It’s perfectly okay to take a few days off work.

When you find your productivity falling, or that you are procrastinating, the right thing to do is not to force yourself to work more.

The mind needs to relax, as does the body.

Overfill it with work and you don’t give it space to function.

The result is inefficient work and mistakes.

But there are a few things you need to be careful of:

1. Don’t substitute one mental activity with another. Movies and games are a mental activity. Spending too much time on these will not allow your brain to rest. Rather you will get exhausted and lose energy.

2. Stepping away from technology and doing physical activity will help your mind rest.

3. Know when to start working again. Set a schedule for returning to work. If you find yourself avoiding work after having rested a few days, there is an underlying issue that needs to be resolved. Procrastination and laziness are just symptoms.

4. Be real with yourself. If you’ve developed an addiction – such as a game addiction, know when to discipline yourself. If you can’t set boundaries, be ready to delete the game or get professional help.

5. Sometimes you need to get it out of your system. At times you might binge watch a program for a couple of days and start to think “oh no, I’m becoming unproductive,” but this is just a process and a few days later, you should be back to your productive self. You’ll need to be alert and may have to make a conscious decision to stop the pastime activity. However, it’s easier when you get it out of your system.