You Can't Take Your Vacation Hours with You When You're Gone
Or maybe not even into next year. How I knew it was time to take a vacation, and how you can start to plan one for yourself.
Welcome! I’m Dr. Jillian, a physician leader, mom, and coach who is on a mission to help overwhelmed, ambitious women live less stressed, more satisfying lives. If the full post doesn’t show up in your e-mail, come over to the webpage or Substack App to see the whole thing. Subscribe here to get future posts straight to your inbox:
✨ Last time: Free Yourself from Overwork: Listen here.
✨ Today: Use your vacation, you can’t take your hours with you when you’re gone.
Recently, a coaching client told me that she had nearly 200 hours of vacation time to use before the end of the year.
And, with a 3-month notification requirement at her job, she felt mounting pressure to schedule some of these hours or lose them.
I asked her how she’d realized that she had that much time available, and she said that she’d been feeling especially overwhelmed at work and wasn’t sure what had changed. During a check-in with herself, she discovered that she’d been working without a real break for nearly 4 months. No wonder she was feeling frazzled.
I can certainly relate.
As I’ve written about recently (here, here, and here), I worked nearly nonstop for 6 weeks in May and June. Throughout those weeks, I found myself feeling progressively more exhausted and irritable in spite of getting adequate sleep. And my usual strategy of trying to care for myself while continuing to forge ahead with administrative and creative work only seemed to be making it worse.
I needed a real break.
A vacation.
Or, more accurately since I wasn’t planning on traveling anywhere, I needed a staycation.
How did I know I needed a break?
After a stretch of working in the hospital, I sat down to plan my leadership/coaching work for the coming weeks, including the week of July 4th. Originally, I’d planned to catch up/get ahead on tasks during that week since I had fewer meetings due to the holiday.
As I planned, I felt frustration bubbling up inside of me: Why did I have to work when other people got to be away for the holiday? Didn’t I deserve time away?
Bingo. That was the moment.
Any time I’m feeling indignant, extra judgy, or envious, it’s usually a sign that I have a need that I’m not addressing. In this case, it was real time away from work, not just a few hours here or there. Time to actually recharge.
So, I decided to take my own advice and rest.
And I did. I played, hammock-ed, laughed, napped, cooked, ate, swam, read, journaled, moved my body, painted, and more.
I didn’t work. And it was glorious.
The first step to truly taking a break was creating a visual reminder in my planner as a permission slip to myself.
This might seem a bit ridiculous, but I know so many other over-achievers and do-ers who can’t seem to give themselves permission to take a break.
They worry that:
they’ll fall (even more) behind while they’re gone
people will perceive them as less dedicated
they will let people down
everything will fall apart without them
So, they don’t take a break. They keep pushing through until they are so exhausted that they wouldn’t even have the energy to schedule a break if they wanted one.
They burn out.
I burned out.
So, now I look for my warning signs before I get to that point. I give myself permission to take a break when I need one. I schedule breaks throughout the year.
If you’re looking to make sure that you get real breaks from work, here are some ideas to get started:
Reflect/check-in with yourself regularly
If you don’t check-in, you’ll miss your warning signs.
Learn your warning signs
I described a few of mine above. How do you feel/what are the telltale signs when you need a break?
Learn your patterns
Are there times of the year that you’re likely to feel more drained or depleted?
Plan and schedule some things to look forward to
Plan breaks around the times you identified in #3.
Give yourself permission to take a break
Write it out, record a voice note, etc. to remind you that you’re a human being who deserves real time off.
Get some accountability
Tell a coach, partner, trusted friend, etc. that you are looking to prioritize time away and have them help you stay accountable.
This is how I help my coaching clients. I have a follow-up email planned with my client to help her remember to get her vacation time scheduled before the end of the year.
How will you start prioritizing time away for yourself?
I’d love to hear in the comments. Even if you have a tiny breakthrough or idea, it all counts. If you fancy sharing this post using the restack button to help more people discover how to give themselves permission to take vacation, I'd really appreciate that too.
x Jillian
This is so true! I did something similar recently after a long intense stretch to meet deadlines. While I took time to do relaxing, fun things, I found that I spent less time on those tasks but didn't fall behind. Reflecting on WHY I didn't fall behind, I realized that I had more focus and energy for the items on my to-do list (and I even took a few items off that weren't necessary NOW), and I didn't resent doing them because I had taken a real break. Thanks for this reminder to all of us with lots on our plates (or platters!)
I made the commitment with myself this week to stop working outside my hours, no more weekend work and no more after hours work. I'm also playing with the idea of taking a bigger break at the end of the year. I feel much better already just with having better boundaries in place again. We really do need that rest...