How taking time off leads to long term success.

In 2007, I moved to Sao Paulo, Brazil. I worked there for about 2 years teaching English and working in a hostel on the weekends. I have a million stories and lessons from this experience and could in no way, shape or form sum the experience up in a few adjectives. 

But today I want to share with you one story I learnt there about the importance of taking time off, building it into you career and how that leads to not only long term success, but also a much more enjoyable journey.

The hostel I worked in on the weekends was set up by a group of girls who’d been living in this townhouse during their uni days. Close to graduation time, one of the girls had gone to Buenos Aries and seen all the hostels there and, thinking about how there were almost no hostels in Sao Paulo, she tried to turn the townhouse they were living in into one. Tourism wasn’t huge in Sao Paulo but it was beginning to grow so it was a great time to try this out.

I arrived a few months after and I remember the hostel started doing so well. They were going from strength to strength and constantly making improvements and fixing things. Working really hard and setting themselves up what would very likely become a successful business.

Then February arrived… Carnival. The biggest time in the tourism calendar in Brazil and the girls decided to close the hostel to enjoy Carnival.

Being from the ‘developed world’ with my super capitalist, maximum profit, work over everything engrained (and frankly super judgemental) brain, I couldn’t quite understand. ‘You’re going to shut down in the most lucrative time of the year… in your first year of business when you need to work harder than ever… you’re just going to close down the whole hostel and take a holiday?’

I recall one of the girls replying something in the form of, ’Well, if we don’t do it in the first year, we’ll never do it again. We’ll have to work over Carnival from now on.’

I felt it was lazy and irresponsible, even juvenile. They won’t be successful in business because they were not thinking about how the market works and not willing to make the necessary sacrifices to be successful in business.

But… I was wrong.

They took Carnival off. The hostel was fine. They made enough to cover all their costs and they got to enjoy carnival. Over a decade later, the hostel is rated as one of the best hostels in South America. 

I learnt an important lesson about defining success for yourself and about how more is not necessarily better. How this ‘grind, grind, grind, sleep 3 hours a night, let the market decide what you can and can’t do, let profit margins dictate your choices is… well… kind of stupid. And extremely fear motivated.  

I love working hard. I’m level 200% in conscientiousness. But I’m SO grateful for the example these girls set. I’ve built time off into the foundation of my business and I have no doubt this is going to contribute massively to its long term success and my ability to continue to love it so much.

I hope this is helpful to any of you feeling fatigued and approaching burn out but afraid to stop. Life is long. You will regain momentum and enthusiasm over and over again. It will still happen if you break when you need to.

Take time off and really take it.