A 2-week holiday is MORE than twice as good as a 1-week holiday! I’ve said this for a long time now, but as I was driving into the office this morning after a week off relaxing with my family I feel particularly inclined to write it up!
I feel very lucky in that I love my job, so I almost never mind going to work. But I also love being on holiday and traveling with my family and we try to do as much of it as I can. However…before the kids came along we used to take at least one full 14 day break, completely unplugged, at least once a year. I do miss that!!
THE PROBLEM
The problem with any holiday longer than a couple days off (which is NOT a break) is that it can take a while to unwind and unplug; not checking email, reading blogs or the newspaper every morning, and not fidgeting every time you’re more than 10 feet away from your phone.
Then on the other end of the trip, trying to dive back into Slack, Trello, WhatsApp and emails is super painful. It starts the day before you go back to work and generally getting ready for re-entry means I’ve never been able to sleep well the night before the first day of anything, so it means starting back with diminished relaxation even before walking through the office door. HOLIDAY…WHAT HOLIDAY!?
THE SOLUTION
So all in all, that means the true rested part of a week-long holiday, (meaning 9-days including two weekends), is about 4-5 days.
That’s not bad. However, I think you have all that same overhead associated with a two week break as well…so a two week holiday of 16 days (including those weekends) leaves you with 11-12 days. Mathematically, if not psychically, more than twice as good as the standard one-weeker!! Boom.
I’m inclined to start doing that once a year again, whether I want to or not!!
As a side note there were two big things I used to do on holiday that I didn’t do this time:
- actually turning my work email account off my phone and leaving it off until the Monday morning after holiday so there’s no cheating on a couple minutes of email here or there.
- making sure my calendar is almost completely clear that first Monday back to catch up with the team.
Next time, those two features will return prominently…along with that full second week off.
Oh, and if anyone says they can’t take a lovely 2 week break….you may not be able to do it any two weeks of the year with no notice, but it’s possible if you plan ahead. Leave things in good order, leave someone in charge (or don’t, but be deliberate about that), and let them know where to call you in case the building burns down.
It will be fine when you get back, and healthy for your team to have a break from you as well!!