
Kayakers enjoy exploring Apostle Islands' sea caves on calm Lake Superior. Phot courtesy U.S. National Park Service.
Unless your company has a vacation shutdown, you might experience some difficulty in getting away. Work might seem to have an invisible chain linking you to your desk — keeping you from taking two weeks in the sun or even touring your hometown. What can you do to break that chain?
- Walk before you run
- For anything that we find difficult to do, practicing on something easier is a great strategy. If taking a couple of weeks off is difficult, practice first with something smaller.
- Take an afternoon off. Maybe you have a reserve of "personal days" to draw from. But if you don't, here's something even easier: next time you're sick, actually take a sick day. Or a sick afternoon.
- Start planning way early
- Start planning about six months ahead of your target vacation date. If you want to take time off in August, start planning in March.
- Compared to what you normally do, a vacation isn't all that complicated, so why does it take six months to plan your vacation? It doesn't. You don't use the time for planning your vacation — you use it for planning your work. Sequence things — or schedule your vacation — so that crunches are unlikely in the month before you leave.
- If politics is a factor, align with Power
- Work can seem to be
an invisible chain
tying you to your desk - Not much will happen while Power is away on vacation. At least, nothing permanent. Oh, you might miss out on a chance to be the designated stand-in, but your boss will have arranged things so that nothing important will happen during that period anyway.
- Timing your vacation to occur either during or just before your boss's vacation will help you feel better about your absence.
- Tell the ones you love
- Say out loud to those you love that you want to take a vacation, and then work out the dates with them.
- This agreement locks you in. Backing out becomes much more difficult, not only because of their reactions, but also because you won't want to disappoint them. An explicit, open commitment is the key to balancing your priorities.
- Reframe
- For some of us, part of the difficulty in getting away traces to an unrealistic assessment of our own importance. In the actual scale of things, most of us can easily go missing for short periods without affecting normal operations.
- Everyone else at work already knows this about you. Your only task is accepting it yourself.
Finally, I'd suggest that when you do go on vacation, you leave your cell phone behind, but I'm guessing that you'll just ignore that idea. So instead, promise yourself that you won't respond to text or voice messages from work. Few of us are so important that taking a few days off would affect the expansion rate of the Universe. Top
Next Issue
Love the work but not the job? Bad boss, long commute, troubling ethical questions, hateful colleague? This ebook looks at what we can do to get more out of life at work. It helps you get moving again! Read Go For It! Sometimes It's Easier If You Run, filled with tips and techniques for putting zing into your work life. Order Now!
Your comments are welcome
Would you like to see your comments posted here? rbrenDJpmhgyaDTwBQXkhner@ChacmGoYuzfZpOvDQdRkoCanyon.comSend me your comments by email, or by Web form.About Point Lookout
Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and
found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.
This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.
Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.
Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.
Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.
Related articles
More articles on Emotions at Work:
The Unappreciative Boss
- Do you work for a boss who doesn't appreciate you? Do you feel ignored or excessively criticized? If
you do, life can be a misery, if you make it so. Or you can work around it. It's up to you to choose.
Inappropriate Levels of Regard
- The regard we have for others as people is sometimes influenced by the regard we have for the work they
do. Confusing the two is a dangerous error.
Fooling Ourselves
- Humans have impressive abilities to convince themselves of things that are false. One explanation for
this behavior is the theory of cognitive dissonance.
Ego Depletion: An Introduction
- Ego depletion is a recently discovered phenomenon that limits our ability to regulate our own behavior.
It explains such seemingly unrelated phenomena as marketing campaign effectiveness, toxic conflict contagion,
and difficulty losing weight.
Dealing with Deniable Intimidation
- Some people use intimidation so stealthily that only their targets recognize the behavior as abusive
or intimidating. Targets are often so frustrated, angered, and confused that they cannot find suitable
responses.
See also Emotions at Work and Emotions at Work for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming May 14: Working with the Overconfident
- A cognitive bias known as the Overconfidence Effect causes us to overestimate the reliability of our judgments. Decisions we make based on those judgments are therefore suspect. But there are steps we can take to make our confidence levels more realistic, and thus make our decisions more reliable. Available here and by RSS on May 14.
And on May 21: Mismanaging Project Managers
- Most organizations hold project managers accountable for project performance. But they don't grant those project managers control of needed resources. Nor do they hold project sponsors or other senior managers accountable for the consequences of their actions when they interfere with project work. Here's a catalog of behaviors worth looking at. Available here and by RSS on May 21.
Coaching services
I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenDJpmhgyaDTwBQXkhner@ChacmGoYuzfZpOvDQdRkoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.
Get the ebook!
Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:
- Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
- Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
- Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
- Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
- Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
- Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )
Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info
Follow Rick
Recommend this issue to a friend
Send an email message to a friend
rbrenDJpmhgyaDTwBQXkhner@ChacmGoYuzfZpOvDQdRkoCanyon.comSend a message to Rick
A Tip A Day feed
Point Lookout weekly feed
