Taking a Week Off. What I Thought Would Happen vs. What Really Happened
I don’t think there’s a time that I wouldn’t have responded ‘yes, of course!’ to being asked if rest and breaks are important. Obviously we’re not robots and our bodies and minds need time to refresh after hours of looking at screens, being in meetings, and working as hard as we do these days. Make no mistake, I have NEVER been the ‘sleep when I die’ type. In fact, if it’s one thing about me, I am in BED when I’m tired and I’m getting at least 6 hours of sleep minimum (usually I get the full 8 :)). At the same time, as a business owner who’s grown my business from me and my laptop doing everything, to me leading a virtual team of 12; I have always been in the mix of every single thing, and I had never taken a full week off to enjoy a vacation without still tapping into emails, meetings, etc.
I’m a huge proponent of therapy; and a lot of the conversations that come up for me in those sessions are around stress and anxiety, as well as difficulties staying present. I recognized that in the last year or so my mind has become a foggy and jumbled mess.
Allow me to paint the picture. Imagine waking up firing on all cylinders. Your first thoughts of the day are the unfinished tasks on your to-do list from a couple days ago, plus now there are things due today that HAVE to get done. You go to the kitchen to make coffee, slightly running into a corner in the hall because you’re in your head instead of paying attention. As your coffee brews, you’re reminded to go water the plants, and as you’re filling up the pitcher, you see a snag on one of your nails -smh dang. You look for a file, put it on the bathroom counter and tell yourself you’ll come back. You water the plants, and then realize you forgot about the coffee that you now have to put in the microwave. While the coffee is in the microwave you think, oh let me go back to the nail file…. and long story short your whole day feels like chaos… nothing bad is happening, nothing is serious, and yet you’re just buzzing around and going from one thing to the next, constantly trying to stay on top of things while always adding more to your list. No bueno. That was probably annoying just to read, but in real life my brain was truly on an Uncut Gems level of chaos at all times lol.
Anyway, I would consistently hear from my therapist that I’m probably burnt out. The weird thing about burnout is that sometimes it feels like ‘okay I cannot do anything else right now, let me chill.’ But more often, it actually felt like ‘I have so much on my plate, I must be going the right direction, let me keep up this momentum.’ I guess I just got so used to being a juggler that I equated the busyness with ‘this is what needs to be done to grow a business.’ Side note, by ‘busyness’ I felt I was doing work that had to be done, not just doing things just to be doing them. That also made it hard to accept this idea that I was burnt out… like okay, there are things to be done, and they just gotta be done.
I toyed around with the idea of taking a break. I pump faked the first time. I looked up some cabins for a staycation in the Los Angeles area, but abandoned the idea when I thought about how bored I’d be just sitting there by myself. A few weeks later, something clicked and I was convinced to go all in and actually plan a week off. Step one was to mark the week, so I chose the second week of August, and I put an out of office note up for the 8th-15th in Google calendar. Step two was to talk about it. That’s when it got real to me. I started to tell my team members that I’d be gone that week. I told clients that we’d have to push meetings because I was taking the week off. And you know what everyone’s response was? “Oh that’s great!” “Enjoy!” “Yes, turn that phone off for a few days!” Step three was to actually find somewhere to go.
I used Skyscanner and found a roundtrip ticket to Denver for $27. Sold. Then I found a room for 7 nights on Priceline in the heart of downtown. Now it was official. And in planning all of this, I realized that I had never done this before. Eight years of work, and I had never walked away completely for a whole week. I have a great team that affords me that luxury, and yet I wasn’t taking advantage of it.
The week leading up to my trip, I was so nervous lol. I type ‘lol’ because it seems so silly now, but I was STRESSED. I was working hard to ensure that everyone was clear on priorities, tasks, and who to contact for what. To make things harder, I had so much momentum that week with sales calls that I was finalizing, and a new client that I had just brought on –I didn’t want anything to get messed up or cool down while I was gone. Saturday morning headed to the airport, I highkey almost started crying lol. I took Asana, my work email, and Slack off my phone. Sitting at my gate in the airport, I sent my last couple emails and then put up an out of office email reply. As I closed my laptop, everything felt different. Welp! It’s vacation time! All of a sudden I didn’t feel any more stress and I was ready to enjoy myself with zero ties to work for a whole week.
I had an amazing time in Denver. Shout out the homie LaShaun for curating a fire list of places to eat, explore, and even emergency contacts. Each day I woke up when I felt like it. I found something to explore –botanical gardens, the museum of contemporary art, parks, etc. and I relaxed. I spent a lot of time reading, catching up on Homeland, and just enjoying the fresh air. I had so many awesome moments exploring that reminded me how much I love to do so.
So.. here’s what I thought would happen during this week off:
I thought I’d be thinking about work the whole time, sneaking to check email and messages
I thought that by day 3, I’d be losing my mind and not know what to do with myself
I thought I’d get some epiphanies around big life questions like where I see business in a few years, and what’s motivating me
I thought I’d spend more time on social media and chatting with friends
Here’s what actually happened:
I felt zero guilt about work texts on DND, and never even thought about checking my email; even though I’d be on my computer to stream shows. I realized that not having my work email on my phone was a huge game changer. Out of sight, out of mind
I never got bored. If anything, by Thursday and Friday I was starting to wonder if I was doing too much by trying to explore each day. I spent all of Thursday in the room and completely enjoyed it. I never felt bored at all.
I actually didn’t feel a need to talk to people online or chat with my friends all day. When the trip was over, it became more clear why.
And I also got zero epiphanies! I tried to force it while journaling, but nothing significant was coming to me, so I continued to chill and explore and just enjoy my time
By the morning of the 15th, I was excited to get home and have the whole weekend in front of me to hop back into work and my usual schedule; and the funniest thing happened –I did none of that.
It wasn’t until the week was over and I got back home that the benefits of the trip really hit me. I realized that:
I didn’t feel like working Saturday and Sunday, so I didn’t. I felt no guilt, and enjoyed my weekend for what it was supposed to be, a couple days of rest.
I didn’t miss anything. On Sunday evening I finally logged into my work email to about 180 emails. I deleted all the whatever messages, and had only 60 emails left!!! Nothing was on fire, no one needed anything urgently, and in fact, because I told people that I was away, no one bothered me and so I had less correspondence than usual.
My team is fire. Come Monday as I’m checking in with everybody, there were no mishaps, everything got taken care of, and nobody needed me. Nobody needed me. Like, Lex… this is what you are supposed to have been working towards. I’d had this for a while, and yet I wasn’t taking advantage of it because I’m so used to doing everything and managing every little thing.
“Y’all had it all under control? Okay cool, do that again this week.” Do you know how much of a game changer that is?! I came back, and had the most productive week because my focus was all on meetings, sales, etc. and not on what everyone else was supposed to be doing.
My brain feels clear. Now that I’m back in the flow of things, it’s without all the extra busyness in my mind. I feel less foggy, I haven’t been running through a constant to-do list, and I’ve felt ZERO stress! ZERO! Even as I’m typing this I’m confused as to how that works. It’s almost like taking the week off demonstrated to my brain that my work is actually NOT a life and death situation lol, and that anxiety isn’t necessary for getting things done.
I’m more tolerant and less irritable. I don’t feel rushed. I don’t feel interrupted when someone hits me while I’m working. I’m not on edge. I feel calmer than I did before. I have more space to chat with people actually. I realized that while I was gone, I was still burnt out. But a lot of the space to communicate with others set in after my week off.
Productivity doesn’t mean running around like a chicken with your head cut off. It doesn’t mean having a full planner or working from sun up to sun down. It means getting things done efficiently, and it took me taking a week off, a REAL week off, to see that for myself and understand that I was in fact less productive due to burnout. It’s amazing how different my mind feels –I didn’t know I could have a full plate and not feel stress at the same time, but this is great, and this feels like real progress!
Don’t be like me and get so caught up in the day to day that you don’t take time to reboot and reset. I’m talking more than 3 days away. And if you feel like you’re too busy to do so, well, that’s an indicator that you may need it more than you know.