In my experience, taking a break in your mind is the hardest part.
Taking a break from work is easy: you call in for the day, or you wait for a scheduled school break or vacation. But teachers and conductors are inveterate workers – I know many who take days off in order to work more or who regularly sacrifice their weekends for their students.
Still, the easy part. In my experience, the brain keeps going even when you’ve physically stopped.
Now, I have certain work I do virtually every day (like, for example, what I’m doing right now). Taking a break from that work is hard but can be done with planning and scheduling. (I’m planning some of that right now.) Similarly, we all have home care work that must be done every day…dishes, making the bed, laundry. It goes on even when you’re on a break.
All of that can be mastered, though, too. You can use paper plates or get ahead on laundry. That’s not the hard part, either.
The hard part is that the brain keeps thinking. I keep thinking about my students and their needs. I keep writing music in my head, and theoretically solving problems that I won’t get to actually solve for a couple of weeks, still. And I find it hard to dip into a book, my mind wandering back to work.
The only solution I’ve found combining practice and vigilance. I insist on sitting with a book, I insist on distracting myself from work rather than distracting myself with work.
I know I’ll appreciate the mental break when things start going again.