How I Spent My Christmas Break: 5 Days of Deep Work

As most people were winding down from Christmas Eve to the 28th, I did something a little different.

I gave my team the week off, told our clients we were on holiday break, and then quietly disappeared into our codebase.

Running a 24/7 ops company means “off” time is rare. There are always pings, messages, fires, and decisions waiting. This was my first real five-day window in a long time with no calls, no Slack noise, and almost no social media. Sleep? Pretty optional.

Why I chose to work on holiday

On paper, it sounds strange: everyone is on vacation, and the founder is working.

But what I wanted from this break wasn’t rest, it was focus. The kind that is almost impossible to get when you’re context switching all day.

I’ve had a list of technical things I wanted to do for months:

• Clean up tech debt that we’ve been working around
• Refactor parts of the system that only get quick fixes during busy weeks
• Improve some “invisible” pieces of infrastructure that matter a lot but never feel urgent

This week finally gave me permission to go heads down.

What I actually got done

With no one needing me in real time, the days looked simple: wake up, code, walk, code, repeat.

Across those five days, I managed to:

• Jump back into the code and fix bugs that usually hide in the daily hustle
• Clear out old tech mess and simplify pieces that were getting too complex
• Make core parts of our system faster, safer, and easier to work on for the team

It didn’t feel like a grind. It felt like finally scratching an itch that had been there for months.

Why this kind of deep work matters

These quiet days won’t show up directly on a marketing dashboard.

But they will show up in fewer incidents, faster shipping, and a team that can move more confidently when everyone is back.

For me as a founder, it was also a reset.

Stepping back into the code reminded me why I started building in the first place and gave me a clearer sense of where we should take the product next.

I’m not done yet, but this short “deep work retreat” over Christmas was a total win.

Over to you

If you’re a founder, builder, or maker:

When was the last time you had real, uninterrupted time to build?

And how do you protect that kind of deep work in your own schedule?

And how do you protect that kind of deep work in your own schedule?