Cool-Off Week: Counterintuitive Secret to My Consistency

Earlier on, I understood that the conventional  productivity systems are doomed to fail in my life. I've tried a lot of them over the  years, and they worked for a couple of weeks, but then eventually, my inner rebellion would  always come out. And she's a feisty one. She doesn't like authority, rules, regulations.  She doesn't like when people tell her what

to do. She's a true anarchist in her heart.  And so, no matter what system I would try, she would always come out, and she would say  things like, "Who are you to tell me what to do?" She would argue, "We only live once!  Live a little! We're all gonna die. So create some memories! Live a  full life! Enjoy your life! Let's go and do something spontaneous.  Life is short. We should live it." As a result, when developing my own system that  was inspired by the Agile framework that I saw

being so effective at work, I knew I had to do  something about that inner rebellion. Otherwise, the system would be yet another system that would  fail. And that's how I came up with the concept of a cool-off week. Just to make it clear, this  is not part of the official Agile framework, even though I think it should be. This  is my own invention that I created for myself to address my own problem,  to accommodate my inner rebellion.

So what is a cool-off week? My sprints are three  weeks in length. And then, after every sprint, I take a week off. It doesn't mean  I go on vacation. Every fourth week, I still go to work. I still show up, but I  do the bare minimum—the maintenance level. I do the things that are required of me to do  for this whole enterprise to not fall apart.

During my cool-off week, I take a break  from productivity, from doing extra, from trying to achieve a certain result, from  going the extra mile, from improving things, from optimizing things. I still  respond to customers. I still process orders. Everything is happening, but  there is no extra pushing that is coming. And as a result, I have a little bit more  time. This is a break from the more rigid, intense, focused sprint that I had before. It's  a break from any expectation of achievement,

result, outcome, or metric. I don't push  myself to do anything extra during this week. When I had a full-time job,  I still followed the same schedule. For three weeks, I was working on important, big  projects, trying to get them done before the end of the sprint. And then, for the next sprint, I  showed up to work with the bare minimum to not get fired. They were impressed with the work that I  did during the three weeks and then didn’t mind if

I went home a little earlier or if I took a longer  lunch on my fourth week. No one really cared.

So what's the point of a cool-off week? As I said,  it's an opportunity for my inner rebellion to have it all. She can wake up whenever she wants,  do spontaneous things, go to the movies in the middle of the day, work on whatever she wants. She  doesn’t have to follow a prioritized to-do list. She can do whatever she wants. There is no  time-blocking, no schedules, no rules. And the reason why is because during my sprints, I'm  very focused, organized, and disciplined. I try

to avoid distractions as much as possible.  All the spontaneous ideas that I have, I try my best not to do them right away. I put  them in my backlog and then review them later. It's a very tightly held state of being. And  if you think about the word "sprint," like when you run, when you sprint, that's how it  should be. It's very intense and short. So I

sprint for three weeks. And then I need a break.  Like, you can't sprint indefinitely. So after an intense period of work, focus, and discipline,  it's hard to do this for a long period of time. So you need to take a break. It's a  small investment of time that first allows me to rest from my previous sprint  and then just mentally and psychologically prepare and rejuvenate myself  for the upcoming sprint.

And this is my philosophical  view on this. A long time ago, I kind of noticed this trend that  people who work without breaks, who are so disciplined and so organized and  so go, go, go, like the hustle culture bros... Life works in a way where eventually they are  forced to take a long break. So accidents happen, chronic illnesses, marriages fall  apart, their businesses fail for some mysterious reason. I saw it  happen time after time after time,

and you probably saw it too. And so it's kind  of like they didn’t have a break for years. And they accumulated that debt. Then life  forced them to pay off that debt in a way where they had to take a much longer break.  And I was like, Hmm, I’m wondering if I can avoid all that drama because I don’t want to go  on that emotional rollercoaster. So I was like, Hmm, what if I have the breaks,  but I have them on my own terms?

I scheduled them ahead of these extreme burnouts  and depressions and overwhelm and all of that. What would happen? And great things happened.  So what do I do during my cool-off weeks? I try

to do the exact opposite of what I do during  the sprints. And that’s a good framework to use when you are thinking about choosing a  restful, rejuvenating activity for yourself. It should be the opposite of your day-to-day  living. So, if you're a salesperson who talks to 20 people a day, for you, watching Netflix  at night alone without talking to anyone

can be a very restful and rejuvenating  activity. But if you work from home, um, if you stare at the screen—maybe you're like  a data analyst—and you don’t talk to people, you just stare at the screen all day long,  then staring at another screen at night, being alone, is kind of like  you’re doing the same thing. So for a data analyst, going out, meeting people,  doing a team sport can be a more rejuvenating

activity. For me, the cool-off week is kind of  doing the opposite of what I do during the sprint. My scrum board is empty. I do it on purpose.  It’s completely empty. I remove all the sticky notes after I’m done with the sprint  retrospective. I have no schedule, no plan, no to-do lists. I go for longer walks or  bike rides. I have longer lunches if I want to. I do whatever I feel like doing. I do  spontaneous things because, during my sprints,

I try to limit my spontaneity. I have  my sprint goals and focus on them, and all the projects and ideas that  pop up, I put them in the backlog. But during my cool-off week, if I have  a great idea and I feel like doing it, I go and do it. The opposite of my sprint  behavior. I give myself full permission to start something and not finish it.  There is no definition of done for this

spontaneous project. I can abandon them  and not feel bad about it. I usually do more things for which I enjoy the  process, not so much the outcome. I can go to the movies in the middle of the  day. I can meet with friends for lunch and have a longer lunch. Sometimes I like to plan  my vacations around my cool-off weeks. So, for example, my last cool-off week,  we went to Italy. It was nice—a way to have a cool-off week. Definitely did  something very different from my sprint.

I can beautify a space in my home, declutter  something, or make something more beautiful. I wrote a post about it recently on the benefits  of making your space beautiful. But in short, I just do whatever I feel like doing. It’s very  spontaneous, chaotic, not organized, doesn’t follow a plan. It’s awesome. And it releases all  the tension that gets built up during the sprint.

And the benefits that I see from having done the  cool-off week for the last 10 years are that, well, first of all, and the biggest  one, is that I haven’t had a single case of severe burnout or depression  or overwhelm for the last 10 years, even though I did a lot of things. Thankfully,  I did not have to go through any of that. And I think the reason why is because  my initial experiment, my hypothesis of, But what if I have the breaks on my own  terms? I agree that breaks are necessary,

but what if I have them scheduled on my  own terms? This hypothesis has worked out and actually prevents the need to take bigger  breaks. If you don’t accumulate the break debt, if you pay it off on time, you  don’t have to take the longer break.

At least that’s how it is in my life. It allows  me to rest—most of all, emotionally. And it allows me to rest guilt-free. I know for a  lot of us, the idea of resting guilt-free is kind of revolutionary and unheard of, but  when you have it—like when you have scheduled breaks and you worked really hard for the sprint  before—you can have a restful week guilt-free. It's possible. I recommend you try  it. It's very refreshing. Also,

another benefit is that by the end of the  week, I'm actually looking forward to the next sprint. It's kind of the same idea as when  you go on vacation, especially if it's a two- to three-week vacation. During the first  week, you're ecstatic about the whole idea that you don't have to work, that you're just  relaxing, chilling, and not doing anything. You're just happy about this whole situation.  Week two rolls around, and you're kind of like,

you know, starting to miss your regular routine  at home. And if you're there for three weeks, during the third week, you're like, "Oh my  gosh, I can't wait to come home and actually do something productive with my life. I kind of  look forward to going back to work." The same idea applies here. During the cool-off week,  the first two to three days, you're like, "Oh, this is awesome. I can wake up whenever I want.  I have no schedule. I have no plan. Awesome."

The last few days, you're like, "Uh, I'm kind of  looking forward to some structure and actually getting my hands dirty and doing the work." You're  actually quite excited about the upcoming sprint. And of course, as I mentioned, the whole reason  why I created the cool-off week is to satisfy my inner rebellion. During this cool-off  week, she's fed, she's satisfied. She can go to sleep for the next three weeks and not  ruin my sprint. I'm not afraid of having some

emotional revolution in the middle of the sprint  because my inner rebellion wants to come out. No, she is sleeping, and we can focus and have  a good, calm, focused, disciplined sprint.

Also, during the cool-off week, some interesting  projects come up. We're going to talk about the kinds of things that can get done. I do  spontaneous things—whatever I feel like doing, I do that. And oftentimes, these things are actually  quite nice to do. For example, recently during the cool-off week, I did the minimum amount of work.  I had to check something on the Monthly Method website. While I was browsing there, I thought,  "I'm so tired of this design. I no longer find it

beautiful. I don't like my homepage. I don't like  the color scheme. It no longer reflects who I am." And there was this spontaneous burst to actually  redesign the website for MonthlyMethod.com. If it had happened during the sprint, I would have  put it in the backlog. I would not have allowed myself to jump into this because I would  have had some sprint goals I was working on. But since it was my cool-off week, I  thought, "Okay, sure. Why not do that?"

And I spent the next two or three days working on  it. Thankfully, my emotional desire to change the website lasted long enough for me to actually  finish it. I was able to redesign the website and my homepage. It happened in like two or  three days, and I'm quite happy that it did. So, things like that can happen. The cool-off  weeks also give me time to think and daydream.

Because I'm not working all the time, I  actually have the time to step back and have a wider view of my life. And because I go  on longer walks and bike rides, I have the time and space to think about things.  Oftentimes, I have quite meaningful insights during my cool-off weeks  that improve my life going forward.

Another benefit I've noticed is that  cool-off weeks have started to serve as intermittent rewards for my efforts that  don't necessarily bring immediate results. I like to say that our brains hate infinite  timelines. Whenever we have to do something for a long period of time or indefinitely, our  brains are like, "Oh, no way." Imagine running a marathon that doesn't have a finish line.  How many people would agree to do that? Zero,

I think. But a lot of the things we're  working on as adults don't have an immediate payoff. There's a lot of upfront  effort before you actually see the outcome. And that's a very difficult situation for our  brains to be in. They don't see the carrot in front of them. The carrot is far, far, far away,  and yet you kind of want to keep going. So, the cool-off weeks are kind of like  this reward, this little carrot that

I place in front of myself. Yes, they're not  necessarily the direct outcomes of my effort, but what I've noticed is that my brain doesn't  really care. As long as there is a carrot. And the way I tell my brain is, "Hey, listen, we're going  to work really hard for three weeks. But then, we're going to have the time of  our lives. We're going to rest for the entire week. No schedules, no  deadlines. We're going to have it all."

That's the carrot. And then, you enjoy your  time off, and you can come back and continue working hard till the next carrot, and  the next carrot. Eventually, looking back, I think, "Okay, well, I just did 10 years of  this—carrot after carrot after carrot." It's possible to go for a long period of time  with consistent effort using this approach because this serves as an intermittent  reward. And the final outcome is that it

allows me to have a nice rhythm in my life.  Sprint, break, sprint, break, sprint, break. That's how you build momentum. And you don't have  to reinvent the wheel. You live in this rhythm. An object in motion stays in motion. The momentum  builds up, and you keep following this rhythm, this cycle, and things just get a lot easier.  I think the problem with our generation is that

we disregard the power of this rhythm. We  always try to look for the next big thing, the next method, the next framework, and  we're constantly starting and stopping. This stopping, looking for a new path, and  then trying the new path wastes so much time and energy. I'm a true believer in building a  rhythm in your life. It's the same way a nice song isn't possible without a good rhythm or beat.  And if you've watched some of the videos on this

channel about Agile, about these rituals, and you  like the idea but just can't get into the rhythm, I want to invite you to the community  that I will be launching in January. We're going to do all these Agile rituals  together—backlog setup, sprint planning, daily standups, deep work sessions, sprint  retrospectives, and cool-off weeks. You're going to follow the same schedule as mine:  three weeks of sprinting and one cool-off

week. I want you to get into this rhythm and  actually experience firsthand what it can do in your life. I think we have more than enough  information. Information is not the solution. In this membership, I want to help us actually  do the things we want to do—not talk about them,

not plan them, not write about them,  but actually do them. Every decision I have made about this community  has been with this lens in mind: "What do I need to do to increase the  likelihood of my members actually doing the thing?" I have employed all the mental tricks  and strategies that I know to guarantee results. If you become a member, I will use  every tool and strategy I've learned in my life—from building my career, managing  teams, finishing my master's degree early,

launching my business, and more. Every  Agile ritual I've talked about on this channel will be part of the membership. We  will do them together. I truly believe in this, and I want you to come and try it for yourself.  Help me build this community with you. It's going to be another way to showcase how to  build things the Agile way—to start perfectly

imperfect with the core functionality in  mind. We will treat the community as an Agile product that we all work on together,  shaping it in a way that works for all of us. I'm not going to be a dictator here, telling you  what to do and how to do it. We are shaping it up together with one bigger goal in mind:  to actually do the things we want to do. I hope you join us. But for now,  happy sprinting. See you next time.