Days Off Are Not Always Fun

still today I want to talk about days off. This came about because I was talking with a friend and we assume when people take time off work that it is full recharge and fun reasons. And let's be honest, it's not always the case. And when you come back to work, people like, oh, he must be now well rested after that time off. You took time off work.

 

Yes, that may be the case. But if you look at the last year, a lot of people have taken time off for funerals. A lot of people have taken time off for mental health. A lot of people have taken time off to deal with whatever it is they're dealing with. It might be you need to put down an animal. It might be you need to look after grandma. It might be the plumber's coming and you have to take the time off work.

 

So we were talking about how it would be great if there was a different way. There's two things. There's one is a different way of calling time off when you're doing something that isn't fun or recharging. And the other flipside of that is how to deal with people, how to change people's assumptions. That time off is always a vacation or holiday or recharging and or fun without because you might not want to tell people why you're taking time off. If you're going to put your cat down, for example, you might not want people bring it up.

 

You might not want people going, oh, I'm so sorry about all of this other stuff. You might just want to get back to work and work. But at the same time, when they're like, oh, what did you do on your day off? You don't want to say so how do you deal with that and how do we get around calling? Time off. Time off? Yes, it might be time off from work, but that doesn't mean that you might not be not thinking about work.

 

Maybe you are seeing the emails pile up and it is stressful. Maybe you get a phone call from work and it is stressful or WhatsApp message or whatever method of communication it is. How do you let people know that there are boundaries with the time off? Yes, you are taking time off from this thing, but it doesn't mean that you are coming back refreshed all the time. I know there is no well, I mean, there might be a right answer.

 

I do not know it. So if you have any ideas, please feel free to email me. But it's a very interesting thing to think about how we use time off, what the expectations are for time off and people's assumptions with time off. I know that there is definitely the idea that people shouldn't be asking you why you're taking time off. You just taking time off and that's that. Managers, CEOs, supervisors should not be asking you why you're taking time off and in all honesty, should not be making comments about, oh, this is the second Friday you've had off in two months or whatever it might be.

 

You might be taking an exam, you might be applying for another job, whatever it is, the reason you are taking time from not doing work should not be up for discussion in general. And then the other part of this conversation was the work that's left behind when you know in advance that you're going to take time off, even if it's one day, sometimes you might find yourself working weekends or working extra time that week to make up for the time off that you have not been at work.

 

And so does that make your time off enjoyable or not? Because the rest of the time is spent stressing around that one day off or two days off that you will not be around at work. How do you balance the workload? How do you make sure everything gets done and people know what's going on and you don't come back to a train wreck yet? Enjoy that time. Because what tends to happen is if you have like, you know that you're going to take one day, you're not going to be at work.

 

You tend to front stack all your other work on the other days. You're not going to be there. And so you end up working more anyway. And so then is that day off? Was it because then you just playing catch up and all recovery and not necessarily enjoying it is something that you need to enjoy while having the headspace to deal with that time off when you are not at work. I know. I just find this very fascinating and I would love to hear people's thoughts about this because it's all about mental health, physical health and how the work life balance is that even a thing anymore is lines are blurred.

 

Anyway, thanks for listening. We'd love to hear from you. Please email me at janice@thecareerintrovert.com. This is Janice from The Career Introvert. How can you build your brand and get hired? Looking forward to speaking to you next week. Have a great rest of your week.