Through the past year, many of us have been faced with personal and professional challenges. Given the amount of change we have experienced, it is understandable that our university community is feeling fatigued and in need of some well-deserved rest.
I realize it can be difficult to book days off when you are busy; I find it difficult myself. But scheduling time away, whether a day or two at a time or a week or more, is important for maintaining resilience and a healthy work-life balance. Vacation also contributes to better engagement, productivity, and satisfaction when at work.
As we approach the summer months, I encourage you to use your vacation time to take a break and recharge to prepare for the fall—to step away from your screens, and enjoy the outdoors and some recreational time. Personally, I will be taking several long weekends to go camping with my family and to finish some renovations and landscaping around my home.
In addition to other vacation time, you may also want to benefit from taking some long weekends. For example, I encourage you to consider taking July 2 as a vacation day so you have an extra long weekend to enjoy. I also encourage managers to avoid setting deadlines or booking meetings for July 2 to support staff in taking a break. A list of further suggestions and tips for taking a break, and for how supervisors can support their teams, are provided below.
Whatever your plans are this summer, I hope you are able to enjoy some relaxing and rejuvenating time away from work.
Take care,
Suggestions for taking a break when you can’t take time off
1. The mindset of “everything is a priority” is not sustainable for long periods.
Suggestion: If you have a heavy workload, discuss it with your supervisor and identify priorities. For example, if you are in back-to-back meetings on a regular basis, start scheduling blocks of desk time in your calendar to focus on tasks or projects you feel you are falling behind on.
2. The lines between work time and personal time are easily blurred with work from home arrangements. You may struggle to “turn off” work when your office and home are the