As another day passes in which my computer cranks through the 5-dimensional solution space that is network configurations, I often find myself thinking about how to best spend my time. It's an interesting problem because while it may not be the engineering problem or coding problem I'm used to solving, it ties into a critical aspect of life: the mythical work-life balance
Given that I now have an extremely large amount of time to determine what to do with my life while I wait, I've given it some consideration and there's not exactly much of a big revelation. You can either do something productive or take a break. Doesn't take a genius to figure that one out, but knowing which one is a harder question than at least I originally thought. As the son of two parents who are both very productive people, I lean pretty hard on the "do the productive thing" side. When it comes to Project Evergreen, this is especially so. This summer I spent over a month working on the project every day with minimal breaks, no weekends and if I wasn't actively doing anything else I would go right back to coding. This is unhealthy... It also led me to completely burn out when after all of that work I wasn't even close to having a finished product. It turns out stock prediction... is hard.
This brings up an interesting point though which I personally don't think is brought up enough. I have to disclose though that this is absolutely a claim based on my own subjective biased anecdotes and not at all on data. Anyways, the point is that it is extremely important to know when to take a break. As a student, I have seen several friends completely ignore this point during finals week and as a result, they go into their exams sleep-deprived and with their brains fried. Meanwhile, I have witnessed my sibling Alex go through these same finals, and while Alex is a super-nerd who is not exactly an objective metric, they perform consistently better than these friends while putting in half the effort. This is not to say that they are lazy or that they "have it easy", instead it speaks to their ability to study efficiently and effectively which includes taking frequent breaks to keep their mind fresh and active. This for the record was my justification to my high school literature teach for why I was leaving town for the weekend a week before finals that would cement 80% of my final grade.
So, with that in mind, how do you determine when is it right to take a break and when should you take that productive option? The answer to that question is: I have literally no idea and it is a problem I fail to answer correctly in my own projects almost every single day. I could go on a lengthy explanation about when to recognize when your brain is fried or when to know that you should probably just sleep but those are really questions for actual psychologists and not an engineering student. My non-scientific recommendation is that for those sorts of people that pull all-nighters and end up dead on their feet in their final, know that as productive and you think you might be, you'd probably be more productive if you were to take some time for yourself. From a purely efficiency stand-point, it is smart to rest up every now and then. Now if you're not a soulless ghoul who lives only for productivity, know that breaks also make life more enjoyable and will (probably?) improve your mental health. And finally, for anyone who might maybe be a little too far on the relaxing side, don't beat yourself up for it. Just take a note when it happens and start by doing something small. Little changes amount to big differences when given enough time. So I guess as a final note, make sure to relax every so often and also make sure that you do kick back into high gear when you're done.
