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I am about to take a couple of weeks off, trying to disconnect as much as possible. Here's the hard thing that nobody likes to admit. The hard part of taking off is not really planning. But hey, don't get me wrong, my wife has been planning and it is a lot of hard work. I'm not talking about that being hard work or not being hard work. Very important clarification, because it is hard work. I'm not saying planning is easy. I'm not saying planning does not take a lot of energy. It does. But we're talking about a different thing here. What I'm referring to here is that the real hard part for your brain, especially if you are a very driven person, you are a type personality, as they like to call it nowadays. Your brain doesn't let you stop. You'll want to check the phone. Just quickly do something. And the more driven you are, the harder it gets. And the thing is, this is not a willpower problem. This is a motivation problem. And once you can see what are the motivational drives or the core drives that are keeping you from switching off, it is a lot easier to be able to shut them off temporarily. Don't get me wrong, these are core drives you want and that keep you active, productive and motivated throughout the rest of your working time. So let's take a look a few of the potential core drives that are keeping you entirely connected all into your work when you're not working. Core drive two, Development and accomplishment. You could be having a little bit of a progress addiction. You stop feeling that momentum, of course you take off and you're not progressing in whatever endeavors you had at work. Whether that's your own company or somebody else's, it doesn't matter. You feel like that progress is being trumped by this very annoying thing called vacations. But trust me, you do need that. So you want to be able to identify that that might be one of the core drives that is getting you to go back and take a look at your phone. The next one is Core Drive 8. Loss and avoidance. The fear that if you step away, something breaks, you miss out. Fear of missing out. Everyone else is working, still shipping, doing the stuff, still posting for you. Disconnecting can feel like being a bit left behind. You fear that you are fomo, fear of missing out, literally is something that your brain is telling you, whoa, watch out. You don't want to be left out. And it drives you into immediate action. Because remember, this is a black hat motivation. It creates urgency and it gets you to act right now. Could also be a case of core drive one epic meeting and calling. The mission needs me. This is something greater than myself. So I might need to sacrifice my hard earned vacations just to be able to do this. Because work is so important. Noble sounding thing might just be a trap. Honestly. Yes, you are important. Yes, our work is important every single time. But remember, if Core Drive 1 epic median calling is the one keeping you from taking that well deserved and well needed rest and disconnection, you want to be able to identify it, to be able to get it, to not fire back at you rather than make you more productive. These drives are the ones that are making you very good at your job. However, when you're on a break, you're just literally pointing in the wrong direction. Naming them, putting a title and understanding what is going on is where you're able to catch them and start deactivating their triggers. So if the problem is that the core drives are the ones that are keeping you from taking that well earned and very necessary break, that vacation, be it small or very large, then if you want to flip it around, what you want to look at is the triggers that are saying, oh, this is the thing that is keeping me going forward in the job and not in the break in the vacation that I'm taking right now. So I can be present in the moment, engaged and motivated to exactly everything that I am doing in this point. In my case, one of the things that I like to do, at least for as much as I can, or most of the time, is grab the phone, which brings in a lot of the Core Drive 8 and that urgency, you know, message pops in and email comes in. Even if people know and are very aware that you know they shouldn't be contacting you and probably they won't. This is just a copied message or whatever. You don't have your phone there. You're not triggering core drive eight saying, oh, let me check my phone because something happened, it might be important, it might trigger my core drive one epic meeting and calling that the mission is so important and I don't want to be disconnected. So one of the hacks is just put your phone away whenever that is possible. In my case, I like to go to the beach. The place we stay at tends to be very, very close to the beach. So I even sometimes leave it at the apartment. Don't even take pictures with my phone. So it doesn't trigger me into saying we need you back at the job. And some people like to do this whole. Sometimes it's at the end of the year, sometimes it's in break. Oh. Reflect back on your year, plan ahead of what's gonna happen. And that is a trap. Most of the time, if you don't do it at the right moment, if you're doing it in the middle or especially at the start of your vacation, the problem is you're not really putting that endpoint, cutting things off. If you're the kind of person who actually needs to have that, you know, moment of that plan, very specifically, maybe the first day you, you know, double down, go all in with that planning ahead of, you know, that new thing, whatever that is, go all in with that and then get it out of your mind. Genuinely disconnect. You don't want to do some productive resting if you're really on a break on vacation, especially if you are with your family, because there you start triggering. Also, you should also look at what are the other triggers that you're having there. Epic meaning and calling for your family. It's something greater than just yourself. Cordrive5 because your family, your friends could be there. Also make sure those drives are also being there and you realize what you want to be motivated to on that break. That's something that is also good. It's hard earned and trust me, it's not productive resting, but it is productive to get better at what your job might actually look like. So what I'm saying here is if you were the one designing for an engagement loop, right then people are coming back, coming back. But then you need them to step back and reflect or do something else or literally get out of the app because you're worried that they might end up with a little bit of addiction or that risk might be there. You wouldn't design for them to go out and at the same time stay connected inside the loop. You would somehow be able to stop that from happening. Give them no notifications or if they come back, just literally push them out. Do that same thing for yourself. You need it and you're going to be better at your job. Once you do, take that well deserved, well earned rest that you need to actually be better at what you do. So the key takeaway, how do you use this in your own professional style, slash personal, in this case, life. Before you take your next break, don't just block the time. Also ask what is the core drive that typically pulls me back into work? That thing that maybe on weekends or on times when you know you shouldn't be working, it's bringing you back into work. Set up a Disconnect for those triggers ahead of time. Make sure that you're able to disconnect one thing from the other. Is IT Core Drive 8? Is it things falling apart? Really plan so that things will not fall apart with you being there. If you're part of a team, one of the things that we do in actalysis is we are part of a team of consultants. Plan well ahead, do the work, trust the team as well. If you have a team, you're working together, trust others to be able to step up. And if you still feel bad about that, have an emergency room. But let your team know. And people are very smart when you let them. You give them this opportunity. What does an emergency look like that they really have to, you know, step. Make you step out of a vacation and when, which is 99.9% of the time it's not an emergency and can actually be solved without you needing to jump in. So give them that freedom and know if something really happens, they will contact me. And that gives you also that peace that many of us actually need. So design your break so your own core drives are not breaking your brake. The same way you design for any behavior you actually want to happen from your user. So I'm signing off for a couple of weeks. There is a planned episode that you will be seeing that is not going to be a problem for the podcast. We record frequently a lot of episodes, even in advance, so that's going to be okay. However, I just want you to remember that resting is not about being lazy. It's about switching off all those drives that keep you from resting. So you take that rest that needs you. The rest needs you as much as you need it to charge your batteries, be present, get better at what you do by disconnecting and then plugging yourself right back in. And even though we're talking about rests, you know, I've connected it, I think, directly to your professional life and also to the core drives. And if you like these kinds of breakdowns of the core drives and want to use them in your own professional settings, we have set for you up our free core Drives in the Wild guide. You can find it on the link in the description. Just click there. Put in your email. You'll get access to that one email per day until you get all the core drives. You'll see examples like this one out there in the wild from previous episodes in my take as an OCD consultant from the OCATAS group. However, at least for now and for today, it is time to say that it's game over.