How to Actually Take a Break Without Losing Momentum

In this episode, we’re challenging the hustle-at-all-costs mindset and unpacking the fear that taking a break means falling behind. If you've ever worried that pausing will cost you everything you've built, you're not alone—and you're not wrong to want rest. 

🔸 Section 1: Why Breaks Feel Risky
We explore the hidden fears behind stepping away—from letting others down to the guilt that rest feels lazy. The truth? Constant output isn’t sustainable. 

🔸 Section 2: What Momentum Really Is
Momentum isn’t speed—it’s sustainable movement. Learn how rest fuels creativity, clarity, and real progress, backed by science and experience. 

🔸 Section 3: How to Take an Aligned Break
Get a practical, five-step framework to pause with intention, protect your energy, and return without burnout. 

🔸 Section 4: Reframing the Guilt
Feeling guilty for slowing down? This final section helps shift your mindset: Rest is not a reward—it’s part of the work. 

Whether you're craving a weekend off or considering a longer reset, this episode will help you take that break with purpose—and without shame. 

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Transcript

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Autumn G Noble (00:00)

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. This week, we are continuing our discussion from last month where we were talking about burnout and how to identify it before it begins. This week, we are talking about taking breaks and not losing momentum. And if you listened to the episode last month on burnout, you understand why this episode on taking breaks is such an important element to understanding and preventing burnout.

Why do we have a whole episode on how to take a break? It seems relatively straightforward, but honestly for ambitious people, this is something that is really deceptively hard. And when I'm talking about breaks, I'm not really thinking about those five, 10, 15 minutes we lose scrolling down TikTok or any other social media platform. What I mean is intentional, restorative and guilt-free pauses.

I know for me, when I catch myself scrolling on social media or losing myself in TikTok, I'm usually avoiding something. I'm avoiding doing something or I'm avoiding some type of discomfort feeling. And so when we talk about setting an intentional break, it's creating a space to explore those things that we may otherwise be avoiding or that may otherwise be causing some kind of a discomfort. So the social media scrolling,

is rarely a break, but often more of an avoidance tactic and a sign of something that we maybe need to unpack when we do take a thoughtful pause.

I know that even for me in my legal practice, I sometimes really struggle to pull myself away from my screen and take a break. And I used to say to myself, well, I'm just really in the momentum. I don't want to lose my train of thought. And I was always kind of operating from this like frenzied, fast paced action. And now I've come to recognize that that feeling and that pull of like really focused, I just want to get this done kind of effort.

is really me operating from my primitive brain, that fight or flight brain, and kind of a lower thinking brain. And when I feel myself so pulled to the project and getting the thing done, it's often a sign that I need to take a step back, take a breath, take a pause, and really regroup and proceed more intentionally. And when I do that, I always do a better job.

One thing that may be really accessible for all of you listening to consider is whenever you have a large project or a of a hairy tough email or memo that you've been working on and you just want to get it out the door, right? We're having that kind of frenzied feeling of like, just want to get this done. I just want to click send. You know, if you've been practicing long enough that if you don't hit send and you actually come back to that email, memo, brief or whatever it is, the next day,

and take a peek at it, you will notice simple, small errors that you would have overlooked if you had hit send the day before. It's that pause and that break and coming back to it fresh and renewed that allows us to really put that finishing touch and polish on it. That if we allow that frenzied space to hit send and just get it off of our plate right away, we would have missed that opportunity. And that's something that I think

over time and practicing, you just learn. And I think it's an easy touch point for all of us to see and recognize, okay, yeah, there are times in my practice where when I have taken a break and come back to something later, it's always paid off for the better. And it didn't actually create more problems, if anything, it resolved potential problems.

when we don't take breaks and we just rush to get things off of our to-do list, we typically create more problems down the road because that type of work product is never at our highest. So when you rest strategically, you end up protecting your momentum and sometimes even supercharge it because you don't have to worry about those things coming back around for little errors and little things that you're overlooking because

You took an intentional rest, you took an intentional break, did it right the first time, and now you can continue to build that momentum and keep going without having to come back to those projects again and again because we hustled through it.

So in this episode, I wanna talk about why breaks feel risky and what momentum really is and how to take time off in a way that supports your energy, your goals, and your wellbeing.

So let's start with why breaks feel so risky. And what I have seen again and again is that it's always rooted in fear and guilt the vast majority of the time. And it might sound like everyone else is totally slammed. I can't take a break. Everyone else is really working hard. So I don't need to take any time away to rest and recharge. No one else is. And if I do,

they're going to judge me or they're going to think I can't handle it or they're going to be mad at me, right? Those are all kind of fear-based thoughts that are preceded by those guilty thoughts.

There seems to be some unspoken rule in the legal industry that nonstop output equals success. And I want to dismantle that today.

Constant output is not sustainable. Hustling without pauses only leads to resentment, creative blocks, and sometimes serious health issues. I can't tell you how many times I get emails from clients or potential clients talking about how burnt out they are and how they just need a break to rest and recharge. But they're afraid to take some space, take a day, take an afternoon, take an hour because there's this judgment

that they're lazy and they can't hack it, and rather they should be able to continually go without ever stopping. And I think that's a fallacy that we really need to confront head on because it's never sustainable and the results of that constant output are always negative. It never ends well. And we've all been there. I think we can all look at instances in our careers where we tried

to hop on that bandwagon of constant output and it just led to a crash and burn.

I've worked with so many clients who were terrified to unplug even for a long weekend. And that fear pushes them to continually go and go and go and push off the breaks or plan a break for next month or next week, I'll finally take a break. And what ends up happening is when they finally do get to that point where they will allow themselves the break, they're so burnt out that there is no way they can recharge over the course of a long weekend.

And so they're at the point now where they are completely burnt out and they need something more than just a little break. But if you plan your breaks strategically and allow yourself to take them, you will come back more focused, more grounded and more effective than before. And you prevent that ultimate looming burnout that is the alternate road available to you through nonstop sustained action and output.

So here's the mindset shift I want to start with today. And it has to do with what momentum really is. Momentum is not a sustained sprint.

Momentum is not speed. Momentum is sustainable forward movement.

What that requires of us is not constant acceleration, but rather rhythm.

Think about athletes or any of you that might be into fitness and exercise. You know that rest days are part of any fitness regimen. They are built into it, including professional athletes. They don't train every single day, every minute of every day. They build in rest days because they know that that is what their bodies need to recharge and come back even stronger.

those rest days allow their bodies to recover and integrate everything that they have worked on previously.

The same is true for you. And here's the science to back it up.

Research shows that rest, real intentional rest, improves memory, focus, and creativity.

Your brain needs time to consolidate learning and replenish energy.

Without that, we don't think as clearly, we don't see issues and items that we would have otherwise, and we're not able to sort of consolidate all the information that we've been cramming into our brain over the preceding days. Without rest, we lose the benefit of all of that data.

Consider times in your life when you've had really striking insights about maybe what you wanted or maybe your work or maybe a roadblock that you were having on a project. I suspect that for you, just like for me, most of those powerful insights came when you weren't working. Maybe you were in the shower singing along to a song. Maybe you were...

walking your dogs, maybe you were journaling or just sitting quietly and trying to meditate and you have kind of that lightning strike of information that comes and that insight that comes in. You can't access that level of knowing and consciousness when you're constantly going. And so that rest allows your brain to open up to other possibilities and that intuition to seep in and offer you information that maybe we've been overlooking.

So how do we take aligned breaks? And even more so, how do we do this well?

How do you take a break that actually serves you rather than leaving you more stressed when you come back?

I want to offer you a very simple framework that you can use anytime you're feeling the need to pause, but you're having a really hard time pulling away because you don't want to lose traction.

One, set and intention. What do you want from the break? Is it rest? Is it clarity? Is it space? Is it recovery? Be really specific. When I have to kind of pry my eyeballs away from my screen and go take a break because I know I'm getting so swept up in it, for me, that pause is always clarity. Or I can really ask myself, why am I feeling so frenzied and rushed to get this done? And is that serving me? And what does that really

about and what am I maybe overlooking by just going, going, going and not stopping and really thinking about what I'm doing and how it fits into the bigger picture.

Whatever your reasoning may be, we have to get clear on why we're taking the break and be honest with ourselves about that intention. And that can help us decide, okay, what do I need to do with this break time and what should the break look like when we're clear on the intention to begin with?

Second, we set boundaries. We have to let other people know when we're taking a break. And this is something I see attorneys struggle with a lot because remember, there's that guilt and kind of shame that comes with taking a break. And I'm letting other people down. They're going to judge me. They're all working really hard. So why do I deserve a break? And so we try to be sneaky about our breaks, which honestly just creates more discomfort and makes it harder to rest, reset.

and recover because now we're just paranoid if anybody has noticed that we're not answering it right away or if anyone's mad at us because we're not responding immediately to those Slack messages. So own it and communicate it, right? A legal team is supposed to operate as a team. And if you're on the basketball court and your player off to the right decides to take a break and not tell you, you're not going to pass the ball there, right? You kind of want to know that they're not going to be there.

And so as a legal team, we have to kind of use that same logic. If you're going to take a break, you need to let other people know so they're not passing things to you in that moment expecting you to catch them. Be a good teammate, be a good communicator and learn to process that guilt and discomfort that comes from communicating the break. If you don't do that, it's never going to be easy to take a break. You're never going to develop new neural pathways

that allow you to step away and process that shame and fear and guilt that comes with it. When you don't let other people know, we let the shame, fear and guilt drive the boat. And they're always gonna win until we learn how to handle them differently. So this may mean using an out of office message, letting people know I'm gonna be away from my email from this time to this time. I'm taking the afternoon off for personal reasons. Maybe block off your calendar.

and be very clear when you will be returning and available again. You don't owe everyone 24 hour access to you and it's impossible. There are so many times we have to go to doctor's appointments or kids appointments and we're not able to respond right away. There's no reason you can't employ that same kind of a boundary for your own rest.

and recovery. So this one is really critical and I'm really encouraging you not to skip it because that is the inclination that I see again and again and again. And now you've just miscommunicated to your team, which creates more frustration than you actually taking a break and stepping away for a moment, which they will likely understand. Ghosting everyone just pisses everybody off and makes them not trust you to show up and be accountable and honest with them about your needs.

Number three, consider mini touch points. This is actually what I see most attorneys use as kind of a starting point for their breaks and rest and reset ⁓ moments because it is so accessible. And what I mean by a mini touch point is that if taking a break causes a lot of anxiety and unplugging makes you very uncomfortable, let's start with maybe taking 10 minutes.

to step away and maybe you journal, maybe you check in with yourself, you go for a walk alone to the coffee shop down the street, get some fresh air, but start very small.

and find space to check in with yourself and not focus on work. And so however that may look for you, make it small, make it meaningful, and make the intention clear that this is my time to think about something other than work and really check in with myself and see how I am doing.

a simple journal prompt that might be useful for these types of pauses, at least initially, is to journal about what's working for me today. What's frustrating me today? What do I wish was different today? And just see what comes up.

You will be amazed what your mind and body kind of offer you when you check in and ask like, hey, what's going on with me that I'm not noticing while I'm sprinting down this road of work every day. And sometimes those insights can be incredibly powerful in identifying and spotting burnout before it happens.

Four, manage your energy. And this really focuses on what replenishes you. I'm an introvert, so for me, finding quiet time alone and away from other humans is an absolute must. Usually it's nature, sometimes it's kind of going off on my own and doing some yoga or meditation, but figure out what actually replenishes your.

energy. And I mean, not just laying on the couch because, this woman on the internet told me that I need to take breaks. That probably doesn't replenish most people. Scrolling on your phone also probably does not replenish you. So pay attention to your energy and see if you can start identifying activities that make you feel more energized and excited about life. It could be

Being with nature, could be movement, silence, laughter, connecting with friends, a phone call to a family member. Figure out what that thing is that builds your energy back up and find space for that in your life.

Plan for re-entry. Give yourself a soft landing when you return. So maybe if you planned a long weekend or an afternoon off, don't stack 20 meetings on the first day back. And this is what I see again and again and again when we take vacations. We always know that there's so much pain leading up to the vacation. It's always super stressful. By the time we get on vacation, we're just so wound up that it takes forever for us to unwind.

recognize that that's kind of our pattern and anticipate that that's how we're going to feel. And so we have to sort of recognize that when we come back from these breaks, the last thing we need is to hit the ground running because usually it's taken us so long to unwind anyway that the last thing we want to do is get ramped up again the second we get back. So be kind to yourself and allow that first day back to be simple.

and easy sort of ease in review your goals re center maybe it's you spend the whole day triaging your inbox

in with your team, creating a to-do list, looking at your calendar and just kind of navigating life moving forward, but not actually planning on doing a whole lot of productive work that first day back.

There is nothing better than taking a vacation or a break and coming back and seeing that you were kind to yourself in planning this break and seeing that maybe the day after your vacation, the day after your long weekend, you block the whole day off just to kind of get your feet underneath you. It is such a good feeling to be able to give gratitude to that past version of you who looked out for that future you.

that is trying to regroup and trying to maintain energy and momentum.

Okay, this may sound all fine and good, but truly we have to address kind of the elephant in the room, and that is the guilt and shame and fear that often accompanies taking breaks.

Those emotions are incredibly normal, especially for people who have built their identity around being reliable or being the go-to person or the fixer for the people around them. So when you step away from that a little bit and put a boundary in place, it's gonna challenge that idea of who we are and where our value comes from. And so we have to own

that there is going to be a certain level of discomfort that comes from not always putting yourself out there to be the go-to person and instead saying, you know what, no, I need a break and I need some space. It's inevitably not going to feel good and that's okay.

And it's especially okay because taking that rest, taking that break is the most responsible thing to do. It is irresponsible to continually run yourself into burnout where you need extended periods of time to regroup. The more responsible path is to take small breaks and time off where you need them so that you can recharge and maintain that momentum. Instead of having these extreme highs of productivity,

and stream lows following burnout. That is not a responsible teammate. Breaks are simply part of the work in sustaining momentum and forward progress.

It may be useful to reconsider the way that you're thinking about boundaries in these instances. They're not barriers. We're not cutting people off. They're bridges for us to show up better, to be better people, to have better energy and better output. Not everybody's gonna like it and that's okay. But I assure you that nobody is going to like it if you burn yourself out and have to take a ton of time off of work to regroup.

So we have to sort of embrace these boundaries aren't gonna go over well with everybody, but everybody is going to appreciate your continued momentum and sustainable output. And so we have to reframe it as boundaries are a good and positive thing for the relationship in the long run. One way to think about these types of breaks is that rest is really your fuel.

I do a lot of long road trips back to visit family and friends. And usually the road trips are about three and a half, four hours. And sometimes I do them twice in a day, depending upon what I'm doing. And I hate stopping to get gas. I hate it. I feel like it just like really messes with my vibe. It messes with the momentum that I've built. Like I just want to keep going, but it's not possible. And our lives are no different. We can't just sprint.

100 % of the time. We have to take water breaks. We have to take bathroom breaks. We got to eat. We have to get our own fuel. And so we have to start thinking about those breaks as a way to refuel so that we can keep going. It's not a sign of weakness. It's not a sign of failure. It's nothing to be embarrassed or feel guilty about. The reason that you feel those emotions and they feel so powerful is because you haven't tried any other way. Because once you start trying a new route,

and pushing through those feelings of guilt and fear and shame, they will lessen and your mindset and your neural pathways will shift to, need to do this and this is the right thing for me to refuel. And those emotions will become a lot quieter.

I think one of the most important things about taking these thoughtful and intentional breaks is that it allows us to choose to be more present in our life, not just productive in our work. And when we just choose productivity and we just, but when we just choose productivity and we just choose to keep going in our work, we disconnect.

from our life and we become less present in what's actually happening in our lives, in our minds, and in our hearts. And that's why these sort of intentional breaks to check in with ourselves, with the bigger picture are so essential because it allows us to sort of see what's really happening with me in my life. Am I good? Am I not good? How am I really feeling about things? What's working? What's not working? And allows us to have those check-ins.

before any of those underlying issues get so loud, everything has to come to a screeching halt because we've ignored them for so long.

So this month I want you to take a breath and ask yourself what a nourishing break would look like for me this month. What will replenish my energy in my own unique way? And don't be a perfectionist about it. We don't have to take days off or a whole afternoon off. Start with 10 minutes. 10 minute walk in nature, 10 minute journaling, 10 minutes to get outside and go grab that coffee. Start small and see and pay attention to

what builds your energy back up and allows you to show up as a better version of yourself as opposed to that frantic and panicked working from fight or flight energy all day long.

If you're someone who is ready to explore how to build a more sustainable momentum in your career or life, I would love to support you. this something that is very core to the work that I do with my coaching clients. Head over to the LawyerLifeCollective.com and sign up for a virtual coffee with me so we can talk about what's working for you, what's not working for you, and see if I'm the right fit for you.

or dive in and get that one hour free coaching consultation and I'll offer you some support and you can see if I'm the right fit for you and maybe get you just what you need on that first call.

If nothing else, be sure to sign up for this month's newsletter where we will dig more into the topics of burnout and sustainable breaks to maintain momentum. You can sign up for the newsletter at thelawyerelifecollective.com. Until next time, honor your rhythm and trust your energy and remember,

Rest is progress. Not resting only leads to destruction and longer pauses.

Thanks again for joining me this week. If you found this information helpful, be sure to follow this podcast, leave a like, thumbs up or comment on your podcast listening platform. I would so appreciate it. And if there are any topics that you would like to hear more about in the future, be sure to send an email to autumn at the lawyerlifecollective.com.

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As always my friends, thanks so much for listening and thanks for sharing with your friends.