Time Off: Off From What?
Why take time off?
And off from what exactly?
It turns out that ‘off from what exactly’ is a critical component before you answer the first question. As the answer to this second question might then guide why you may or may not need time off at all.
Are you meaning time off from daily work? Time off from rest? (this is not a typo, as you have perhaps been agitated with nothing more meaningful to do, such that you choose to ‘pick a fight’ instead). From your staff or your employer? From vocation-related activities? From learning or studies? From physical training? From an intimate partner or marriage? From kids? From relatives or friends? From clients or customers? From your cell phone? From church?
Already, you may be beginning to appreciate that if you are contemplating time off from any of these various or other options, each might call for a different strategy.
Why take time off?
There is conceptually the requirement for our physical bodies to rest and recuperate. In the context of illness or physical injury, time off might be exactly what is required. There is an argument to be made that illness or injury are but strategies used by the body to get what it most needs – perhaps a strategy to provide us with feedback to pay more attention to our physical needs. Time off is built into our physiology; for example, at least some of our sleep is devoted to this. The role of sleep and recovery from illness is not, though, the main focus of this article.
For some, given the title of this article, you are contemplating some version of time off from your vocational activities. And we are left to wonder why you would have engineered your life such that you want a vacation from your vocation. And wonder, too, if that might explain some of the low rates of engagement (sometimes quoted as low as 20%) in work environments. Essentially, workers are vacating, absent from, or not present with their work.
So what are some of the other reasons to actively decide to take time off from work as opposed to the passive vacating or vacationing that we discuss above?
There is abundant literature in business and psychology about the benefits of time off and why it’s important to recharge your batteries. Time off is touted as a cure-all for so many ails – from burnout to boredom, and interestingly for both of these.
We want to share with you a slightly different approach to thinking about time off because we will argue that it does not serve you to study yet another article about why you “should” take time off. We aren’t even sure that it’s all it’s cracked up to be.
Let us divide the reasons for why to take time off into the following:
Physical rejuvenation, as discussed above.
Mental rejuvenation. The brain and mind can use rejuvenation too.
So we might ‘sharpen the saw’ as Stephen Covey describes in part by ‘leaving a problem alone and without consciously focusing on solving it’ for a period of time. A question consciously submitted to the unconscious is a powerful stimulus for solutions. Ask and leave it alone. In other words, you are taking time off from actively seeking a solution. These are often the source of Eureka moments where insights and ideas arrive that would have been challenging to come at through purely logical linear means of problem-solving.
Actively engaging your mind in ‘alternate’ work can also give you an opportunity to appreciate a challenge from a different perspective. This alternate work for the mind or body might itself be a tool to distract your conscious mind from consciously trying to solve the problem. It allows the unconscious mind to bring forth alternate solutions.
We are well aware that so many of us spend so much of our time putting out fires. Doing ‘busy work.’ Not permitting ourselves the time to consciously think or the permission of space to allow ideas to land or be nurtured within us. Actively taking time off can accomplish just that.
These periods of time off can allow us to be curious again and to look at whatever we were addressing before with new eyes, allowing us to see different options for moving forward.
The perceived burden of what we might be dealing with might be enough that we are at risk of ‘breaking’ or burnout, so vacating from the situation may be helpful.
Dan Sullivan, in his book “10x is easier than 2x,” makes a case for more time off, not less. And hidden between his lines are the reasons listed above.
However, many of the situations that you might find yourself in, or know that others are in, are none of the reasons above. In many cases, time off is a form of escape. What’s more, is that the individual might be escaping from some perceived nightmare to some perceived fantasy. And they have never considered what exactly they are escaping from.
It has again become popular to take time off to meditate. Yet, for many, to meditate means to escape. Not only to escape the apparent chaos and noise without and within but to attempt to bring peace to the wars without and within.
Since, as we have argued, there is no peace without war, it is an unrealistic expectation to achieve peace without war by meditation or by any other means. After a period of transient apparent escape, the ‘escapee’ is hurtled back into actuality with the perfect mix of both war and peace. This often leads to a desperation for more periods of escape – and the cycle of unfulfillment becomes more pronounced. If you attempt to avoid fights with any outside person, you end up with the biggest fights with the inside person – yourself. You can’t escape war in your search for peace any more than the North Pole of a magnet can escape the South Pole.
Some think that retirement is permanent ‘time off’ only to be disappointed when they are faced (sometimes unconsciously) with nothing meaningful to fill their days and lives. They begin to wither away, literally.
Time off for escape is particularly concerning because you won’t be able to escape for very long before it starts to gnaw at you. You don’t get to escape what you haven’t loved. The old adage of what you resist persists applies here too.
When you do take time off, there may be the practical aspect that work to be done is not done. That is neither of itself positive nor negative. For the sheer volume of work when you return may inspire you to develop more effective systems for dumping, delegating, prioritizing, or doing.
On the other side, when you do return, the reality of what you were facing has frequently not changed. Bosses and spouses still nag, babies still cry at nights, your calendar didn’t magically clear itself, budgets didn’t automatically balance, political parties in power didn’t automatically change, and the weather is still not yet predictable!
We have written about this previously–see Are You Fired Up About Burn Out? where we explain in more detail that your perception of burden relates directly to whether you think it’s going to get you more of what you want and less of what you don’t. And, to the extent that you perceive that what you are doing is getting you more of what you want, you will be less inspired to take time off. Less inspired to take coffee breaks or smoke breaks, snack breaks, or sick breaks.
Uninspired individuals doing tasks that are not meaningful to them are how such ‘breaks’ got invented. When we treat workers as mechanical cogs in our industrial machines and pay little attention to what they value and how we might help them achieve that, we end up paying…yes, paying with breaks and disengagement.
There is a considerable body of work that focuses on how our use of language might define our perceptions. For example, we (Kumar and Amit) have been reprimanded for saying that we are ‘spending’ time with our families. Instead, we are told to think of that as ‘investing’ time with our families.
And yes, language is powerful, as making that deliberate change does impact your thoughts and feelings. There is a reason that in sales copy, one is taught to speak of ‘an investment in program A or B’ vs. ‘the cost of program A or B.’
However, we wish to point out that when you think of ‘spending’ your time, you think of it as your time having been ‘used up’ in the past. You don’t have it or the benefits of it at some time in the future. When you think of an ‘investment’ of time, you think of some advantage it will bring in the future. Note that an important point is being missed in both sets of languaging. Your time and attention are allocated to some past event or future outcome. What’s missing from that calculation is the present. It is no wonder that so much of human experience is consumed outside of being present.
We are caught like the proverbial hamster on the wheel with just too far to go in just too little time. It is from this point that we will take our Members in our extended Member Content for this month. Then, in our Live Member Teaching, we will work with you so that you might leverage your ability to increase your presence to grow your impact and grow your rewards. Join us here.
So, there is a role for time off. However, it would be wise to first consider time off from what. Time off for rest and reflection, and rejuvenation might be exactly what is most called for.
Be also aware that the more inspired you are, the more grateful you are for what is as it is, and the less need there will be for time off for escape.
Until the next perfect time…
Amit and Kumar Ramlall
PS… In our extended Member teaching, which you can access by joining us here, we will provide insights into why we might find it so hard to stay focused for just long enough to move the needle in your life and business.
If you’ve got the code to staying consistently on priority and consistently inspired by what you do, please come share with us at our Live Member Teaching on July 18, 2023 at 5:00 PM Mountain Time. And if you haven’t yet got it figured out, do come as we will share the key steps that have worked for us and clients in multiple industries.