I haven’t seen Kiki’s Delivery Service, but it’s been in my (incredibly long) mental watch list for a long time.

Taking a break is so essential to doing what you love well; while I was in uni I had the ability to schedule things the way I wanted. I still had many deadlines, but I could prioritize my life at any given point and then work extra hard to make up for that time. Now that I’m working though this isn’t an option, you have to show up and you have to work for the designated hours that you’re getting paid for. Fair enough, but this isn’t a healthy way of working and living in general. One big vacation during the summer and a few strategically placed days off now and then throughout the year aren’t enough to keep you inspired and motivated for the rest of the year.

It’s a tough problem to solve unfortunately, mostly due to the fact that you’re working with others that sometimes depend on you for something, and you’re working for some product or service to be delivered to a customer that more often than not is rushing to receive it.

Open source projects are one good counter example of this, since communication with others is usually asynchronous and there is no entitled customer to sit over your head and ask “are we there yet” 50 times a day. They might be slower paced than corporations in some things, but the result is almost always better.

There are many reasons for that, but one of them might be the lack of burnout as well.