How to Use All Your Vacation — And Really Unplug

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Welcome to the hbr ideacast from harvard business review. I'm alison beard. Think of your last vacation doesn't have to be an amazing trip. Just the last time you took some time off from work, did you really take the time off? Or did you check email, take a few calls, work on the train or by the pool? I remember one pre pandemic holiday when I spent an entire day on my laptop editing an article, occasionally looking up to see my family having an amazing time on the beach. Mary Du, my colleague and friend and the producer of this podcast was recently working on it from the Galapagos Islands. Yes, she was on her computer instead of looking at turtles. And we're not alone. A recent survey indicated that 82% of Americans work on vacation and 90% check work messages. Then there are a whole bunch of people who don't even take their allotted time off. Research indicates that only about 50% of people in the US dollar. The situation might be better in other countries, but there's no question that technology is interfering with our ability to truly disconnect from our jobs as end of year holidays approach. We wanted to talk to some experts about time off, why it's important, why we're often bad at using it, and how to actually unplug. Art Markman is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, Austin, and author of the book Bring youg Brain to Work. And Caitlin Woolley is an associate professor at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University and co Author of the HBR.org article Don't Work on Vacation. Seriously, Caitlin, let's start with you. What is wrong with us? Why aren't we able to take time off and put work away?

Well, I think a lot of it has to do with the feeling of urgency. If I don't finish this task right now, if I don't complete that work, it's not going to get done. And we don't think about maybe doing it after the break. So I think we feel the sense that we need to do it, do it as quick as possible, do it on time. There are people that we maybe owe the work to and we don't want to be late for them. And so I think that's part of what's driving this sort of always on culture, especially just because it's so easy. It's so easy to check your Phone and then kind of get pulled into that work email or request from somebody. And it's really difficult for people to unplug and to disconnect and to put up those boundaries, I think.

And art, do you think that this is a peculiarly American phenomenon or do you see it in other parts of the world too? You know, I know there are countries where people get lots more paid time off, you know, several months, but do these people also use it more and more effectively?

Well, as with every tough question, the answer is yes and no. I mean, I think that certain industries, particularly tech and the financial world, it is hard for people to unplug anywhere. But I do think that there are other countries that do a better job of taking vacation and also actually not working on weekends. I think that, you know, northern Europe, for example, seems to be much better than the United States at actually taking weekends off, not to mention going on vacation. And, and a lot of Europe does. It does a nice job of shutting a lot of industry down in, you know, for a whole month.

My favorite is the out of office emails you get from people in Italy. Like it is July 31st and I will return on September 1st. Please email me back then.

Yeah, it's so good. It's absolutely right. And, and so I think, I think we, we don't have a designated month off, and I think that that really hurts.

Has the pandemic, you know, it's obviously prevented many of us from traveling and some of that is just starting to pick back up. But how has it affected how people think about and use their time off?

So what I've heard, you know, just from conversations, was that people were requesting meetings more during off time. So because you're working from home, people kind of think you're just always around. And so meetings were getting moved to early morning, late evening, even on the weekends, when maybe before there was a bit more of that work life balance, just because physically we weren't. People wouldn't request meetings on the weekends because they knew you were out of office. But with the turn of the pandemic, I think those boundaries disappeared and we saw more of this bleeding. And where people felt like it was more okay perhaps to ask for that, and then people maybe felt less confident kind of pushing back and saying, you know, this is my time with my family or this is my time off, and sort of accepting or feeling like they feeling obligated to accept some of those meetings.

Is that because the pandemic pushed us all into crisis mode or because everyone was stuck at home? And so no one was technically on vacation. And you know, you're a psychologist. How has it changed the mindset around taking time?

Yeah, I mean I, I think there's, there's two different things going on. I mean, the first is of course at the start of the pandemic, I think everybody was in crisis mode and so it was all hands on deck all the time. And I think part of the problem is we didn't quite get off of that mode. And so people were starting work a little bit earlier because they weren't commuting. They were sometimes working a little bit later because they weren't commuting home. And those hours stuck with a lot of people without really thinking about how we might do things differently. And then I think the other piece is because we aren't going anywhere because vacations now were staycations. For a while it felt like, well, if I just carve an hour out here or there from the time I was going to take off, that wouldn't be so bad. But you're not getting that mental downtime even though, even though you're not physically going anywhere. And that's a real problem.

So let's rapid fire, go through some of the important reasons to take a proper vacation, which means unplugging, not checking email, not checking calls, et cetera. Caitlin, you go first. What's the top reason we need to do it?

So there's a lot of work on just wellbeing concerns, right. And how it affects your health and your happiness. And even some of the work that I've been doing investigating is looking at your attitudes in relationship towards the work. So even independent of happiness and just general well being, what I'm finding in my research is that not taking that time away from work actually undermines your interest in working in general.

What would you add?

It makes you way less creative in the solutions you develop because when you are constantly immersed in work, you're stuck in the weeds. Which means that you describe every problem you're solving in terms of the specifics of that problem. Actually getting away from work for a little while gives you a different perspective on it. It actually makes you think about the problems a little more abstractly and that often leads to more creative solutions to problems.

You mentioned staycations, art versus going away. Why doesn't that work as well? Why do people sort of need to get out of their normal environment?

Yeah, I mean one of the big things about a staycation is particularly in a work from home environment, is that everything around you is reminding you of the work that you need to do. Because we've now blended our home environment, our work environment, and in the case of a staycation, the vacation environment. One of the nice things about getting away is that it doesn't remind you of your day to day life. It actually allows you to form memories of something independent of your usual context. And if you go away to a place that is that you know is a relaxing place, it may actually remind you to be relaxed. And so that that change in context actually changes your complete mindset because it influences what you're being reminded of.

So this is an important question for me because often I will travel to a relaxing place, but then the flight back is really stressful and so it sort of for me negates everything that happened when I was away. A lot of times people travel to see family and that's not particularly stress free either. So how do you make sure that you're actually capturing the benefits of holiday?

It's a hard problem. And you often see or even coming back from a vacation, maybe people feel rejuvenated that kind of first day and it might disappear or it might not even be the case. Right. If you've had sort of a stressful break, if it's with family or that plane ride back where you're kind of thinking about all the upcoming tasks, I think you can still get some benefits in terms of you've had that disconnect during that time. And so Art mentioned just having more creative thoughts, having more creative solutions. I think that benefit would still come through. And I think a big part of it too is the ability to disconnect. And so having that break, having those boundaries in place and then kind of coming back into it, I think you can still reap some of those benefits of vacation. Even if transitioning back in, you're kind of thrown into the midst of things and you're feeling that stress, I mean.

Temporary stress while you're on the flight back is not negating the whole vacation. I do think that there's. While you're on vacation, particularly if you get away from work, one of the things it does is to remind you that there are other things you do in your life besides work and that's valuable and sometimes even reminds you that that actually while it's nice to get away from work, it's actually nice to get back to it too. So I think that just because you might experience a little bit of stress in the transition back to work, that doesn't mean that the whole vacation wasn't Worthwhile.

So Art, how much time should people take off to get all the benefits you're talking about?

Well, I think one of the ways to think about vacations is that there are a few different kinds of time away from work that are worth taking. And so it's not that there's a one size fits all answer. So certainly once a year at least you got to get away for a full week and just allow yourself not to think about the key work problems, not to think about your, any interpersonal issues you have at work. Give yourself that time and perspective. But I also think that you should consider taking some half days, you know, go leave work early and go for a run or you know, take care of some things that, that you need to do for your, for your home at a time when, when the stores aren't all jammed full of people. And so, so some half days are good and even taking some long weekends, leaving, leaving on a Thursday evening to go somewhere for three or four days, particularly if, if you need to reconnect with a romantic partner or, or go visit some friends, family. So I think, I think actually considering a range of options rather than saying that there's only one way of getting away that's going to be a benefit helps a lot.

I was going to say, I think it's probably a personal decision and it's sort of where you're coming from. Exactly what Art is saying. And so, you know, if you're not really, if you're only taking a week, you're not maxing out your full time off. Starting baby steps is probably a good solution. I was actually going to go in the opposite direction and think about there's a way in which we have breaks at work and we might not even be taking those very effectively. So if you have a lunch break, are you completing work emails during that time? There's research on how you think about even micro breaks or breaks in the middle of the workday and how to make those more effective for you so that you can actually, you know, feel a sense of like refreshness or rejuvenation like even during the day itself. But in terms of like the actual amount of time even I, I think I'm not great about taking off probably more than two weeks. So I think it's probably a personal decision at that point.

So let me ask about that problem first. This idea that regardless of how much vacation your employer is giving you, you're not taking all of it. And most people say you absolutely should for your wellbeing, creativity, et Cetera, people feel pressure not to maybe because they want to get their work done and be a dedicated, high performing employee. How do we get over that hurdle? How do we get people to actually use the vacation they're given?

I think the challenge is that when you're pitting work against leisure, work is always going to seem to be the more important thing. But if you can think about the leisure time as helping you be better at your job, helping you be more creative, helping you build your even interpersonal skills at work because you've had time off and you can come back and re approach the problems from a different perspective, or even helping you to maintain your interest and your love for your job. I think if people think about it that way then it almost gives them more reason to take the time off. It's not seeming like they're a bad employee or that they don't like the work, but they're actually using that time to get away so that they come back even better. And I've seen some people who are really good about that and they can actually put that into practice. And I think that gives you some help, some reason to take the break.

Yeah.

And you've got to practice this. Right. I think there's, I have colleagues who study exposure therapies for phobias. One of the things you have to do is to experience, experience the situation that really frightens you and, and then recognize that nothing calamitous happened.

It's so funny to think like I'm afraid of taking vacation.

That's ex. Right. And that, but that's exactly it is. We think oh, if I take this vacation and, and, and, and, and I don't check in every day, something calamitous could go wrong. So, so you know, start by just parking all of your technology for a full weekend and recognizing that if you leave work at you know, at 5 o' clock on Friday, that at 8 or 9 o' clock on Monday morning, if you haven't checked your email on Saturday or Sunday, nothing calamitous happened. It was okay. And, and, and sort of learn that okay, I can actually go away for a day or two or three or four or five and, and come back and yeah, there's going to be some, some work built up for me that I have to take care of. But the world didn't end.

Yeah. So I think you're getting at the solution to the second big problem which is our inability to unplug and thinking that, you know, it's okay if I just check email in the morning and then go to the beach, or if I, while the baby's napping, I, you know, finish up that thing that I left hanging at work. So how do we really break ourselves of those habits?

Don't bring your laptop on your vacation.

It's so impossible. I can't imagine.

Can you guys? Those are two different things, right?

I mean, so do you, too, travel without any technology?

I bring my phone and I bring an iPad that I don't bring to work.

Okay. So I just. Over the Thanksgiving break, I traveled and I, you know, always failed to take my own advice. And so I was working. But what I've been trying to do is sort of have scheduled sort of like categorizing the time, right? So it's like I'm on it for two hours, and then I'm not on it, not thinking about it the rest of the time. And I think some of the work I've been doing, thinking about, you know, how do you use categorization cues? How can you help to, like, create those boundaries? Because I think that's the big thing. You kind of check your email and then you kind of fall into this, and there's sort of no cue to stop. And so kind of setting up those boundaries, and then if you're great, if you can turn it off, that's good. I haven't taken a vacation yet where I haven't brought any devices.

You definitely don't take your own advice. Let's talk about planning and preparation. How do you make sure that the office, your team, your direct reports that everything can continue to function seamlessly without you there?

Well, for one thing, we're all bad at delegating because we treat delegation primarily as something you do in the moment when you're planning to be away. And I think one of the things that we really have to do is to remember that learning to delegate means constantly teaching other people around you to do your job. So that. So that when the time comes where you need someone to do a segment of your job, that they can do it. And that actually gives you a lot more confidence in giving people the opportunity to take care of things, because you've already walked them through it. And I think that's one really critical piece of being able to walk away from work effectively. I also think it's really important when you go away to. If you have. If you're in a position, you know, in a supervisory position of some kind, it's really important to have somebody who you can authorize to contact you if there's a legitimate emergency. And the reason it's nice to set things up like that is that this way, if you don't hear from anybody, you don't need to check.

Right.

Part of what happens is people think, well, if the how would I know if the place is on fire? The answer is if you've got somebody who's going to call you when there's a significant problem or text you, then you will know and you don't have to check all the other stuff. And I've done that before. I mean, I'm in administration now at the university and I have people who will contact me if there's a significant problem. And I'm on vacation and they've done it.

Yeah, we've published some great articles on effective out of office messages too. You know, either making it clear how you're spending your time, you know, I'll be with my three children on the beach. Please email again, you know, at the end of this week. Or I just had a colleague who was out for surgery and she said, I'm out getting a robot knee. And so it was just very clear, you know, please don't bother me. To your point, Art, you know, you can also set up those. If you need information about this, please contact this colleague. If you need information about this, please contact this one. So let's talk about teams, bosses, organizations. How can people in charge do a better job of encouraging people to a take the time that they deserve and also really unplug when they go away?

I think a lot of it comes down to modeling the behavior that you want to see.

Right.

And so if you have a boss who's never away themselves or never taking the time, I think that sort of sends a communication sort of culture throughout the organization about what they value and what's important. And so I think that, yeah, setting those expectations, setting the culture, has to kind of come from the top down. And so I would want to see people in higher positions sort of allowing that behavior and showing it, kind of demonstrating it themselves.

Yeah, I agree. That's really important. Even down to the level of I encourage people, if they work very late at night and work crazy hours, that they set up a filter on their emails so that the emails don't send until 8 in the morning, so that even if they're checking email at midnight, that it doesn't send out till 8am so that if nothing else, nobody sees that what hours you're working. Because I think it's important for people to be able to make their own minds up about what hours are most effective for them. And so it's, you know, part of taking vacation is starting with just taking the night off.

One group that we really haven't addressed at all is sort of blue collar laborers, et cetera. Are there things that employers should be doing in terms of vacation to make sure that it's not just sort of the upper income brackets that are getting the benefits of this? You know, don't those frontline laborers need it the most?

I think some of the same practices come into play where a lot of it might still be having to license yourself. Right. Having to put the time in. And then I think the organizational structure, having it be the place where you, there are resources, there are people who are going to come in to fill, fill your shifts, fill your role goals is important. And I think too, like, you know, you don't need to spend a lot of money to get away from work. Right. You can, I think, have a staycation and just as we were sort of, you know, mentioning before, have a situation where you can keep yourself busy and active and engaged and really to have that break. And so you can still, I would say, get a lot of benefits without having to, you know, travel the world or spend a lot of money on the vacation or on the break.

Yeah.

And I think, I think large employers should also try to work some good discounts with some of the local fun things to do. You know, if you're, if you're, if you're, if your city has an amusement park in it, then, you know, get, get discounted tickets for the people who are working for you or even free ones. Right. Work it out so that, so that people can do some things on the budget that they have that still allow them to get away and actually feel like the, that the organization was looking out for them.

So we talked a bit about sort of the guilt of feeling like there's so much to do. So how does one get over that? Particularly if you're working in an office that's understaffed. It's just there really is no time and not enough people to get all the work done. And yet you do still need that break.

You have to do it. I mean, the hard part is, again, it's practice. But, but, but the fact is that the organization is not going to fall apart if you go away. And, and frankly, if the organization does fall apart because you went away, there's a bigger problem than you in that situation. So, so I think you just, you have to just go and, and do it.

Yeah, it Makes the case for hiring more people.

That's right.

More of the work done.

Yeah, that's right. Right. If you, if you're right, if you're telling me I. This whole place falls apart because I was taking my, my contractually obligated vacation, then, then we got a problem.

And I think that too is sort of where organizational norms and culture can come into play. Because if you have a colleague or boss who's supportive of that. Right. Who's understanding, like even if we have a lot going on, I recognize that you need to have the time off and is helping to encourage that. I think that takes some of the burden and some of the guilt off of you as well. Well, and so I really don't think it should be on the individual necessarily. I think it should be something that is supported by the organization. They recognize that you need time off, that you need to like you're your best self right after you've had a break.

What about policies regarding vacation? You know, there are employers who give two weeks. You know, in Europe you might see four to six weeks. There are now companies that are offering unlimited vacation. What works best?

The unlimited vacation thing doesn't seem to be working in the US Very well. People are not taking the time. And I think part of it is almost a kind of classic anchoring and adjustment effect. If you tell people that they have two or three weeks, then they might say, well, three weeks. I'm not going to take three weeks, but maybe I'll take two. But if you say unlimited, well, now I don't really have a number there. So now I'm starting at 0. 0 and anchoring at 0. And then maybe I take a couple of days off here or there, but. But you don't.

I would say I'm starting at 52.

I was going to say. Exactly. It reminds me of sort of mental accounting type things. Right. Because it's been allocated, because it's been earmarked as time off and there's a record of it and people are tracking it. Right. When you have two weeks or three weeks, people can see it in their scheduler, in their calendar, and it rolls over oftentimes each year. And so they can physically or kind of plan to take that time off when you have unlimited time off. I think the people who are attracted to some of those jobs that probably are giving those benefits might have struggles themselves to kind of take time off in the first place.

It's interesting. I would love to see every employer in the sort of professional settings move to a. Just Sort of we trust you to take the time you need, which is sort of an unlimited policy. But I think what I'm getting at is just the accounting of vacation has always been very perplexing to me. Like going into the system, having to enter your days, explain your reason for being away, et cetera, when it's a group of, you know, presumably high performing adults. So, you know, are there ways to get at that idea of unlimited vacation just by being more flexible? Could employers do that?

So there's almost. There's two things, and I was kind of talking about the numeric, right. You're kind of counting the number of days. And that might encourage people to actually take more time off. But I completely agree with you that you don't want to feel you have to explain your vacation because then having to file a report, having to allocate that time and write that in, it kind of takes away from some of it. And you might feel then compelled to justify it. And that can also contribute to some of the, the guilt that you're talking about. But I, at the same time, I was kind of on, I agreed with Art that I think unlimited vacation, where you can kind of just take it, I don't know if, you know, you kind of just take it when you want it, makes it harder to actually take it. And so maybe there's a world in which, you know, you still have a set number, but you don't have to give or you don't have to like put the time in or you don't have to give justification for it.

Yeah. I'm wondering whether we should, whether companies should move to creating some incentives to take vacation. Like, I'm going to pay you $100,000 a year if you work 50 weeks a year. But if you work 51, I'm knocking 5% off your salary. And if you work 52, I'm knocking 10% off.

I love that. That's such a great idea. Have any companies done that?

No, I just thought of it now.

Well, I hope that we have helped our listeners take better vacations, take more vacations, and particularly as the winter holidays approach, everyone gets the rest and relaxation they need. Art. Caitlin, thank you so much for being on the show.

Thanks, Alison.

Thank you so much, Alison.

That's Art Markman, professor of psychology at the University of Texas, Austin, and author of the book Bring youg Brain to Work. And Caitlin Woolley, an associate professor at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. If you like this episode, you can also Check out episode 790 a conversation with Ethan Cross, a psychologist and neuroscientist, about how to stop overthinking things. This episode was produced by Mary Dew and we get technical help from Rob Eckert. Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. I'm Alison Beard. Sam.