it is that you do every single day, piece by piece, moving one step closer towards every single day of being able to accomplish your goal.

So once again, I see you, I hear you, you're doing awesome. I'm proud of you. But also, know when is the right time and the right place for professional development, for personal growth, and of course, for trying to be able to just coast and take it easy every now and again. That's all I got for you. Stay nerdy out there, folks. Talk to you next time.

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