Vacations, Productivity, and Work Life Balance

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I just got back from a short vacation to Okinawa, Japan.

A few days away gave me space to recalibrate. Not just my goals for 2025, but how I think about work itself.

Whether you’re a 9-to-5 employee, a small business owner, or a content creator, I think we all need to rethink what productivity, vacations, and work-life balance actually mean.

And in this week’s video, I share a bit more about my personal experience with my ongoing journey from the corporate world to the creator economy.

Let’s dive in.

How Productive Are You Really?

If you work a 9-5 job, be honest:

How many hours per week are you actually productive?

Conversely, how much of your work day is bloated with:

• Meetings that could have been emails

• Socializing and chit-chat with co-workers

• Lunch / coffee / smoke / bathroom breaks

• Context switching from one work task to the next

Or worst of all… doing some tedious work task because it is required of you, but that you know deep down is not the most important thing you could be working on?

I met with a friend over coffee recently, and I asked him about his new tech job. He said that he loves it, and he estimates that he works about 20 hours per week.

I bet many of you reading this are in a similar boat.

But there a couple things you can do about it.

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Are You Working On Your Top Goal?

At some point in my tech career, I was introduced to the Mochary Method.

It’s a work-style that Matt Mochary uses to coach CEOs and Founders including Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, Naval Ravikant of AngelList, Sam Altman of OpenAI, and many more.

There’s an extensive curriculum involved but there’s one core premise that resonated the most with me, and that I want to share with you.

He calls it the “Top Goal”:

Mochary primarily worked with high-flying tech CEOs, but he says this method can work for anyone and everyone.

Think back to your typical work week again:

How many hours are you spending on the most important thing you could be doing?

I’m guessing the answer for many of you will be low, especially if you work a 9-to-5 job.

If you’re still happy in your 9-5 job, this approach will absolutely make you a top-performing employee. The average is a low-bar nowadays. If you want to speed-run your way up the corporate ladder, give this a shot.

But what if you’re not happy with your job?

The Difficult Transition from Corporate to Creator

If you aspire to quit your job and start your own business one day, you might already be frustrated by this notion.

Why am I wasting so much time at work? What if I could capture the full value of my work, instead of my employer?

And if you’re already a business owner / content creator, you’re probably already extremely aware of how productive (or unproductive) your time is being spent.

Because in my experience, and in my wife’s experience, and in the experience of many entrepreneurs and creators I’ve spoken with, anything other than the most important thing can feel unproductive.

To put it in a slightly different way:

• As a 9-5 employee, we often convince ourselves that we’re being productive for 40 hours per week… when in reality, we’re not being that productive.

• As a content creator or business owner, if we’re not productive for 40 hours per week, it can feel like we’re not doing enough… when in reality, we’re likely doing a lot more than we think.

It’s a conundrum that I hear often from creators and I’ve seen it lead to burnout time and time again.

And that brings me to vacations.

The Purpose of a Vacation

As a reminder, I worked for about 10 years at various tech startups across sales, marketing and product.

Now, I’m an independent creator. I create my own schedule. My wife is also an independent creator who creates her own schedule.

The most noticeable mindset shift we’ve experienced is how we approach vacations.

Back in the corporate world, a vacation was truly an escape.

We mostly dreaded work, so a vacation served as the one (maybe two) times per year that we could disassociate completely and pretend to live another life.

Many 9-5 workers desperately crave a life other than the one they’re living.

But what if you are already living the life you’re living?

• What if you absolutely love your job?

• What if you’re a content creator with full control over your own schedule?

• What if you’re an entrepreneur building the business you’ve always wanted to build?

Wouldn’t a vacation feel… different?

Well, yes it would. And it should!

When I meet an entrepreneur or content creator, I can almost always tell if they came from a corporate background. One of the biggest tells is that they feel guilty about not doing enough.

The creators that never worked in corporate don’t feel this same guilt. And ironically, they probably get more done as a result of that freedom.

There’s a quote that I absolutely love from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and many other books on complexity in the modern world.

I — and many other entrepreneurs that transition from corporate life — cling to the structure and rules dictated by the old system… and this can blind us from the amazing experiences that the new system provides.

Action Items

As mentioned at the outset, this my best attempt to organize the many thoughts I had on vacation.

And I hope it helps you depending on where you’re at in your career.

If you’re in a 9-5:

• Be honest about how many hours you're actually productive.

• Question whether your schedule serves you, or if you're just surviving it.

• Remember: 40 hours is a social construct, not a success metric.

If you're a creator or entrepreneur:

• Redefine productivity. Busy ≠ effective.

• Give yourself grace. You don’t need to “earn” rest.

• Don't turn your dream job into a job you need a vacation from.

I’m one year into my content creator journey, and I’m still figuring it out as I go. But as always, my goal with Wealth Potion is to share what I’m learning along the way — in case it helps you through a similar transition.

To your prosperity,

Brandon @ Wealth Potion