R&R Necessary for Healthy, Productive Work Life

Summer is here and in full swing. It’s time for baseball, picnics and vacations. So, what do you do for “R&R”?

Rest and relaxation are important ingredients to maintaining a healthy and productive work life. Sounds funny doesn’t it? Not “ha ha” funny, but a little strange to say that rest and relaxation are critical to being productive at work, but they are. Taking time away from work lets you come back to the office refreshed, reenergized, and rejuvenated.

Read the words in that last sentence very carefully. It says “taking time away from work.” I didn’t say “time away from the office.” There’s a difference. You need to put the work aside to fully recharge. It’s way too tempting to take work with you on vacation, but then it’s not really a vacation, is it?

If you travel for work with any frequency, you have a mobile office in your briefcase. Peeking in mine as I write this, I see a laptop, an iPad, a Bluetooth, and an assortment of chargers and cords to keep me fully charged. But to come back to the office fully charged, you need to leave the briefcase at home.

I know, I know, the business just can’t function without you. If you disappear from work for a week, the whole world will stop and nothing will get done. Bullpucky!!!! If you’re willing to risk it and leave work at work to take a week’s vacation, I bet you’ll find that somehow your people are able to manage without you and still get things done. The real question is whether you’re willing to try it.

I know a lot of people who aren’t. I know business owners who shut down their companies for a week or two every summer so they can go on vacation. I’ve worked for a manager who measured his people’s productivity in his absence by the number of reports waiting for him upon his return from vacation. These people couldn’t really go on vacation because they didn’t trust the people who worked for them.

If you resemble these owners and managers, then you’ve got a problem and it’s either a “you” problem or a “them” problem. If you don’t trust your people enough to go on vacation then you better fix that problem.

It’s a “them” problem if you have an entire team of untrustworthy people who aren’t capable of doing their jobs unless you’re lording over them. If that’s the case, get rid of the people you don’t trust and go on vacation.  And when you return from vacation, you better figure out how to improve your hiring practices.

If there is no team of people that you could ever imagine trusting enough to leave them and go on vacation, then you’ve got a “you” problem and you need to get over yourself. No one is that important. The world will go on without you for a week.

And there’s another side to this coin. Often people judge your loyalty and dedication to your job if you aren’t accessible 24/7. If you don’t respond to emails immediately, if you don’t answer phone calls within hours, you get a reputation of being unresponsive and lazy. People have such a ridiculously high expectation for immediate response in today’s world it’s looked at as rude and inconsiderate to “unplug” from the office.

My response is that’s too bad — for them. You can add an “out of office” message on your voicemail and email. You can even state that you will not be returning calls or answering emails for a specific period of time. If they don’t like it, so what?

And, if you’re the boss, don’t hold the expectation that your people need to be responsive to you while they’re on vacation. Don’t subject them to an endless stream of calls or emails. Encourage your people to leave the work behind and then leave them alone. They’re on vacation!

Everyone needs time away from work. In our increasingly mobile society, you can take your work with you wherever you go. That can be a wonderful thing or it can be an incredible burden. When you’re on vacation, leave the work behind and focus on those people or things that are most important to you. And, as a manager, demand that your people do the same.

Here’s my challenge for you. This summer, while on vacation, I want you to go one week without opening an email or returning a single phone call. For some of you, it is probably very difficult to imagine going even a day without doing either and I’m challenging to go an entire week. It’s enough to make some Type-As break out in hives.

But if you’re willing to try it, my bet is that you’ll come back to the office more energized and productive than you have after any previous vacation. Why? Because for the first time in a long time you will have actually taken time away from work, not just time away from the office.

Give it a try this summer. Oh yeah, and let me know how it works out.