I strongly believe that career breaks should be normalised in our busy and stressful societies of today. For the last 5 months I have been on one myself, taking the time to rest, rediscover my happiness, and work on both my personal and professional goals. Here are a few of what I consider to be the perks of taking a career break:

Taking time out to recharge

Burnout is real, and when it strikes, it needs to be dealt with as a matter of priority. Our minds are so stretched from our day to day lives that some may find it hard to switch off at all. What happened in my case is that I was one of these such people who struggled to switch off, resulting in eventual burnout and poor mental health overall. Taking some time out from work helped me to take a step back and reflect on what went wrong and what I could have done to help myself better. These are lessons that I will be taking on board with me going forwards. In essence, my career break helped me to recharge after the burnout and to learn lessons for the future, for the sake of my wellbeing.

Trying new things

….and I can recall three new things specifically: attending social meetup groups, volunteering at a local animal rescue centre, and exploring a new potential career path. Without taking my career break, I am not sure that I would have done any of these things, since my former working life consisted of mainly work, eat, sleep repeat. I got into this lacklustre routine, and was living to work, rather than working to live, forgoing personal fulfilment and enjoyment of life to the detriment of my overall wellbeing. I found that attending the meetup groups was especially good for my wellbeing – meeting like-minded people who I could later count as my friends. I would recommend meetup groups for anyone who is seeking more social interaction and new experiences – you never know where this could take you!

Focussing on personal & professional growth

As part of exploring a new career path, I embarked on a foundation qualification in marketing, to give myself a good grounding in a subject relatively new to me. As with the above section, I am not sure that I would have done this if I hadn’t taken my career break, and therefore taken a step back to properly think about my career and life plans. I am still figuring out my professional path, but I am confident that I will find the right fit for me when the time comes. On a personal level, I have been attending counselling sessions, which has helped immensely with both my mental health and with building healthy routines and practices to deal with aspects of life going forwards. This is something that I would strongly recommend for anyone going through a rough patch – reach out for help as soon as you can! It may help you more than you first anticipate.

Space to consider next steps

This includes the space to consider future travel plans! I used some of my time to plan and book up my dream trip to Canada, which I don’t think I would have got round to (at least not for a long time!) otherwise. As aforementioned, it has also allowed me the time to consider my next career steps, after feeling stuck in a path and routine that wasn’t working for me. The clarity of mind that comes from taking a break out of working life is invaluable, and something that I believe everyone should do at least once in their life, if they can.

Have any of my readers ever taken a career break, and if so, what did you find to be the most beneficial aspects of this? Did it give you much needed time and space, or did you throw yourself head first into something that you had always wanted to do?