You Can Love Your Job And Take A Vacation
The only way to sustain high performance over a long time or rapid change is to take breaks. Taking the time to recover means you love your job.
I was coaching a Director-level client who is a top 1% high-performer in her organization. She was driven, wickedly smart, and exhausted. For the last year, she executed critical strategy shifts, incubated AI initiatives, and grew her team.
“I love my job!” she said, “But I need a vacation. I haven’t taken one in a long time.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“No one has said I can take one,” she reflected, “and I worry that my team can’t continue to deliver top-notch performance without me.”
Silicon Valley ranks among the worst 5 regions in the U.S. for work‑life balance, with ~72% of professionals reporting it as poor. If the company offered “unlimited vacation days”, most employees did not take any days off. When I was at Thumbtack, we had this vacation policy, and the CEO had to mandate employees to use vacation days and institute a two-week company shutdown in December. Starting from the top, employees feel obligated to deliver higher impact quarter over quarter, trying to hang on through layoffs until they are mentally and emotionally burned out.
It is impossible to do your best work when you are mentally and emotionally exhausted. When a rubber band is stretched constantly over time, it breaks. When it is allowed to recover, it maintains its resilience over time.
Taking time off does not mean you do not love your job. On the contrary, it means you want to sustainably and consistently show up at your best.
If you work at a creativity-driven leadership job, the impact you deliver is not correlated with the amount of time at your desk. We are most creative and effective at solving complex challenges when we are well-rested. It requires you to do the hard work of setting boundaries, protecting your and your team’s priorities, and planning for the long term.
For those who are worried about the next layoff, time at the job doesn’t lead to job security or promotions. Doing a poor to mediocre job or missing project timelines will lead to less job security.
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How To Take Time Off Effectively
How do you make room for time off for yourself? You’ll never “find” time. You MAKE time.
Book the vacation: Go to your calendar NOW, and book the time 1-2 months out when there isn’t a critical launch date, annual planning, or performance reviews. Make it at least 2 days, ideally one week.
Control the narrative: In your next 1:1, let your manager know that you will be taking a few days off to recharge and recover, so that you’ll be able to sustainably deliver high impact for years to come. Deliver the same message to your team, your peers, and your cross-functional counterparts.
Set up your team: Track what tasks come your way, and develop a plan to uplevel the team to handle them at a higher quality on their own. Practice delegating well and ensure you don’t get pulled back into the daily work.
Encourage others to recover: As a team, you’re as strong as your weakest link. Lead by example. Then encourage others to make time to recover and recharge.
The only way to sustain high performance over a long time or rapid change is to take breaks. Like high-intensity interval workouts, the key is to break up the work into short sprints with rest in between to recover. Rather than simply encouraging yourself and your team to “just get through it”, make the recovery an essential part of the cycle.
And on that note, I will also be heading on vacation with my family for the next ~two weeks. See you at the end of August!
Yue
And I would advise not to stick it just to one mega break. Take your time off regularly with prolonged weekends during the year. Even small bits can make a great difference!
Agree 100%.
In Italy we are used to take 2-3 weeks vacation in August, so everyone is desperately waiting to go on vacation during these 20+ days, but really everyone is on vacation during these days.
So if you’re working (to guarantee business continuity), nothing big can be move forward, and if you’re on vacation, everyone else is on vacation at the same time, so no place is actually relaxing, but just full of people trying to relax.
And if you take 1-2 weeks vacation in a different time you’ll feel somehow guilty.