i know it's not always possible or feasible for everyone but if you can afford it i would highly
recommend taking some time off between jobs i just recently started a new job and i had
a chance to take one month off between jobs and this is how i did it and i need to say that it was
absolutely worth it if you read advice online then it always says that you always need to be on
you always need to be in a job and some articles even suggest that it might hurt your professional
career i think nowadays like in 2022 it's not that bad like you can always explain why you had
to take a leave or it's perfectly acceptable when you have one month off between jobs in your resume
so why is it important to take a break i find that when i work at least 8 hours a day 5 days a week
50 weeks of the year then it's actually really hard to be mentally healthy when can you have time
to properly recharge and decompress you don't really have that much time maybe you have two
weeks or four weeks holidays if you are allowed to take unpaid leave but it's just not enough time so
as i said i started a new job as a ux architect in mid-january this year and i took four weeks
off between jobs technically i was still employed in january with my previous employer but in real
life what happened is i only had to go back for a day and just sort out some administrative things
you know paperwork with hr but i was on holiday from mid-december so what happened is i took two
weeks paid leave and i also took two weeks unpaid leave and of course i had to work harder before i
went on leave because i needed to hand over the projects in a way that it can work without me in
my absence and when i am not in my job anymore so that was kind of a short-term trade-off
so regardless what went down in a job you know even if you leave on good terms sometimes you
know things were a little bit fishy in the end because there is always a reason why you leave
a job right i find that it's always important to keep it professional because you never know when
you will see these people again and especially important here in new zealand
in wellington which is such a small market everybody knows everyone so you can build
but also ruin your reputation very easily how to negotiate time off between jobs here are my
tips so this is how i've done it first off you gotta check your contract what it says about
leaves so here in new zealand we are legally entitled to tell our employers when we want
to take 50% of our leaves and they cannot say anything. they just need to comply with this.
and because i took leave during the summer break period which is the christmas time in
new zealand so my employer told me when i had to take this one week off then i could leverage that
and i was able to tell that okay so you told me when i need to take the leave, but then
i would like to take this extra five days as well and they couldn't say anything else just...
...yes, take the time off. so that's one thing you gotta check your contract what it says and
you know before you sign your contract you gotta understand what you are legally need to do or can
do if you would like to take a leave i negotiated the other end as well with my new employer and
this is what i would recommend you to do as well especially if you made some commitments already
you can tell them hey i need to be here and there or you already have a booked holiday or you know
you just gotta take care of something you're not there yet they are very happy to have someone on
board so i find that it is actually much easier to negotiate the new job the starting date
then negotiating taking some time off with your previous job so the trick that i use it's more of
like a i'm driving that kind of conversation with my new employer so instead of asking them when
they want me to start i say when i could start so that is a different kind of conversations every
new employer wants you to start immediately but i find that you know the jobs and the work is just
it's just not that urgent nothing will happen if you start a week later than what they want you to
the other tip that i have is, just tell your new employer that you worked really hard in your
previous job and you really would like to give your hundred percent in your new job. so it would
be really beneficial to have the time to properly decompress and reflect on your previous job and
mentally prepare for the new job i think this is perfectly reasonable and all employers want you to
be there 100 when you start a new job so they're not going to say no to that let me know if you try
you know working in tech as a designer or actually anyone working in tech we all know that this is
such a fast-paced environment and during the pandemic most people just develop this meeting
fatigue i find that when i talk to my friends here everybody is looking for some time off to
decompress and to really reflect on things and just being properly offline if this is possible
at all it was really important to me because i just felt that i was really overworked in my
previous job i had a lot of extra responsibilities i just really needed that time off i definitely
had the meeting fatigue a lot of stress from the projects that i i just didn't
really have time to deal with or i didn't really have time to reflect on things
it was always you know deliver deliver deliver deliver and every week every every sprint i
could just never say that oh yeah this is not i'm just going to take this one week and
properly reflect on things and how i'm going to conduct my professional life and how i'm going to
lead my projects or do my work so i never really had that time in the last year so realistically
when you take some time off between jobs so i took one month off right so in the first
week i was still thinking about my job i was still thinking about it i couldn't detach myself from it
and on second week that was just i just kind of started to enjoy this freedom i started to think
less about my previous job i think the third week was the time when i was properly able to
detach myself from my previous job and we went on a road trip we had to go to auckland and sort
out our canadian visa so i wasn't even in this environment anymore i wasn't in wellington so
hello hello
so the new scenery just really gave me like an extra push or the the final push that
okay i am really in holiday mode and i actually don't have that previous job anymore.
there was a time when i could really focus on things that i really enjoyed so i was really
offline i was kind of absent on social media as well so it was really just a time to enjoy
new zealand and a road trip and you know eating good food and not really being worried
about anything and on the fourth week i was finally ready to reflect on my previous job
it's just kind of like i didn't have those emotions that i had when i left the job i
was able to reflect objectively so i just did a little bit of a retrospective like what i could
have done differently and what i would like to keep when i go into my new job and what are the
things that i should stop doing because it just didn't work in the tech industry so there was a
good reflection time for me and i would highly recommend to do that whenever you have a chance
you don't need to wait to start a new job to do this kind of reflection you can do that like end
of the week on friday you know what happened on that week and what you should keep and
what you should remove from your professional persona. yeah! and the other thing that i did
in week four was 90 days plan what i would like to achieve in my new job so i was mentally preparing
for my start day you know during the time of i think it's great that you can discover new things
or you can immerse yourself in your hobbies or you can spend some time with your family or pets and
friends i think it's really important to be or at least to try to be disconnected so i wonder how do
you do this like do you take time off between jobs i know different countries have different vacation
time so in new zealand we are really lucky with our 20-21 days. i know in canada it won't be the
same it will be only two weeks or three weeks or something like that yeah it will be a huge shift
for me probably so we'll see how i go by the way i wrote a book you might have seen this video
from me but if you haven't i would recommend you to watch it like how i wrote a book in
a month but what i was going to say that i decided i will give this book away for free
so if you would like to get a copy of that i have a form that you need to fill out and i will send
you the download link when my book is released in april the book title is things i wish i knew
before starting in ux designs so if this is an interest to you then i would recommend to you
sign up to receive a free copy otherwise thank you for watching and i hope i see you again soon bye
you