Thread by @izzydoesizzy

1/ I hit a career milestone today. My most organized vacation plan ever.

On 8/14 I wrapped up work before a 9 day vacation:

- Contacted all my clients I would be away
- Delegated outstanding tasks
- Provided instructions for support and an emergency contact

https://twitter.com/izzydoesizzy/status/1294421742287564800

2/ By doing that, I was able to COMPLETELY unplug from work for the whole 9 days!

- Disabled work calendars
- Logged out of work emails from my phone and computer
- Logged out of SLACK (big one)
- Logged out of Zoho

So I was able to fully enjoy my vacation.

3/ Coming back to work this morning, I was confident things were well-handled, but I was still curious about what I’d see when I logged back into work emails and Slack.

4/ First, my awesome team did what they needed and respected my boundaries. Luckily there wasn’t much to be done in the first place.

Second, I have only 7 emails in my inbox this morning that need attention. But nothing urgent.

So coming back today was a BREEZE!

5/ I understand that some roles are very different than but for me the lesson here was:

- PLAN your vacation super well
- ANTICIPATE what will happen and for how it will be dealt with
- INFORM any important stakeholders well in advance (1-2 weeks)
- DELEGATE outstanding tasks

6/ For some reason that happened to be an acrostic for the word PAID. I’m going to pretend that was planned.

7/ All in all, I think many of us tend to rely too much on the fact that it’s so easy to send a few emails and answer a few questions while we’re away rather than do the work to plan and delegate (which takes time and effort).

I’ve been very guilty of this in the past too.

8/ For the past year, I’ve had very strong work/life boundaries on evenings/weekends, and it has made me much more successful in my work, and much less reactive.

I rarely feel burnt out anymore because I give myself time to rest and enjoy my life outside of work.

9/ Your brain needs time to check out completely and recharge.

Most of us don’t realize that the 1-minute it takes to check Slack or email might cause us to be thinking about work or worry for the next hour that the problem is being handled.

And that’s the big problem.

10/ So in sum, when you take your vacation, ACTUALLY TAKE YOUR VACATION. Otherwise you’re just kinda still working the whole time and done get to recharge the way you need.

11/ It will be more challenging with my own business @joinclearcareer I understand, but I will take these early days to set up the right framework well in advance so I will be easier in the future.

12/ Bonus: Here are some shots I took with my drone at a cottage we rented a few hours north of Toronto in Noëlville.

Here’s a plug for lakairlodge.com rent a 1 bedroom waterfront cottage for $1450 (tax incl) for a whole week.

Mention me to Dennis! He’ll love that!

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