The Power of Time Off

Oct 14, 2009

I love watching the great speakers at TED and Stefan Sagmeister’s presentation earlier this month is no exception. Here, he speaks on the often overlooked power of taking time off. His concept of breaking down the three main stages of life (education, work, retirement) and taking five years from your retirement stage and essentially spreading them throughout your work years is an intriguing concept.

One year over the course of a lifespan doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but if I had the finances to try something like this I most certainly would. The chance to replenish the batteries and add new perspective to work (in my case web design work) would not only be exciting, but also a challenging experience.

3 comments

Khuong Hoang

Hello Trang, Awesome video, you should also check out Dan Gilbert’s talk on TEDs too, very interesting. LIke your website, still working on a revision of mine, too much flash. Good luck with the work.

David Trang

Hey Khuong, thanks for referring me to Dan’s talk. There are so many amazing TED talks, it’s hard to keep up with them all. What I really like in Dan’s presentation is his concept of how we manufacture happiness in our own brains, and that too much freedom can affect our own happiness negatively! Gives me a whole new perspective when making any critical decisions for the future.

Joseph Bayot

Ah I love TED talks! This one was great. Something I’ll definitely keep in mind.

Just wanted to leave a comment to tell you have much I liked your site redesign. So clean and functional. Kudos!