It’s time to really unplug on vacation

“I just came back from vacation! It was great. Of course, I had to check my email daily and manage a few things, and there were a couple of calls I had to be on. But other than that, it was terrific.” 

I hear this all the time, and I bet you do, too. I get it. I took vacations this way for the first 15 or so years I ran my business. 

There were three reasons why I felt obligated to work on my vacations:

It seemed like the responsible thing to do. Because I was in a leadership position, I believed that part of my job was to keep an eye on things, and never truly step away. 

I didn’t feel it was ok to ask people to wait. It can be hard, if not impossible, to set a boundary with a client, boss, or colleague. I felt I had to be immediately responsive, and that it was inappropriate to put my desire to unplug over what they needed, regardless of the true urgency of the situation. 

I didn’t always have someone who could cover for me. I got better and better at hiring amazing people who were able to lead and make decisions in my absence, but that wasn’t always the case. There were also times when situations emerged that had to be handled by me given the unique nature of my role. 

I also took shorter (one week) vacations because it seemed more realistic to go away for less time. I didn’t like the feeling that pulling out my laptop on vacation gave me– a sort of dull sense of anxiety– but it seemed like the cost of taking any vacation at all. 

One year, though, something shifted. I really need to unplug– I could feel it inside me. So I tried an experiment. I put an autoresponder on my email that was something like this: 

I am on vacation and fully unplugging until (date). I will be back in the office on (date), and will likely read this email within the first two days I return. I will not be checking email on vacation. If you are contacting me about something that can’t wait until I return, please contact: (name/email) about (topic) issues, or (name/email) for (other topic) issues. Thank you for helping me have a restorative vacation. 

I asked my colleagues who were listed in my autoresponder to leave some time to keep an eye out for things, and talked with them about what I imagined was most likely to come up. We discussed what I wanted them to handle directly, what I thought could wait, and the circumstances in which I would want them to call me and disrupt my vacation. 

It worked like a charm. My colleagues called or texted me only when something came up that they felt couldn’t wait and really required my attention, which almost never happened. The folks who got my autoresponder often wrote back congratulating me for unplugging, and noting that the matter could wait for my return. 

I quickly felt the mental and physical effects of taking real time off. Three or four days in to a vacation, my shoulders began to relax. I’d be sleeping better. My mind would dwell less on work-related topics and more in the moment. I’d feel more at ease just sitting doing nothing. Pretty soon, a week wasn’t enough, and I started taking two weeks off. With the ability to truly unplug over a longer time period, I noticed how transformative a good vacation could really be, even if it was a “staycation”. Two weeks (or more) gave me time to truly forget about work, center myself, family, and friends, and be someone other than “work me”. I even took a sabbatical where I unplugged from work  for 10 weeks entirely, and received only one work-related phone call during that time. 

It’s clear to me now that the beliefs which kept me working during vacation were established by growing up in a society that values and teaches productivity and achievement above the needs of individuals. I had internalized those norms, as had the folks I worked with, which kept us feeling like we have to remain on the hamster wheel of work all the time. 

When slowing the pace or limiting the hours of daily work feels like a “win” (rather than an unacceptable compromise) we may be prioritizing work and productivity over our own needs. Isn’t that antithetical to what a vacation is meant to be? 

As your next vacation approaches, I encourage you to explore the unspoken beliefs and expectations in your work environment and your own ideas about unplugging. Are there steps you can realistically take that will give you more opportunities to rest, relax, and recharge without thinking about work? And if you’re not in a position that allows you the agency to set up and enforce some of the boundaries this requires, can you share this blog (or similiar articles) with colleagues and plant some seeds for future change?

Setting healthy and realistic boundaries can benefit everyone. It gives you the time off you really need to recharge, while modeling for others that work isn’t everything. Let me know how it goes.