One of the thrilling parts of the holiday season is the thought of taking time off. You imagine yourself completely agenda-less, basking in the glow of an open fire — or hearing the waves crashing on the beach, if you’re a fellow Floridian — but often, there’s one little snag.

Work.

Sometimes, it’s not even that your colleagues are contacting you during the break; it’s that you feel compelled to just finish this one tiny, teeny little thing … and six hours later, you’re still at it. So much for a vacation.

While chatting with some friends over the weekend, Nate brought up this problem:

“I feel like I need to give myself permission to take time off.”

A few of us exchanged glances. Yes. That. He described our problem perfectly. We weren’t giving ourselves permission to unplug. We kept running through our to-do lists, thinking that if we just tackle this one little thing and wrap up that one other thing, we could finally be free. But in doing so, we were just keeping ourselves from relaxing and being refreshed — the whole point of taking time off.

So, while it’s definitely easier said than done (remember that stat that 1 in 3 people work every single day of their vacations?!), try to give yourself boundaries. If you really can’t fully unplug, maybe you can give yourself office hours — capped at 1 hour per day, max — or check in that first day, then commit to un-syncing your office email from your phone for the rest of your stay. If there’s an urgent matter, someone will call you.

If there’s one thing I’m learning, it’s that if you don’t set boundaries at work, very rarely will someone set them for you. There’s always more that could be done, but rarely does it need to be done right that second.

 

This post is part of Life Between Weekends’ Tuesday Takeaway series. Every Tuesday, we’ll share the most compelling insight we’ve gleaned from a book, movie, tour, documentary or article to inspire you during the workday.