Cool-Off Week: Counterintuitive Secret to My Consistency

The final ingredient of my Agile-inspired personal productivity system is the cool-off week. In this video, I share its origin story, explain what it is, describe what I do during this week, and reveal why it has been the key to staying consistent with my productivity system for the last 10 years.

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Timeline:
00:00 - Why I invented the cool-off week
01:44 - What is a cool-off week?
03:30 - What's the point of a cool-off week?
05:03 - I'd rather take the breaks on my own terms
06:33 - What do I do during the cool-off week?
09:50 - Benefit: No burnout in the last 10 years
10:52 - Benefit: Gult-free rest
11:31 - Benefit: Looking forward to the next sprint
13:27 - Benefit: Interesting projects get done
15:07 - Benefit: Time and space to think
15:42 - Benefit: Serves as a reward for my long-term efforts
18:17 - Benefit: Creates a nice rhythm in my life
19:30 - If you want to actually DO the things you want to do. 

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
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

(00:20):
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?"

(00:42):
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

(01:07):
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,

(01:30):
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,

(01:51):
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,

(02:17):
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,

(02:43):
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

(03:09):
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.

(03:30):
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.

(03:52):
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,

(04:13):
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

(04:35):
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

(04:59):
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...

(05:24):
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,

(05:45):
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

(06:07):
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.

(06:29):
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.

(06:51):
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,

(07:12):
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

(07:40):
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

(08:09):
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,

(08:33):
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.

(08:57):
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.

(09:21):
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

(09:42):
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

(10:03):
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,

(10:26):
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,

(10:47):
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

(11:08):
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,

(11:31):
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.

(11:55):
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

(12:16):
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

(12:43):
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

(13:04):
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.

(13:27):
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

(13:50):
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."

(14:11):
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

(14:33):
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

(14:54):
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

(15:19):
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.

(15:42):
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.

(16:02):
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,

(16:26):
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

(16:50):
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,

(17:10):
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

(17:33):
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

(17:54):
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

(18:19):
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,

(18:41):
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.

(19:08):
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

(19:33):
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,

(19:57):
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 (20:05):
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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.

(20:29):
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:

(20:53):
"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

(21:20):
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

(21:55):
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

(22:16):
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. (22:40):
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I hope you join us. But for now, happy sprinting. See you next time.