As the summer’s coming to an end, and you may have returned (or are returning) to work after vacation, you may want to pause and ask yourself what you’ve learnt from taking some time off. While your first inclination may be to reminisce fun days at the beach and yummy margaritas, there are other elements of your vacation which may actually apply to your…career.
There’s something about physically and mentally distancing yourself from a project or activity that allows you to see and understand things you may not have grasped before, simply because you were too close to the subject at hand. Kind of what happens when you step away from a piece of writing, or a work project, and come back to it after a day or so.You get a new, fresher perspective you’d have never had, had you remained close to it.
That’s also what happened after I returned from a two-week vacation in the islands. While I did enjoy disconnecting from work and taking some “real” time off, actually being away from the daily grind did allow me to perceive some aspects of my career I hadn’t been able to understand until then.
Here are some career lessons I’ve learnt, away from my email inbox, daily work routine and plumping Maybelline mascara:
It’s quality over quantity
Taking time off allows you to value quality over quantity when it comes to how you spend your time, on and off the job. Being able to slow down and enjoy some time outside of the rat race makes you realize just how much your frenzied, crazier pace makes you less, instead of more, productive.
It also makes you understand how time, and not so much money, is really our most precious commodity. Every time we allow ourselves to slow down and reflect on how we spend our time, we get a new lease on our schedules, and ultimately our lives.
As I come back from vacation, my priority is to prioritize quality over quantity when it comes to my schedule and career. Minimize waste, maximize efficiency and enjoyment, and focus on the ways I can be create more time.
It’s about working well, not more
I was so burnt out I couldn’t wait to get out of work on the day our vacation flight was scheduled to leave. And I wasn’t the only one…About 83% of American workers are stressed out about their jobs, of which 50% say this stress interferes with their sleep and general well-being. Interestingly enough, we also note that 55% of American workers don’t take all their paid vacation.
I even felt guilty taking a whole two weeks to get away. In work time, it may seem like an eternity you could never catch up on. In reality, the work still gets done somehow, some way.
With the distance and perspective, it becomes obvious that a lot of the time we spend at work is not necessarily time well-spent. We work a lot, but are we really working well? If we were, maybe we’d do more and feel less burnt out after all.
Get out more!
As dear hubby and I have family overseas, most of our vacation is spent visiting our close relatives in other countries. As we spend some time away in Senegal, France and the Cape-Verde islands, we get to be immersed in other cultures for some time, and observe how others work.
In Cape Verde for instance, most workers take a two-hour lunch break to go home, eat and rest in between morning and afternoon work hours. In France, most employees take the whole month of August off for family vacation. In Senegal, the many national holidays and allowed vacation give workers much-deserved breaks all throughout the year.
Being able to see different ways of working and various career perspectives enlarges how you look at your own career. You start thinking more about building a life that includes your career, instead of just building a life around your career. You also get to re-assess the way you approach your work, and re-calibrate for better impact.
Keep growing!
Along with gaining a more enlarged perspective from traveling and taking a break, you also get the thirst to keep growing. Doing the same thing over and over again, whether at work or in life, keeps us stale, outdated, and frankly bored.
Every time I go on vacation, or take some time off, it gives me enough distance to want to keep growing. To want to do more things, be more balanced, and enjoy life and work more.
Overall, I found taking the time to get away from work paradoxically lets me learn more about it. That without time off, time on is of a lesser quality, and enjoyed so much less. And that every vacation, every ounce of time spent away from the daily grind is an invaluable opportunity to re-focus, re-calibrate and re-position ourselves to build the careers we truly enjoy.
What career lessons have you learnt from your vacation?
To Your Success,
The Corporate Sis.
