By Roman Lapacz

Have a break…

As a new SCA student I’m still amazed by the great amount of opportunity that comes at you everyday. I’m currently working on a large variety of projects, each one really different from the others but all very interesting.
But even if I’m definitely aware of how lucky we are, I just realised that there is also a dark side to it: you can’t do everything.
Yep, that’s what I tried to do this past week and I’ve never been so close of breaking my physical limits.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, I chose it, I love it, and because I’m stubborn as hell I will get to the bottom of everything I’m currently implied in.
But if I want to do so, I will definitely need a strategy, because we unfortunately still are made of flesh and bones. My body won’t keep up this rhythm for long, and falling asleep in the tube until the terminus last Wednesday was his way of teaching me that lesson.
(Stratford is a nice place by the way.)

And he was not the only one telling me that, the whole world was sending me the same message.

First, we just got this amazing Kit-Kat brief, that is all about how our definition of a break has changed on the past years because of our digital multi-tasking habits, and is challenging us to find a new interesting way to play with that. In this world that is getting faster and faster, and where all the lines blur, are we always or never in break?

Then Pip Jamieson, founder of the Dots,  mentioned during her talk at Silicon Beach how she sometimes get on the edge of the burnout because she pushed herself and her team way too hard, and gave us some great advice to deal with it (like spending 4 days on a beach in Spain for example, yep it’s that simple).

And finally, the great Graham Fink came to the school to give us an absolutely mind blowing Masterclass, and somewhere in this wisdom-shoot-in-the-face he reminded us how are best ideas always come at us when we take a step back from our work and relax.

So what do we learn from all that?
Improving the quality of our breaks is also improving the quality of our work.
It’s ok to have limits, and we should take the time to understand them in order to push them a little further everyday. Doing something besides your professional activities, even if you have the best job in the world, is crucial if you want to become better.

And I know that because I took a break before rereading this Scab, and the first draft was definitely worst than that.