This week, I drove four hours out of town for my great aunt's funeral.
She was an astounding 97. She'd lived on the coast my whole life, in a town my family used to visit every summer when I was growing up. I hadn't been back in exactly ten years. I left as a quirky 14-year-old and returned as a confident 24-year-old who'd built a brand, an audience, and a business in the time between visits. At the funeral, I had to reintroduce myself to family members who couldn't recognize the woman I'd become.
The trip itself was simple. My dad and I drove down the night before to stay with cousins. In the morning, we got ready and drove to the church for mass. The pews were essentially full of mostly family because my family is huge. Afterwards, we all went to a luncheon at a private venue on the ocean canal. I spent the day off my phone, greeting people I hadn't seen since I was a teenager, offering condolences, and hearing stories about my great aunt that I'd never heard before.
I didn't look at my phone until we were in the car driving home that night. Much to my surprise, I found fifteen orders waiting for me.
Without my daily posting. Without my constant DMing. Without my replying to every comment within ten minutes. Without me being chained to my phone the way I'd been for the previous six months. Fifteen women had bought my planner while I was sitting in a church remembering my great aunt.
I cried.
For months I had been operating on a single fear: that the moment I stopped working, the business would die. I am the only employee. I'm the only marketing engine. I'm the only customer service. I post the content, I write the emails, I pack the orders, I do everything. So somewhere along the way I'd convinced myself that the second I stopped showing up, everything would collapse.
Those fifteen orders proved otherwise. The world didn't end. It went on. That was a major breakthrough for me.
The Pattern That Got Me Here
Before I tell you what changed, I need to tell you what my life had become.
A typical day for me looks like this. I wake up at 8 AM and immediately start answering emails, comments, and DMs from bed. I pack orders to ship. I get ready and record videos. I leave the house to drop off the orders, then go to the gym to edit videos on the treadmill. I stop at a cafe for a liquid lunch (a matcha latte) and continue working on my laptop — writing articles, building email campaigns, communicating with manufacturers, getting anything else on my list done. I come home to record more videos and prep supplies to pack more orders in the morning. All while engaging on social media. All day, every day.
There is no weekend. There is no day where the work turns off. I don't look forward to going out to dinner. I don't look forward to anything other than what's next on my to-do list. My downtime, what little of it exists, is spent reading a book about how to do better work, or eating dinner while I scroll my own analytics.
I lost my sense of work-life balance because my work became my life and my life became my work. I stopped prioritizing socializing. I was lucky to fit in time for the gym. I wasn't eating breakfast. Sometimes I wasn't eating lunch. I was sliding, slowly, into a version of myself that I didn't recognize and didn't have the energy to notice.
The work then followed me into my sleep. I would dream about the business. I'd wake up at 4 AM worried about deadlines and inventory orders. I would close my eyes and see the inside of my email inbox.
I knew it wasn't sustainable. But the fear was bigger than the knowing. The fear was that if I paused for one day, everything I'd built would unravel.
So I never paused.
Why Women Especially Are Afraid to Rest
Before I get into what changed, I want to name something.
The kind of overworking I'm describing is not gender-neutral. Women do it differently than men do it. We carry it differently. We're punished differently for stopping.
We're expected to have it together at all times. To handle other people's responsibilities while seeming like it comes naturally. To be feminine and beautiful and composed while accomplishing it all. We're racing each other and we're racing some impossible internal standard at the same time. As a self-proclaimed girl boss it becomes a 24/7 commitment, and nothing about it comes easily.
I'll be honest. I envy slow living. I read about women who can be okay with moving slowly and I cannot imagine it. I always want more. I always want to push. I love that about myself, and I don't think it's something I'm going to outgrow.
I'm not telling you to be a slow living woman if you're not one. There's nothing wrong with wanting to push. Some women are wired for it. Some women are not. Both are beautiful.
What I am telling you is that even women who are wired to push need to take days off. Burnout takes ambitious women off the field permanently. The point isn't to stop being ambitious but to stay ambitious long enough to actually reach the thing you're trying to accomplish.
For solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, content creators, and small business owners specifically, this is harder than people realize. You're in the driver's seat. Every moment you're awake is a moment you could be working on your thing. There's no boss telling you to clock out. There's no HR system reminding you to use your vacation days. The structure that exists for corporate workers does not exist for you, so you have to build it yourself.
And for the corporate baddies reading this, the same principle applies. You're overworking too. You're answering Slack messages at 11 PM. You're saying yes to every project. You're treating your vacation days like they're optional. You're afraid that if you take a step back, someone else will fill the space. That fear is its own kind of trap.
We all have a version of this. The flavors are different. The fear is the same.
What Burnout Actually Costs
There's research on this. The numbers are not subtle.
Chronic overwork is one of the strongest predictors of burnout, and burnout has measurable consequences for both your body and your business. Workers experiencing burnout are significantly more likely to make mistakes, lose focus, miss deadlines, and produce lower-quality work than they did before they were burned out. The thing you're trying to protect with overworking is the thing overworking is destroying.
The physical costs are real too. Chronic stress contributes to disrupted sleep, immune dysfunction, anxiety, depression, and a host of other downstream effects. The women who push hardest for the longest are not the women who win. The women who push hard and rest strategically are the ones who get to the finish line.
You are not impressive because you can't take a day off. You are at risk.
The Day Off That Changed How I Think
The funeral wasn't a vacation. It was a sad day. I was grieving and I was honoring someone I loved.
But it was also the first full day I'd taken off in months. No posting. No DMs. No comments. No emails. No phone. The phone was in my bag and the bag was somewhere else.
I had to actually be present with my family. I listened to stories. I hugged people I hadn't seen since I was a teenager and watched them realize who I'd become. I sat at the luncheon table and ate real food and looked at old photos of my great aunt as a young woman and younger photos of myself even and remembered, for the first time in months, that I am a person who has a family and a history and a life outside of an iPhone screen.
The day had been one of the best days I'd had in months. I felt grounded. I felt connected. I felt like a human being instead of a brand operator. I felt like the version of Jules who existed before the business consumed her was still in there somewhere, and she'd just been waiting for the world to be quiet enough for her to come out.
That's the part nobody tells you about taking a real day off. It's not just rest but a reunion with yourself and your values.
How to Actually Take a Day Off (When Work Is Your Whole Life)
If you're reading this and your business or job feels like it would collapse the moment you stopped, I want to give you some actual tactics.
Schedule content in advance. If you're a creator, you can batch a week's worth of content in one Sunday and schedule it across your platforms. The content goes out without you. People don't know you're not actively posting. This is the single biggest unlock for taking a day off as a creator.
Set up auto-responders. Email and DM auto-responders that say "I'm taking the day off and will respond tomorrow" do not lose you customers. They build trust. They signal that you're a real human and not a content machine. Set them up before the day off so you don't have to think about it.
Go no-phone, not just no-work. This is the most important rule. Having a day off where you scroll TikTok and check Instagram every hour is not a day off. A real day off means the phone goes in another room, in your bag, in a drawer, somewhere you have to walk to get it. The grounding effect of a no-phone day is dramatically different from a no-work day. Try it once and you'll feel it.
Pick the day in advance. Don't wait for the day to feel right. It will never feel right. Look at your calendar, pick a day, and protect it like a non-negotiable meeting. Saturday. Sunday. A random Wednesday. It doesn't matter which day. It matters that you commit to it before your overworking brain has a chance to argue.
Have something planned. A free day with no plan turns into anxiety because your overworking brain doesn't know what to do with itself. Plan something restorative. See family. Go to the beach. Have an actual brunch with a friend. Spend the day reading a physical book.
Notice what happens. When the day is over, check what didn't catch on fire. The orders that still came in. The followers who didn't unfollow. The clients who didn't leave. The world that didn't end. Collect the evidence. It's the only thing that will make taking the next day off easier.
For corporate women, the same principles apply with different vocabulary. Take the vacation day. Don't check Slack. Put up an out-of-office. Trust that your manager will still respect you on Monday. The corporate fear of "appearing replaceable" is the same fear entrepreneurs have about their business, and it's the same lie.
What I Carry With Me Now
The funeral changed how I think about my business and what I owe myself.
I will still work hard. I'm not converting to slow living. I'm still going to wake up tomorrow and pack orders and record videos and write articles and chase the version of this business I know it can become. I am wired to push and I am not apologizing for it.
But I'm not afraid anymore.
I know my business can run for a day without me. I know taking time off does not mean losing what I've built. I know that the woman I am at the luncheon table and the woman I am at my laptop are the same woman, and she deserves to exist in both places without guilt.
If I'd taken a day off three months ago, I don't know if I would have come back to 15 orders. The business might not have been ready. But this funeral was a test, and the business passed.
Now I can take the next day off without my body forcing me into it.
The Permission Slip
If you've read this far, I think you're someone who needed to hear this.
You're allowed to take a day off. You're allowed to take it without earning it first. You're allowed to take it even when work is technically waiting. You're allowed to take it even when you're afraid the world will fall apart in your absence.
The world will not fall apart. The people who depend on you will be fine. The business will be there in the morning. The job will be there on Monday. The Slack messages will wait. The inbox will wait. The orders will keep coming, or they won't, but either way the day off is not what determines it.
What determines it is whether you stay alive long enough to keep building. Burnout takes you off the field permanently. Rest puts you back in the game tomorrow.
Pick a day this week. Schedule the content. Set the auto-responder. Put the phone in a drawer. Go do something with people you love or in a place that feels good or just in your own bed with a book and an iced coffee.
You're allowed.
The world won't end. I promise.
— Jules
If this resonated, the PRS Method is the system I built to actually take care of myself while still building everything I'm building. Start with [the cornerstone article on PRS] or read about [how to plan your life in 12-week quarters] to start building rest into your weeks instead of waiting for a crisis to force it.
0 comments