My job as a Program Manager has become navigating people’s emotions. When teams are pressured and individuals are stressed, they lose balance and respect, and it’s a downward spiral of productivity loss from there. Teams and managers who take vacation and show interest in others’ lives are so much more productive. It’s what builds sustainable companies, sustainable work-life balance, moderated stress levels.
Get out and get balanced
Despite multitudes of articles claiming vacation improves productivity, there’s few people who actually max out vacation time from their company:
When you’re balanced, you’re able to make quicker, better decisions and put issues into perspective. From a Program Manager whose life it is to keep a project on schedule:
- Max your vacation every year and never hit your accrual limit.
- When on vacation, completely sign off. Cold turkey. Turn off email sync.
- Don’t respond to email when on vacation. When you’re half-in and half-out, you make it less productive for people still in the office. They don’t know whether to really wait for your response or to make decisions and forge ahead.
- Don’t answer emails on nights and weekends. There’s always emergencies for deadlines, but routinely doing this creates sub-threads with a few people who are online. You think decisions are made until others come back to work and question a decision made 30 responses ago.
- Take at least one 2+ week full chunk vacation a year if you can. It takes a few days to wind down, and a couple days to dread going back; if you only take 1 week off, it’s not enough.
- Don’t feel guilty. There’s never a “good” time to take vacation.
You’re successful if you create space in your life.
Space = Time + Energy
If you have time and no energy, that’s like being so tired that on your day off you just need to sleep on the couch. If you have energy and no time, that’s like having a stacked calendar but the desire to reflect. You’re in control of your life, so put up boundaries for yourself. Your personal life AND work life will be better off.
What would you do if you had 3 months off of work?
It doesn’t matter what your answer is. You can stay home and play video games for 3 months. The point is you need hobbies, passions, anything that engages you. Create that space and enjoy it!
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