I've taken to extended breaks in my career, reduced my expenses to dollars a month and pretty much focused on something else entirely. The first time it was lea

I've taken to extended breaks in my career, reduced my expenses to dollars a month and pretty much focused on something else entirely. The first time it was learning taijiquan and reconnecting with my body through walking and physical labor. The second time is was to play video games and build a community. At the end of both sessions my energy was revitalized around software engineering because in each instance i came back around to using the computer to solve the actual problems I wanted to solve for my real goal. Each time I needed to relearn the tools which was also a nice experience as it allowed me to fix lingering problems. I highly recommend these types of breaks, especially if you have a first principals understanding of computers, as that's critical for saying, "I know this is a problem I can solve with math and computers."