Make Room For Time Off

There is nothing that has scared me more in my life than the idea of not being needed. I have always wanted to be in the mix, to have a seat at the table, to be consulted when things happened, to be in the room when it is decided what goes forward and what needs more time to bake.

For decades, I took great pride in not taking (m)any days off so as always to be ready to be needed. And when I did leave the office/not have my laptop open all day, I was still 100% available if asked to be. It didn’t matter where in the world I was or what time zone my body was in, I still ran an 8am EST to 8pm PST work day that I called Hustle Standard Time. Even though my Out of Office was always very clever, I was never actually OOO.

It has only been in the past three years that I have learned just how valuable time away from the work without thinking about the work truly is. Being completely off holds space for new ideas to fill the spaces previously held by whatever wheel was squeaking the loudest. It doesn't make challenges go away, but it does allow the most critical concerns to rise to the top above the concerns that feel most important because of a persistent person in your inbox or Slack.

“Your inbox is a to-do list written by other people.” - Chris Dixon

This past weekend, Maddie and I went to the Cayman Islands to celebrate her birthday and enjoy the long weekend. And, thanks to my amazing EA Kirstey, I was able to step away from my inbox and any new outside expectations or last-minute priorities. We’d worked hard to make sure that everything was sorted before my flight took off and as I am typing this on the flight back into NYC, I haven’t gotten any SOS messages.

A business owner I respect used to have a strict time off policy. At her firm, if you didn’t take a full two weeks off, as in no email or communication with the team for two weeks straight, you didn’t get your bonus at the end of the year. I asked her why she was so strict and she said that:

Everyone always came back more rested and truly ready to get back to work.
Everyone had new stories to share and new experiences that added to the cultural mix without it being contrived or "I saw this on TikTok last night."
It showed her, and her team, that their business could operate without anyone person for a period of time, and if it couldn’t, they knew they’d grown and needed to start hiring again.

So in the interest of taking time off, this is the end of this week’s newsletter. Sent a little later in the morning so you can get through your holiday weekend inbox overflow with no links, and no call to action.

But, I do hope you’ll take the few minutes I’m giving back to you to take a quick pause and really think about the long weekend you just had and start thinking about the ways in which the next time you take off can be more meaningful to you, your team, and the work you'll do when you return.

Make Room for regularly scheduled programming next week!

Andy

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