(This article is fourth in a series of five addressing how to spend less time at work – and still be a good employee)
Getting out of the office during normal work hours is refreshing and relaxing. It helps recharge your motivation to work and keep you focused.
Get out of the office!
Never be ashamed to use the vacation time you have earned. Vacation days are a great tool that you can use to create deadlines for yourself. Try mixing up how you take your vacation to keep you energized and focused at work:
- Take a half day: Use a half day every few weeks to get out and enjoy something you can’t do when you leave the office at 5:00 every evening. Personally, I like to go take these days to visit trails that are too far away for me to visit after work. A nice long trail run in the middle of the afternoon helps refresh and clear my mind.
- Take a full day: Take a full day off to break up a stressful week, take a three day weekend, or create a deadline for yourself. If you have a big deadline on Tuesday, take a vacation day on Wednesday! A vacation day right after a big project or sale will motivate you to keep the deadline, it lets everyone else in the office know that you will be unavailable the day after the deadline, and it gives you a day to recuperate and come back to the office ready to take on new deadlines.
- Take a LONG vacation: If you’ve historically deprived yourself of time off and have accumulated a large number of vacation days, take a long vacation! Take ten days of vacation – that would be a full 16 days out of the office. Use a long vacation like this to tie-up every loose end you have. Don’t leave a single open-ended project, unfinished task, or even a dirty desk. Plan on returning to a completely clean slate.
Just say NO
“I know you’re going on vacation to tomorrow, but can you take these pitch books with you and review them? We can discuss them when you return.”
“No, but I’ll be happy to read them when I get back.”
Don’t be afraid to say no to coworkers, or even your boss, when you are taking vacation time. Just because your coworkers work while on vacation, doesn’t mean you should. Letting yourself take work home or on vacation leads to soft deadlines. It’s easy to fall into a thought process such as this: “I’ve got a lot to do; I’ll bring these product catalogues to read on the beach while I’m on vacation.” Inevitably this thinking will lead to something like this: “I’m really tired today; I’ll finish these emails at home.” Which ultimately leads to “I’ll just stay late tonight.” Before you know it, you’ll be spending evenings sleeping under your desk (ok, it’s not likely, but it could happen!).
Say “no” when you are asked to take work home or take it on vacation. You’ve earned vacation time (that’s why it is listed on your pay check). It’s your time to use outside of the office – not time for you to work outside of the office. If you are effective at planning and keeping your personal daily deadlines, you can be confident in saying “no” because you know you will get the task completed the next time you are at work.
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I very much agree with your second point. When you’re taking time off to relax, you need to have the courage to say no to bringing work along with you … even if your boss is the one asking. Come to think of it, there are times when you should say no to more work even when you’re not on vacation. Getting overloaded with work doesn’t do you or your office any good.