How many vacations do you take?

News & General Discussion
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So since my diary got over the few past days two code black entries (end times grade), seems I’m going need a break or I break. :slight_smile:

I’m my own boss. I’m quite free to pause when I want. And some people may need more than others. But is there any average of some kind? I will now pause for two weeks until 2nd of January 2017. Maybe mid year is also a good spot.

Although I’m somewhat free to take vacations when ever I want. As an indie game dev I’m still kind of responsible for the whole undertaking of my business. I take video games very serious, they are more important than you are (See, code black. The end times)! So vacations that don’t inhibit maximum performance would be a very good idea.

I’m a workaholic. Two weeks of no shity Unity editor, or slick C# coding, would make me feel bad, though. :frowning:

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What the FUCK is a vacation

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This is where people stop working. Because they are bad workers and like to get fired!

How do recognize a lazy dev? By the smile on their face! See, hard working devs don’t smile. :slight_smile: << He is a lazy bastard!

4

I’m still in school and I take 3 vacations. One during Winter break, Spring break, and Summer break. I usually spend those breaks programming and not sleeping. Sometimes I’ll spend all day just playing videogames D: but I’ll feel shitty after that. Usually once a year my family takes a trip to an amusement park since they’re less than 3 hours away.

Look at a vacation as in investment towards your health, motivation, and company :wink:

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5

Three to four weeks a year is considered ‘normal’.

However as an independent business owner there is no special need to be normal.

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6

I only do this as a hobby. Was gearing up to take the plunge to do it as more than a hobby a few months ago. And I realized if I do that I would likely be destroying other aspects of my life. I ended up taking a 2 month break from game dev. Last time I posted here was the end of October.

I think for me I would either need to be in perpetual vacation mode and spend no more than 7 hours per week on game dev period (as in actual game dev and even time on forums, YT videos, etc) or do it in sprints where one week I spend maybe 20 hours on game dev and the next week I spend no time on it at all. Point being I’d need a lot of vacation time from it because there are just other aspects of my life that are more important than making games. I almost hate to say that but at the end of the day that is just the way it is.

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You know at first I thought you meant you only took vacations as a hobby. I clearly need more sleep than I realized. :stuck_out_tongue:

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We spend a relatively ridiculous amount of time on vacations, but we also work our asses off.

I’ve known plenty of small business owners who literally ended up in the hospital as a result of “all work and no play.” One of my best friends had a heart attack about two years ago because he just wouldn’t slow down and enjoy his success. Work-related stress can and will kill you dead as a doornail.

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What youll find is creative work is hard and you simply cant work like a machine. Thats what I feel anyway, otherwise you will burn out

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Hmm… I’m mid twenties but that never occurred to me Finals last spring were super stressful. I just completed the last one today (WOOOHOO YEAAA!!!). I will have to keep this in mind. The grades aren’t back except for one class… but I do believe I will be passing my classes this fall. >:)

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Since i am my own boss. No real vacations for a long time. Some stuff always come up when in your “vacations”.

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Very true. Recently I feel like “I need to get more gaming ‘done’.” Because it’s the only thing that gives me back some energy.

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Same thing. Except I’m in Middle School. And my brain still comes up with too many ideas and lacks peseverance

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Yeah, it can also cause a mentality shift and sway your mind to the power of the dark side. :confused:

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You need a vacation! :smile:

I just finished up an animation contract and I’m taking a break til 2017 when I’ll begin again on my own game dev stuff.
I’m excited to begin 2017 but will take the break I deserve.
Yeah - I also work full-time in addition to contract work, but that will be replaced with personal game dev work.

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Got a day job, so I pad 3 day weekends into a week off. That makes for five or six small ‘vacations’ a year even if they are all stay-cations. (I also like to take a day or two off for game jams when I can.)

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Hard for me to pin down what “vacation” actually is. While it can be considered “time off” from your normal routine, that “time off” usually means switching gears to do something that can potentially be as stressful and/or exhausting, like traveling, or cleaning out storage or the garage, or running numerous errands that you’ve been putting off because you didn’t have time to do them otherwise due to deadlines with your normal routine.

It was really nice to have the summer/winter/spring breaks during school. Those were times where I had the opportunity to do my own thing, which usually meant my personal creative/productive time. When you’re young like that, you can do that. What sucks is, as I got older into the 30s, my mind was still on that “be productive during Winter break” time, when in reality, the holidays now brings more stress than opportunity to unwind and “do your own thing”, due to traveling to celebrations, gift shopping, basically the “hellidays”. As a kid, I didn’t have to worry about that stuff.

Last year, when I started Under the Weather, it was strange. I feel like I worked harder than I ever had, yet I was relaxed. I did take an extended (week) vacation hooked on to a relative’s wedding out-of-town, so I took that opportunity to unwind, even though I wanted to just keep on working. The trip was fantastic though, but I ended up getting sick, and was forced to rest for a week. I finished up Horde Rush 2 months later, and took some time to rest after that, heading into the “hellidays”.

So really, vacation to me is when I’m working on my game projects. It’s the most relaxed I get, and knowing that I have the energy and focus to work on them means I’m healthy enough to enjoy it.

But if I were to give a general, baseline answer, I’d go by a day job’s PTO accrual rate. My last job, it was around 1 day a month. So, by that, I’d say about 5 days every 5 months. But, it also depends on how exhausting the work was. If it was at the end of a project, take some more extra time off to re-energize.

Ugh, hate these wide open questions. I start writing books.

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I don’t attend any holidays/celebrations. That’s not my way of life. So no X-mas, or all the other funky stuff for me. My birthday is a level up of course. But it’s also in December. I think I make whole of December more of a relaxed month, to reflect and phase out the old year and my previous age. Too bad that I wasn’t born on the first of January! Maybe I should create my own calendar? (Sooner or later I will anyways) :slight_smile:

Beside of the December which is very suitable for a bigger resting phase. Seems I will have to observe myself how I do during the year itself to decide how much rest I need depending on how much I work. Those day should be distribute evenly through out the year, I think. Maybe a three month period with a resting week, or fewer days, at the end of those three month. So March, June and September would be for more resting relative to the rest.

I think key of the resting days is that what ever you do. And even if I still stick to things like Unity (and I do right now…), I always should have the option to just be able to stop what I do, so I can prevent stress build up. The thing is that the mind is based on the executions of its subconscious mind. Bad habits day hard, but so do good habits. A grown, talented or skilled mind isn’t simply going to stop during a resting phase, lie down, and sleep for 7 days straight! And that’s fine. All what matters is that you know when it’s enough.

This sound like me. And the fact that I’m at the beginning of my career as a game dev, isn’t really helping me to slow down. Because there is a lot to do. This should change after my first game is out. :slight_smile:

19

As of next Friday I’m on permanent vacation again.

I should probably do something about that.

:stuck_out_tongue:

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Judged by what I know of Steve Jobs, I think that Darth Jobs hit the grave because of really crappy resting habits, too. Look at Bill Gates. What do you notice? He still kind of sits on his Imperium Throne with two hearts beating inside his chest.

Seems it’s to late to tell Steve Jobs this:

Its’ not “fiction” or just “design” that Darth Sidious and Darth Vader look like crap under the hood. There is a reason for that. Yes it’s called “dark side degeneration”, but in real world we don’t really use such terms of course.

I understand that the western world is really pathetic regarding the understanding what the mind is, and how it relates to the human body. However, I’m 100% certain that Steve Jobs never would have died of cancer if he had a similar mentality to Bill Gates.

Permanent? Sounds like you quit your job. :slight_smile: