Thank you for your message but I’m on leave…what to do and not do next
Thank you for your message but I’m on leave…
What to do and not do next
This year I’ve set the intention to take more annual leave in small chunks of time more often. This has come from two years of cancelled leave and staycations due to the pandemic. It has also come from realising regular rests are much better for me than say one long break where on return the zen is forgotten within a couple of days. Sound familiar?
I want to feel rested more often than not. I don’t want to feel exhausted more than refreshed. I’ve blogged about different types of rest before, and as a regular listener of Greg McKeown’s essentialist podcast I’ve learnt to tweak how I approach rest. I now embrace ongoing rest to help me to combat exhaustion and as a way to place self-care at the heart of what I do. Rest features every day - sleep, walks, breaks from screen, meditation, just lying on the floor or bed for a few minutes, talking with cool people that energise me, making, strength classes, listening, stretching, attending to indoor plants, change of scenery to help with chucking of time, etc. And long periods of rest come from embracing weekends and annual leave where I can get out and about and do those things that require some more time.
One of our rest actions in academia is annual leave.
Time away.
The space to extend daily actions of rest.
Leave is an amazing gift. It’s a reboot, refresh and step away time over an extended period of time. Usually we get to do things we don’t get time to do during usual day to day activities due to our personal and working commitments. It’s a time for many of us to travel, to leave the home, or to catch up with people who we want to spend time with.
I’ve noticed a flurry of chatter about this topic on Twitter lately from academics. With contextual information often shared around the double-edge sword of leave.
You take leave because you need it but on return to work, you are flooded with all the requests that came through while you were on leave and you are back to exhaustion pretty quickly
You can’t take leave due to teaching commitments but HR force you on leave
You take leave to write or research but should be able to have working conditions that allow you to carry out this act of work during working hours
You take leave but are so exhausted you fall sick for the first few days
You have leave but can’t take it
You are on leave but work colleagues keep contacting you
And there are so many other situations we could add in here.
Drawing on my recent experience. In the last month I’ve had two mini leave rest breaks. One a weekend camping trip that started on a Friday late afternoon and ended on a Sunday with a connection back to bare basics and gorgeous nature. The other a four day annual leave break with two days off work connected to the weekend. Both leave rest breaks featured colleagues messaging. Before I progress, I want to add a caveat: colleagues were briefed; colleagues who are friends and who have personal contact details and whom we talk non work content are not included in my sharing here…in fact they knew I was on leave and sent me well wishes before and connected with me after and thus totally respected boundaries.
I was struck by the blur that occurred. I talk about the blur from the perspective that even though I had briefed colleagues, had actioned all projects to stages where momentum could continue, had turned off all notifications on work platforms, and provided out of office messages with solutions of who to talk to if you couldn’t wait…I still received work communication. This communication came on my personal platforms. So there was a blurring between personal and work that was not conducive to rest. Messages of enjoy your leave, how is your leave going? What are you up to? Do you have a moment to talk? Can I ask you about x? kept coming. Sometimes 6 messages a day from just one person. These messages were not via normal channels of communication with these people. To clarify, my personal platforms do not have day jobs (usual work) work conversations in them at any stage prior to going on leave. It is lovely to be in colleagues' thoughts, but the boundaries were overstepped and strained, causing me to reflect deeply about how we now view colleagues taking leave. The honouring of the space that comes with leave was not respected.
Now after a rant to my partner. Processing a combination of shock and anger. I had to tune into what messages my reaction was telling me. Yes, I can not look. True. My mini anger moment was a manifestation of frustration. It tells me lots and tuning into this is helpful. My shock was accompanied by the question: really? Is it really that important that you can’t wait for my return? And my processing led to this blog post to reframe how we can help each other to respect leave and the space to rest. If I need this help, I am pretty sure you may as well. Boundaries, from every direction, of course come into consideration.
So what’s happened to how we view leave or more so how we view someone else taking leave? Has pandemic blur become such a blur that boundaries of respecting a work colleagues leave time just doesn’t matter? Have we lost sight of what’s important? Have we lost ability to wait or make decisions for ourself or ask someone else? Does the place of rest and rejuvenation not have value anymore? Why are so many people working on weekends? Why are so many of us needing to know an answer right now? So many questions….
So, as we return back into taking leave outside our own home, let’s return to respecting others' decisions to take leave and allow them to disconnect. Let’s support each other to have the space to rest no matter how we decide to construct it.
So here is my boundary refresh for leave tips:
Preparation for leave prep, try this…
Educate others about how you approach leave (and rest really). If we hear each other talk about it in constructive and proactive ways we support and empower each other. And hopefully support the growth in a common language to position leave and rest as a key strategy for our toolbox of self-care.
Place an out of office message on your email and stick to it. Guide colleagues to how you approach leave and where they can go for assistance on any matters.
A recent tip I picked up from a colleague is set the out of office message a couple of hours before you start leave, when you are still working, to give yourself a buffer to finish off tasks with a more gentler flow. A bonus is it also calls out colleagues who email you at 4:45pm saying: “I know you are about to go on leave but could you do….”.
Another colleague puts an automatic email response the week before informing upcoming leave and that if anything needs to be actioned please get it to them ahead of time. It’s a kind of super heads up strategy that may be helpful for those of us in roles that are concerned with working with large groups of people across multiple areas or projects.
Set yourself up with your intentions for how you are going to engage with platforms that are not officially work but keep you connected. How are you going to approach it? These platforms while you are on leave? What are your rules for engagement?
Turn off all notifications.
Consider removing apps or moving them into a folder that has a no go rule attached for you.
Look forward to your leave, gift this to yourself.
A colleague who is on leave, try this…
When someone takes leave, please don’t message them. Respect their space.
If someone is indicating they are on leave from one email, it’s highly likely they are for their personal email address, What’s app, text, teams, Facebook messenger, Instagram DM, Instagram comments, Twitter DM, Tweets. Note to self…if your message is that important call/speak/contact someone else who is relevant.
Don’t find an out of a office email response and move to a personal form of communication…that’s just not cool, you do interrupt the rest.
Hold over your message until they return.
Don’t send a “how is leave message” or ask “when we are back” on other platforms. We love that you are taking of us, but check in when we are back at work.
Think through what it is you need to do and who can help you, if you can’t progress, schedule a meeting for return (but not at 9am on day one of return).
Just do the work and brief us later. We trust you to keep working.
You really really really want to action something but someone is on leave…
Just don’t make contact.
The power of the one minute pause. This is a wonderful strategy for integrating rest and balancing energy during the day. And it is a bonus strategy of taking the time to think before you send that email or message to someone who is currently taking time out to rest themselves on leave.
Email send delay. Most email platforms now have the capacity to support you to send emails and have them arrive in an inbox at a certain time. So even if you are working to your hours you can provide the gift of it arriving not on the weekend or after working hours.
Note to self while on leave
Think: When you open that message, what are you saying yes to?
Love yourself enough to know I need to rest; just don’t look.
If you have a role where triaging or being aware of what is happening is critical, then set strict boundaries on when you look. But I still think, do you really need to check? Trust who is acting for you, you will be briefed on return.
Note to self on return from leave
Be gentle.
Read and open emails and messages around your time management boundaries.
Calm inbox is something I have been using for a long time now. I read emails twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, managed around how my brain best works. First thing in the morning I know I am most fresh and have set the boundary for this to be creative time (writing new words, thinking through a particular project or problem, finding solutions, etc). Know how your mind works and where your energy high is to allow you to be creative and build this into your day.
Learn from this past leave on the practices of your colleagues, and consider what tweaks you may need to make for your next out of office message.
Reflect on how you handled your ability to rest.
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